A young man who said his name was Brandon Christensen came to my door mid-morning today and said he was raising money for his baseball team at San Francisco State to go to the finals. He said that Coach Fuller had said it would be character-building to sell magazines that would also help underprivileged kids. He said his parents lived in the neighborhood (Tim & Sandy) and that his father (a doctor) had helped him figure out how many subscriptions he needed to sell to get his team to the finals. He claimed the contribution was 85% tax deductible and that I would receive a follow-on confirmation of that fact from his father. He also said that because the subscriptions were so expensive, his coach though the team members should put in some sweat equity and wash house windows as a thank you for supporting the team and scheduled a time to come back on Friday to wash my windows.
After he left, I googled the company name and address and came up with the following URL:
http://usacomplaints.com/reports/0/185/RipOff0185620.htm
Apparently this is a known scam. The young man was very believable and quite good at what he does, but don't give him or another person from QSI like him a check! Otherwise, you may find yourself with an expensive, unwanted magazine subscription that helps no one but him and the company for which he works, QSI - "Quality Subscriptions, Inc." Like the person who wrote the rip off report referenced in the URL above, I wound up putting a stop payment on my check and having to send a certified return receipt requested letter to the company to cancel the subscription within the 3-day window specified on the receipt he gave me.By the way, he scrawled a big "Thank You!" over the section of the receipt that clarifies they are NOT a charitable organization, all the while keeping up his believable patter and distracting me so that I didn't read the fine print until after he left.
I was driving to a business lunch later and saw Brandon on the street, so I stopped my car, got out, and asked for my check back. He said he didn't have it — that he had already given it to his father. I told him I didn't believe him and told him what I had read on usacomplaints.com. He just kept up his polite patter, using the word ma'am frequently, and saying he didn't know what to tell me, that I could check with his father. He then made a show of calling his father (who didn't answer of course) and dropped names of neighbors he said had bought subscriptions from him. When I asked the address of where he lived he gave me an address which I later discovered was non-existent...
I was late for my business lunch and by myself, so I decided to just move on — I still couldn't quite believe he was such a total con artist — he was that skilled at how he presented himself! Now I wish I had called the police right then and there, although assuming he had stuck around, that might have not been the most personally secure tactic to take. So I'm chalking it up to a lesson learned — as they say, if something sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
Hope others can learn from my mistake and not buy from this or similar QSI characters if they come knocking at their door!
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