Two young women knock at my door, presenting themselves my neighbors. "We're journalism students at Temple University and that we've both gotten an internship at the BBC in England." They are doing this fundraiser to earn money for their travel. One of the two does most of the talking; the other mostly stands there and looks uncomfortable.
They produce a folded sales booklet from the back pocket of one of their jeans, and show me two sets of books that I can choose from. The books, I am told, will be donated to the Lombardi Cancer Research Hospital for children with cancer.
I was very skeptical, because something seemed so off about the whole deal, so I asked a bunch of questions. What year are you? What will you be doing during the internship? How does this fundraiser work? What percent do you get? (80%!). They also ask me questions, saying that they've been told that they are supposed to learn from and be inspired by the people they meet during the sales process, so what do I do for work? I continued to be suspicious, but I stupidly wrote the checks: one to Destiny Sales, LLC and the other to Prestige Sales, LLC for $55.00 respectively.
They completed the sales forms — very official looking — but I didn't even get to indicate which books my money would be purchasing. "We're selecting all of them with the different sales we make, and we have to check which ones we've already sold with the other paper work we have at home."
Once they were gone, I looked up the company name on the internet and saw the other scam reports with stories so similar to mine. My heart sank! But, I was helped by one person's account who said she'd cancelled her checks. So, I called my bank and cancelled the two checks, but that's an expensive proposition ($32.00 per check to stop payment!)
The small consolation I can take from this experience is that it ended up costing me less to do cancel the checks than the $110 for some bogus scheme.
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