While not all door-to-door magazine sales are a scam, many of them are. Often times, it is the people doing the selling who are as much a victim of the scam as those people who actually buy the magazines. The sad part of it is that the guy at my door might be an unsuspecting participant in the scam. He might really think he’s going to get a prize trip somewhere. I am pretty sure he was lying about the 19,000 points and how he was in first place, because it made for a juicy sales pitch. It was like he was trying to make me feel sorry enough for him to want to buy a magazine. Homey don’t play that.
I did some research on the subject, and uncovered another problem related to the magazine sales. The unscrupulous companies who put these kids out on the street to go door-to-door often work the sellers like indentured servants. Many of them are loaded up on a bus and taken to distant areas where they are pretty much forced to work all day and most wind up making very little money. It is promises of prizes like trips that entice these young people into signing up for the work, but the majority of them end up with very little to show for their effort.
In February 2001, the New York Times ran a horrifying four-page story about young people caught up in magazine sales crews and the kind of things they went through. Check it out and you may think twice about even opening the door to these people. In fact, I wish now that I had warned that young man at my door of what he was involved in, and to get out as soon as he could. If these people show up at your home or business, don’t fall for any of their sob stories. A legitimate salesperson wouldn’t need to get into such a long story before they even told you what they were selling.