Once or twice a month, I receive a renewal notice for Women’s Day or Ladies Home Journal or Newsweek or some other magazine to which I have never subscribed. I throw them away. I know that some people don’t, because for the last two years, Harper’s Magazine has been carrying a warning about false renewal notices. I sometimes read that warning and think smug thoughts.
If you don’t know by know where I am going with this, you are dumber than me. That’s right. I was clearing up my receipts from last year and the Harper’s renewal notice, marked “Paid, 5/18/05″ looked oddly familiar. Right on the notice it says, in very small print, “Miss Hickman, you have been suckered.” (I’m paraphrasing here. I could fish the notice out, but I won’t. It says something about how they may or may not have a formal relationship with Harper’s Magazine, Inc.) I checked Harpers.org, and sure enough, my subscription was renewed for three years in 2003. It expires in October of this year. They haven’t gotten any payments from me since 2003 and the 866 number on the renewal notice has been disconnected. They certainly haven’t gotten any two year renewal.
I tell you this story, because I’ve also been subpoenaed to appear in person (I’m sure my father is going to tell me that this statement is somehow redundant) before the County Clerk because I didn’t turn in my Jury Questionaire. Lucky for me, usually a terrible keeper of records, I got my First Jury Eligibility Questionaire right after I discovered the renewal notice caper. In a very un-Amanda-like act, I carefully noted the confirmation number I was given when I responded to the Jury Questionaire online and filed the notice away. So I have something to wave self righteously at them when I appear. So at least I can be indignant when they yell at me. (And they do yell. Last time I had jury duty they were downright nasty to most of us.)
Comments
This is so strange. so you mean someone sent you harper’s and a fake card?
who has been paying for it?
have you been getting it at all?
Naw. See, I subscribe to Harper’s, and a while ago I renewed for the longest renewal possible. Three years. So it is a total accident that these guys who send out fake renewal notices hit the jackpot with me. They got me two years into a three year subscription, so I didn’t really know off the top of my head that I should have another year left, and I didn’t bother to look at my records to see when I last renewed and for how long. I just responded and renewed my subscription. But Harper’s never got a cent and they don’t know a thing about it.
This was probably one of the first fakes I got, and it happened to be a notice for a magazine I subscribe to. Since then they’ve sent me notices for magazines I don’t subscribe to, but you can’t trick me into renewing my Ladie’s Home Journal subscription.