Today a young man - probably 17 or 18 - knocked on the door and started on in on this story about earning money for college. He was dressed like a hoodlum and smelled faintly of weed, but he was very friendly. I had a bad feeling.
He gave us a whole speech about college and a trip to europe and points which eventually led to the offer of magazines. I had no interest and never fully trust these types of "door to door" scams. My fiance, Brian (for some reason) decided to buy a magazine. I knew he shouldn't have.
He wrote out a check (after he was given a new total which included some "Fees" that were not mentioned before) and the kid left. As soon as he walked out the door i looked the company up on google and found usacomplaints. Coms. As soon as i read a few to him, Brian took off in his truck to find the kid and get his check back.
While he was gone, i went to talk to the girls upstairs in our building because this kid, Blaze, had mentioned that he sold some subscriptions to them as well. I told the girls what happened and what i had found on usacomplaints.com. They said they felt uneasy about the situation as well and that "Blaze" had made very suggestive comments to them and had made them very uncomfortable. They said, as did Brian, that they had a feeling they made a huge mistake in buying the magazines. However, they had paid with cash.
Brian and i drove around again to look for the suburban the kid had left in and we saw it turning in to our complex. Brian followed them, signaled for them to pull over, and asked for his check back. He told them he had looked the company up on the internet and did not like what he had found. They did not argue and handed the check over. Brian noticed that the inside of the SUV smelled like weed.
When we came home a few hours later, the girls upstairs told us that different magazine sellers from the same group knocked on their door again. The girls questioned them and tried to track down the original seller - Blaze - but the new sellers played dumb. After the sellers left, the girls called the police who tracked them down in our complex trying to scam more gullible buyers. ALl the police could do was tell them to leave, which they did.
We have all tried to call the number listed on the receipt, and - BIG SURPRISE - no one answered and we have received no response. PLEASE - i don't care what the product or the story is - DO NOT buy things from door to door salespeople. It is almost always a scam. We're lucky we got our check back, but our neighbors will never get their cash back.
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