Yesterday a man named "Matt Rowley" approached me in the parking lot of a Best Buy by my car. He started chatting with and speaking very quickly about how he is outside for many hours a day doing this promotion for his wife who is 5 months pregnant so she can gain $10,000 for a year of college tuition.
He starts telling me about how he gains points if people like him and at first I thought he was just doing some sort of survey. He was very nice and he was talking to me about video games and which ones I liked and he told me that he played video games for a living.
We were standing next to my car which was unlocked because I was about to get in before he approached me. He goes to the passenger side door and GETS IN saying that he needs to sit down because he has been outside all day. That freaked me out, I did not like a stranger sitting in my car. He hands me these laminated cards that have a bunch of different magazine names on them and different points assigned to each magazine and tells me to choose some. I wasn't sure what to do and he starts telling me which ones I should choose and which are the best deal. At this point I am thinking that they will just bill me later and I can cancel it and I just wanted to get him out of my car and out of my hair. I choose a few magazines and he says that he needs $199 in cash or check. I was astounded and I told him I did not have that kind of money because I'm a college student. I told him I would get one magazine and he told me that would cost $60 for the subscription. I should have known it was fishy at the time but he had these carbon copy order forms with the cancellation policy on the back which looked very official so I didn't even think I was getting scammed, I just though that I would cancel as soon as I got home, but the only way to make him leave was to buy something. So I gave him the $60 and he leaves.
I drive home and I googled OK Marketing and found all the stories on this website very similar to mine and realized I had been fooled. I was extremely angry and I felt so stupid that I got in the car and went back to where I saw him. I drove around the shopping center and I didn't see the same guy but I saw another guy that looked similar to him talking to a girl about my age with similar carbon copy order forms. I knew he had to be doing the same thing so I called the police and told them what was going on and where I was.By the time the police showed up, the man had finished with his "client" and had joined the same guy that ripped me off! The police stopped the two of them and asked them questions. I was parked on the other side of the shopping center watching. One of the officers came over to me and asked me about what happened. I told him my story and he said that there wasn't much that they could do because it would be hard to prove it was a scam. That upset me because I knew it was a scam after reading all of these stories. The officer went back over to the scene and I saw him write the two men tickets. When he came back over to me he told me that he wrote them both tickets for not having a peddler's license which carries a mandatory court appearance. This made me feel somewhat better since I figured their court fees would far outweigh my $60 but I still felt very upset and violated.
From now on if anyone ever approaches me, I am turning my back and not saying one word and everyone else out there should do the same. After all, if I wanted a magazined subscription I would go out and get one myself!
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