Practically every magazine I subscribe to now has notices (by the publisher) to warn readers about fake subscription renewals.
So, why has there been such an explosion of this scam? How do they know what magazines I subscribe to? What is going on with this?
Well, magazines sell their subscriber mailing lists, so perhaps that’s how the scammers know that their targets are subscribers to Time magazine or Sports Illustrated?
They work because they’re among the most plausible of all scams. Only the tiniest percentage of people are going to believe the Nigerian prince in their email. But everybody with a magazine subscription is used to getting renewal notices in the mail, and usually multiple notices. With shrinking circulation, magazines are under pressure to lock in subscribers so renewal notices go out earlier and earlier. And figuring out the actual end date is sometimes confusing or difficult to find among the string of numbers on the label. And wait, there’s more. Some companies already outsource their subscription fulfillment departments so that the notice is coming from somewhere that doesn’t use the company logo on the envelope.
All in all, it’s almost perfect. The scammers are merely shifting behavior you’re going to do in any case over by a couple degrees so that the money goes to them. If I weren’t so darned honest, that’s the scam I’d set up.
I’ve had magazines “renewed” that I never subscribed to, or intended to subscribe to. Currantly I have a “renewal” for a magazine that has another year to run. Usually can’t find a date on these outside forms.
Magazines don’t sell their mailing lists to scammers.
No, they sell them to list brokers, who will then sell them to just about anyone.
I’ve been wondering about this myself. I bought my wife, who is really into cooking, the Food Network magazine for a year, I literally got to issue #2, and I got my first renewal notice, and EVERY issue since then has come with a renewal notice attached. Amazing…
I will not even consider renewing until the magazines stop coming, and even then, I give myself 50/50 odds that the magazine will keep coming (with renewal reminders attached) indefinitely.
Besides, I have never understood why my wife even wanted to get a cooking magazine. So you get to read a mini-cookbook each month which has one or two good recipes in it hidden among the ads? There are numerous websites that provide great recipes for free, and every library on planet Earth has an abundance of free cookbooks. Personally, I’m wondering if she’ll even notice when the magazine subscription runs out. Don’t get me wrong, because I LOVE the food she cooks and she’s a great chef, but I also dislike the clutter of magazine ending up on every horizontal surface in our house, especially if an issue is being ‘saved’ because there was one recipe in there (and no one can remember which one) that looked good 10 months ago when everyone started going apeshit for quinoa, or whatever the ‘food du jour’ is this week.
Someone called me about renewing one of my magazines. It sounded like a great deal, but when she asked for my credit card number, I told her to send me something in the mail and I’d send a check. She got very snippy. No, I had to give her the credit card number over the phone. I told her I was busy, and she said she’d call back. So I called the magazine. What a surprise, the woman on the phone wasn’t legit. I told her that when she called back. She said haughtily that her mother had gotten her involved in this business, so therefore it was legitimate.
Yeah, right.