I get lots of unsolicited magazines at my office. US, Golf-something, and some fitness thing. I never ordered them, but I’ve been getting them for a couple of years now. Occasionally there will be one of those “last issue” cards attached, but the magazines keep coming. Pretty sure they just snagged my firm’s mailing address from the Bar’s website.
Magazine services seek out my address and send me all kinds of magazines, as I’m know to be a physician. All for free. They want my waiting room to be filled with patients reading their magazines. So I get Sports Illustrated, AARP, Ebony, Boy’s Life, People, Nat Geo, and a ton of others.
My patients never get to see them as our waiting room doesn’t allow magazines.
I have been getting Men’s Health Magazine every month for years now. It goes from my mail box to the trash in seconds. I never ordered it, asked for it or ever went to their website. Magazines do this to keep their circulation numbers up which allows them to charge more for ads. They don’t care if you don’t pay for it. The ads are where they make money anyway.
I moved and it stopped but now that I turned on my address forwarding I will bet I will get them again.
Years ago my sister started getting Cosmo in the mail. I remember asking her why she would sub to it, and she hadn’t, and she had no idea why it was coming. I don’t think we ever figured it out.
(I’d rather get something like Vogue than Cosmo. Cosmo’s only good for wiping up cat pee)
Another thing I’ve found is that it is fairly easy to get subscriptions at an intro rate of about $3 per year through a service. But they are not always easily identifiable as subs on your credit card statement, so some people who don’t pay close attention to small charges on their bills may think they aren’t paying for a subscription even though they are. The subs auto-renew, of course, and sometimes the price goes up significantly at that time. That might be when you start wondering what that mysterious $20 charge is.
I find the fashion mags always smell good with all their perfume ads. I put them in the bathroom if I get them.
Actually, in most cases, publications can’t include unpaid subscriptions in the numbers that are used to set their ad rates. They are regularly audited so that advertisers are assured that the numbers are not artificially inflated.
From that site: