Just say no to door-to-door magazine sales

Herb Weisbaum • Profile • E-mail

It starts with a knock on the door. The nice young man or woman standing there wants you to buy magazines. You’ve never seen them before, but they have a convincing story about why they’re going door-to-door. They may have ID and seem on the up-and-up.

Just say no.

That may sound harsh, but it’s the smart thing to do. The fact is you can’t tell if that person on your doorstep is for real or a con artist. There’s a very good chance you’re being set up for a scam.

“They seemed like nice people. It sounded like a reputable company,” says Stacey Harley of Olympia, Wash. She paid for $70 worth of children’s magazines and never got a thing.

This summer, like every summer, deceptive door-to-door magazine sales crews are out in full force across the country. They are mostly high school and college-age kids who are taught to use a number of phony pitches. They say they’re raising money for a local hospital, school or charity. They’re earning points toward a school trip. Some even claim to be supporting the troops in Iraq.

In the last 12 months, the Better Business Bureau has received 1,100 complaints against more than 50 companies that sell magazines this way. Many of the victims were so moved by the fictitious pitch they paid hundreds of dollars for subscriptions.

BBB spokesman Steve Cox says some complaints are about high-pressure and misleading sales tactics. Other victims say they never got the magazines they paid for.

Prestige Sales
Last year, a young man knocked on Dina Varao’s door in Sacramento. He wanted her to buy magazines or children’s books that would be donated to local schools and hospitals. He said this would help him earn a high school trip to Europe.

“He was good,” Varao remembers. “He made a lot of references to living in the neighborhood and going to a local high school. That’s how he roped me in.”

She paid $49 and got a receipt. After the young man left she noticed the receipt said Prestige Sales of Arizona. That seemed strange, so Varao talked to her neighbors and nobody knew the young salesman.

Scams come in many forms — Phony invoices: These solicitations are deliberately made to look like bills or renewal notices to trick you into buying. If you already subscribe to the magazine it’s easy to be fooled. Look carefully to see if the letter is from the publisher or some other company. If you’re not sure, call the magazine’s toll-free customer service line. — Telemarketing calls: Be extremely skeptical when someone offers you a free subscription if you pay a “small” one-time processing fee. Chances are that fee is more than the retail price of the magazine. From my experience, publishers don’t sell magazines this way. I’d say no and hang up.

Afraid she’d been scammed, she decided to cancel. There was no phone number on the receipt, just an e-mail and mailing address. After writing numerous times with no response, Varao threatened to go to the Better Business Bureau. That’s when she got a message that Prestige would destroy her check.

Varao was lucky. Her check was never cashed. Even so, she feels what they did was “really slimy.”

A Prestige crew hit Eileen Lyle’s neighborhood in Carlsbad, Calif. Same pitch; they were friends of someone in neighborhood.

“They would have a different story at each house,” Lyle tells me. “We’re this person’s cousin or that person’s brother or we’re staying with someone in the area.” When a neighbor challenged them, they took off running.

People from 12 states have filed complaints with the Better Business Bureau about Prestige Sales, LLC, which has a PO Box in Phoenix. The unhappy customers say they never received their orders or had to wait up to six months for them to arrive.

The BBB in Phoenix gives the company an “F” rating.

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