This past weekend, I had some friends over when someone rang my doorbell. I looked through my peephole and thought the guy on my porch as another friend of mine who was supposed to be out of town. When I opened the door, I realized that my friend was still out of town, and the guy on my porch was there to sell me something. For the record, I have never and will never buy anything from anyone who knocks on my door.
The first thing the guy said to me was, “Your neighbors said you were friendly. Are you friendly?” I am pretty friendly, but I hope my neighbors didn’t get this guy’s hopes up by telling him that. He then hands me this beat up old card that has a bunch of handwritten notes like ‘I Win!’ and other junk on it. This guy, who was probably about 20 years old, then mentions the name of some program he is in that is supposed to help him better his public relation skills and something else. I wasn’t really paying that much attention.
He went through this long spiel about how he needed 20,000 points to earn a trip to somewhere and how he was in first place with 19,000 and needed just a few more to get the trip. What it eventually got around to was the guy was trying to sell me some overpriced magazines. I politely declined and the fake smile on his face quickly went away. He made some comment that I think was hopefully polite, but I was already closing the door when he said it.
Back in August 2005, the Washington Post did a story on Magazine Sales Scams where people claimed to be from a school or some group, but were not. Even the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) website warns about magazine subscription scams. A Google search for ‘magazine sales scams’ returns hundreds of articles from newspaper and television websites all over the United States that report related scams in their area.