monophoto
Member
I just received a phone call from a person claiming to represent Wood Magazine and offering to renew my subscription at a special, senior citizen rate. She claimed that I had been sent a letter that should arrive in the mail today or tomorrow offering the renewal at the regular, higher rate, but they wanted to make sure that I was able to take advantage of a lower geezer rate.
The call originated at 516-986-2591 which appears to be in Farmingdale, NY (Long Island).
The woman claimed that I had charged my previous subscription to Mastercard, and asked for my number to enter the renewal. I objected that most of the phone calls I get are robocallers/scammers, and because I had no way of knowing that she was who she claimed to be, I was reluctant to provide that information over the phone. She assured me that she was legitimate because she had records of a prior subscription and knew that I had paid by credit card.
Now, I have a subscription to Woodturning magazine (published in England) and my subscription is due for renewal early next year, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that I would be asked to renew sometime in the next few months. But this woman didn't seem to know anything about Woodturning magazine, instead referring to subscriptions to Wood Magazine, and Popular Woodworking. So I specifically asked her where the magazines she represented were published, and she assured me that they were all published in the US. At that point, my scammer alarm went off and I discontinued the discussion.
Many of us used to be subscribers to Wood Turning Design, a US-based wood turning magazine of which Joe Hermann was the editor in chief. The publisher of that magazine suddenly went out of business six or eight years ago - as I recall, Joe told several members of the IAP community that Wood Turning Design had been very successful, but the parent publisher was dragged down by some other craft magazines that had not been struggling for many years.
Shortly before Wood Turning Design ceased publication, I (and many others on this board) were contacted by an organization offering subscription renewals to the magazine. It turned out that the organization that offered those renewals was a third-party subscription service that was unrelated to the publisher of Wood Turning Design magazine, although that was not entirely clear in the mailing we received. Thinking that the renewal offer was legitimate, I submitted payment shortly before the demise of Wood Turning Design was announced. I was eventually able to get my money back, but I continued to receive renewal offers for Wood Turning Design from that subscription agency for at least a year, and later the offers were recast to offer subscriptions to other publications. As I recall, that subscription agency had a suburban New York City mailing address. So I am suspicious that the woman who called me today was from that same agency.
Ya gotta be careful - there are a lot of scammers out there!
The call originated at 516-986-2591 which appears to be in Farmingdale, NY (Long Island).
The woman claimed that I had charged my previous subscription to Mastercard, and asked for my number to enter the renewal. I objected that most of the phone calls I get are robocallers/scammers, and because I had no way of knowing that she was who she claimed to be, I was reluctant to provide that information over the phone. She assured me that she was legitimate because she had records of a prior subscription and knew that I had paid by credit card.
Now, I have a subscription to Woodturning magazine (published in England) and my subscription is due for renewal early next year, so it's not out of the realm of possibility that I would be asked to renew sometime in the next few months. But this woman didn't seem to know anything about Woodturning magazine, instead referring to subscriptions to Wood Magazine, and Popular Woodworking. So I specifically asked her where the magazines she represented were published, and she assured me that they were all published in the US. At that point, my scammer alarm went off and I discontinued the discussion.
Many of us used to be subscribers to Wood Turning Design, a US-based wood turning magazine of which Joe Hermann was the editor in chief. The publisher of that magazine suddenly went out of business six or eight years ago - as I recall, Joe told several members of the IAP community that Wood Turning Design had been very successful, but the parent publisher was dragged down by some other craft magazines that had not been struggling for many years.
Shortly before Wood Turning Design ceased publication, I (and many others on this board) were contacted by an organization offering subscription renewals to the magazine. It turned out that the organization that offered those renewals was a third-party subscription service that was unrelated to the publisher of Wood Turning Design magazine, although that was not entirely clear in the mailing we received. Thinking that the renewal offer was legitimate, I submitted payment shortly before the demise of Wood Turning Design was announced. I was eventually able to get my money back, but I continued to receive renewal offers for Wood Turning Design from that subscription agency for at least a year, and later the offers were recast to offer subscriptions to other publications. As I recall, that subscription agency had a suburban New York City mailing address. So I am suspicious that the woman who called me today was from that same agency.
Ya gotta be careful - there are a lot of scammers out there!