Magazine Scam

On Sunday I'm hanging out in my back yard playing with Lucie and Kira and these two girls walk up and ask if I live there. I said yes I did. One of the girls then goes into a whole bubbly schpeal about this contest she's in where it's boys vs. girls in the selling of magazines, but the main thing is for them to raise money towards college and a trip to Cancun for the top sellers -where they can bring along people who bought magazines from them. Now, I was very non-committive and non-verbal to all this, but did not say as I should have from the very start - I am not interested please go away. I think that her bubbliness was just overwhelming me and really not in a good way - it was actually getting on my nerves, but I was a little tired and had a lot on my mind, not to mention that my upbringing taught me to be nice to people and that everyone deserves a chance, blah, blah, blah and that was running through my head.

So, I figured I would just put her off and say that I can not make a decision and needed to consult with my husband who was inside. Now, once again, I should have just gone inside and pretended to talk with Jason, But NOOOO, I tell him there are two girls outside and that they are trying to sell magazines and I need him to be the heavy and just say no and to not get taken in by the one girls excitement and bubbliness. That was a mistake. He, of course, said he wouldn't and he would handle it. He then invites them in to sit at the table outside while they go over their schpeal. I even tried to help at one point, but not really, I guess, by saying the reason I was staying out of it was that he had just lectured me on my spending to much money one things we don't need. I was thinking he would say, this is true, so girls I shouldn't do the same thing, but no, he starts looking at the magazines. All along in the back of my head there was this little voice which I kept ignoring screaming at me - this is a scam, this is a scam. I then proceed to agree with him about buying a subscription and that he should run to the atm so that we can give them cash and not a check, so they don't have that information and they get an additional 1,000 points for an atm run. I stupidly allow him to ride off to the atm with them and not until he's gone do I think this could be a set up, etc. He didn't even have his phone on him so I could check on him. Nothing, happened thank goodness and he returned with them safely shortly thereafter.

Now, while he as gone and after excruciating minutes of trying to get the computer to open up in explorer and to stop pulling up his Heroes game, I began to look up "magazine scams selling door to door" and had just found a few instances and references when they got back. Once again, I chickened out about standing up to all this and just saying no - grrr - and Jason and I waved goodbye to the girls as they went their merry way. This is when I decide I need to say something to Jason, because I couldn't before, because saying it in front of them would have been hurtful to them - duh. He than says why didn't you say something and let me look at what you found. He reads a bit more and does further research (including looking the company up on the BBB site) than I did and and found out they were listed as unsatisfactory on the BBB and one persons report says exactly what will be said by the con-artist and it actually was almost word for word down to "I don't get along with my family. They have been abusive towards me, etc." The article said to call your local police and report them which I did and our wonderful police department said they'd send someone right away to investigate.

Jason and I figured we were out our money and that it was the price we paid for being so stupid and foolish, especially for me not to go with my instincts which are pretty good. We did keep looking out the windows to see if we saw them in the area still and to see if the police really did come out to investigate. While doing this we see them walk up to a neighbors house across the street and I asked Jason if he wanted me to be the Witch that I can be and he said yes. So we walked across the way and waited until our neighbor shut them out the proper way and didn't give them anything. At which time I said "Call me a bitch if you want, but we need our money back and we don't want any magazines." The head girl started acting all pouty like while at the same time throwing me daggers of death, but she did give us back our money. She then asked us what changed our minds and Jason said well we did a bit of research and almost everything that came up about your company said it was a scam and not to do it. Neither one of the girls made any protests saying that this wasn't true or that there had been bad people, etc. but that wasn't them. They just walked up the street. We did see the police about 5-10 minutes later looking around the area to see if they saw them, but don't know whether or not they eventually found them. (Have to say it was nice to have a good response time from our police force and that they took something like this seriously.)

I am glad that we got our money back and that to learn this valuable lesson it did not cost us much more than having to admit it outloud and our resulting embarrassment. I was extremely paranoid for the rest of the day and most of the night and probably sorta will be for a little bit about retaliation, because I am just like that, but hopefully they just moved on with their little scam and are in a different area or better yet the police were able to find them and maybe do something about it so that others stupid, ignorant people don't fall prey to this scam.