Two pieces of advice from someone who’s been around this block a few times:
This particular scam is quite prevalent, so you’re not just looking for that particular ‘publishing house’ name. They’re all the same, just different names;
If/when you send items back in prepaid envelopes, make sure any bar codes (usually near the bottom) are obliterated with a Sharpie marker. Otherwise, they know exactly who sent something back to them…and they’ll send you more.
I got nearly the same one today; except it was for Discover Magazine.
They or lookalikes have been around for decades. This is not a new scam by any stretch.
They prey on people who are careless and who do not actually read.
Similar parasites prey on small companies by sending bogus “invoices” that look legit and hope to get a check now and then and they do.
This is rather like the “domain registration” scammers, who send out letters (or emails) to the owners of Internet domains that are made up to look like registrar invoices. In big letters at the top it usually says something like “Domain Name Expiration Notice”, but if you look closely at the message and ignore all the “URGENT!” and “will expire!” texts, you will eventually find some small text that says “This notice is not a bill”. Some of them are apparently intended to get the recipients to switch their registration from their current registrar to the sender (at a cost of about three or four times what they’d pay to a reputable registrar). Others sell some nebulous ‘service’ such as “domain search engine registration” which is never actually described or defined, but can safely be assumed to be entirely worthless.
I don’t mind if they send me more. Costs them real money to do so and they have zero chance of success and those aren’t going to someone who might take the bait.
I always send their junk back if there is a prepaid envelope. Kept one really stupid and persistent “religious prophet” tied up for years sending me stuff. Near as I can figure it cost them about twenty dollars just in postage before they gave up. Plus the cost of all the “holy” trinkets they sent me. The “blessed prayer” shower cap was the best in terms of “Were they sober?”
Tie them up with so many false positives they cannot afford to keep fishing.
Post Office won’t send stuff back like that. Got done too many times and the advertising/“direct mail” industry has great lobbyists.
Same people who got the regs changed so you can’t send them their junk with no stamp and let them eat the postage due costs.
For sure. If the government doesn’t fund postal service properly, well, the postal service needs to operate as a for-profit enterprise and then pretty much anything goes. So I’d amend my comment to say that the scam-mail should be made into the politicians’ problem and people should forward this crap to their congresscritter.
I live in Canada, remember my parents getting this sort of stuff when I was a kid. It has never found its way to my mailbox as an adult, and I don’t think my mum gets it any more either. Canada Post is not particularly well funded either, so I don’t know what led to the change (or if my personal experience reflects the general trend). Maybe it could never happen in the US because First Amendment or something, I dunno.
Good tip, most “free trials” these days require a card so they can charge you when you forget, but these were no-card-needed magazine offers where you just check a box and get your free issue. So they had no leverage other than letterhead with BILLING DEPARTMENT on it to scare you.
I have dealt with collections agencies for hospitals and utilities when they made billing errors and refused to correct them. The amounts were just $40-$100, like a magazine subscription. The resulting illegal robocall assault and inability to make it stop was so intense and traumatic any normal person would have just raised the white flag. And these were supposedly reputable companies.
There is no way I would intentionally renege on a contract in hopes of sticking it to them; this is asymmetric warfare. The collections and direct mail marketing lobbies have paid for so many arms that the best one can hope for is to walk away alive.
Ditto, and having spent half my life in both countries, the difference in Canada is stark. I think the difference is that Canada Post is reasonably well funded relatively speaking, and it’s not a hybrid private/public “independent entity” like USPS is. Canada Post is not expected to earn a profit or be self-sufficient. It’s a public utility and a public good, and is treated as such. How it should be!
When I was growing up, we got a little bit of junk mail as you say, like ValPak books and such. But if you’ve never lived in the US, trust me that it’s an order of magnitude difference. I recycled armfuls of the crap every day down there.
Yeah, I hear your logic on that.
I thought they stopped publishing in the 60s. One of the best satire magazines out there.
We definitely get a lot less in the UK. And an out-and-out scam like a pretend bill would definitely not fly.
I manage the websites for several businesses along with their domain names. Several are in my account and a few are in accounts I helped them set up.
All the contact information is for their business so if something happens to me they can easily retain control.
They are constantly sending me emails or copies of notices telling them they are about to lose their domains. One company actually paid 270 bucks for a one year renewal but thank goodness they had no idea how to complete the transfer. They did lose the cash.
I’ve told them repeatedly their domains are registered for 5 to 10 years not to worry and just throw them away but nope, they freak out every time.
And this is how the scammers make their money.
There’s a related scam that involves simply sending invoices to companies for “services” or “office supplies” and hoping that an overworked admin will pay the invoice without looking too closely. That’s straight-up fraud, though. The “domain name registration” people have a level of plausible deniability in that they can claim to be offering a (worthless) service. “We’re shocked that you thought our advertisement – which we made up to look exactly like an invoice – was an invoice. Didn’t you see the ‘this is not a bill’ text printed in 7-point pale gray type at the bottom of the page?”
Best response is to write RTS occupier deceased on the front with a Sharpie and put it into a mailbox. Clutter up their mailing room.
Also scribble over the recipient’s name and address on the envelope.
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