I walked directly into a scam.

All things considered, still a great trip. This is me, with the car, on the F1 Montreal Circuit (opened to public, I had no idea)

I want to tell you about something that happened to me recently. It reflects badly on me; but the lesson it left behind is one I think is worth sharing (and a good reminder to myself).

Just last week, I was in Canada. I rented a car from Avis to get around.

When I returned it, I made a point of asking the counter staff to confirm that the tank was full. They agreed that it was full, the car

was perfectly fine, and I walked away thinking that was the end of it.

Two days later, Avis informed me that the car had not been returned with a full tank. They imposed a charge.

That was the first incident. Despite their claims that everything was fine, despite their staff confirming that the tank was full upon return, they billed me for a claim they did not prove. I disputed the charge — on Facebook. (Avis has since refunded that amount, which is the right outcome). But my very public frustration had caught someone else's attention.

Someone had seen my Facebook comment. They reached out to me, claiming to be from Avis, apologizing for the incident and promising to refund as well as compensate me for the trouble. It sounded reasonable. It sounded like accountability and service recovery. It sounded awesome. Until it wasn't.

It sounded awesome. Until it wasn't.

What followed was a very human response to a very deliberate trap. They asked me to set up a Remitly account and transfer funds to them as part of the "reimbursement process." I did it. I am not proud of this. The amount was $414. When things did not go as they said, they told me I was not following their instructions correctly. They kept me confused, kept me hopeful, and kept me compliant. If you cannot convince them, confuse them. They continued to gaslight me, pulling me further from my own instincts until I was lost.

In the end, I was out $414 I should never have sent — not to Avis, as it turned out, but to a scammer who had simply been watching and waiting for someone angry enough to take the bait.

I am sharing this not to vent — though I am frustrated. The financial lesson buried in this story is one I do talk to clients about, and this time I was the client who proceeds to ignore me.

We do not throw good money after bad.

There is a concept in economics called the sunk cost fallacy. It describes the very human tendency to keep investing — money, time, energy — simply because we have already invested so much. Walking away would mean admitting we were wrong. That the loss was real. That it was our fault.

So instead, we keep going. We convince ourselves that the next step will make it right. That a little more will recover everything. It almost never does.

The first charge from Avis stung. But it was a small frustration, with the fix being to go through them direct instead of Facebook. The moment I sent that $414, I had made a second mistake trying to fix the first one. I had let the sunk cost — the original disputed charge — pull me into a decision I would never have made with fresh eyes. The rational move, the moment someone asked me to send money in order to receive a refund, was to put down the phone.

And yet I did not. Because by then, the loss already felt personal. Cutting my losses meant accepting that I had been fooled — and that is a harder thing to do than it sounds. This same impulse keeps us in situations that no longer serve us, because switching feels like admitting defeat. It is the impulse that turns a manageable loss into a larger one.

I know this. I teach this. And I still got it wrong.

So here is what I am taking away from this, and what I hope you take too. When something is lost, accept that it is lost. The question to ask is never "how do I recover what I have already spent?" The question is "given where I am right now, what is the smartest next move?" Those are very different questions, and the second one is the only one worth answering.

And if anyone — ever — asks you to send money in order to receive a refund, hang up.

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I write on topics related to financial habits and decisions. Do explore my other articles at https://www.williamseah.com/blog if the ideas resonate. Drop me an email at reach.william@gmail.com or text me at 9673 1523 if you'd like to chat over coffee or whisky.