At 8pm in the evening a young man shows at my door. Says he lives in the neighborhood in the condos across the street with his aunt. Says he left a flyer on my door last week about a school fundraiser. (of course, there was no flyer). He says he's also looking for yard work, lawn mowing - well, duh! I also live in a condo, so its maintained, but he just wanted me to think he really lived in the area. Pours it on about being Hispanic, minority, needs money for college, working all sorts of odd jobs... Even said he doesn't actually get "paid" for selling magazines and books he's going to show me, he earn "points" and the company he's selling for sends the money directly to his school.
Well, I'm in sales and I'm a pretty tough sell - but this guy had me going. I fell for it, wanted to help him out. He used names of neighbors to even be more connvincing. Anyway, I ended up buying a book I could give as a gift, but almost fainted when he handed me a receipt for $69, and asked for a check. I started to back out and he gave the great pitch - oh, its such a beautiful book, really big coffee table quality - and you said its for you mother, she'll really like it... Blah blah.
He wasn't gone two minutes I was getting sick at my stomach, so went to the internet to see if this was legit. Still believed he lived in the neighborhood and I could look him up and cancel. He did tell me I had 3 days to let him know if I wanted to change my mind and cancel, so didn't yet panic, nor realize I had been fully scammed.
So I went and Googled the company. Woo-hoo, is there ever a lot of scam reports out there about this group. If you read the multitude of web postings out there you begin to realize that this company actually sets up this whole scam, although they put a "disclaimer" that the sales reps are individual consultants. What a load of garbage. The scheme and scam is the same all across the US. Read them all, but also stop payment on your check as soon as possible.
I was lucky to get to my bank as soon as they opened. I did file a report with the local law enforcement. I do hope they're still in the area. I want to see them nailed. Who knows how many innocent people they've frauded. Oh, the book I was charged $69 for ($60 for the book, $9 shipping) - I also checked on the internet for... Several years out of date and located in a couple of places for $9.95. (yes, NINE dollars). Nice profit.
How many elderly people have fallen for this and just never receive their magazines/book and don't know what to do. The gravest crime out of all of this is that this company is training young people to do this! Telling them this is honest business! Someone has got to do something about this and get them shut down.!!!
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