Hello friends from the search engines! If you’re reading this, you’re not the only one to receive one.
With apologies in advance for turning this blog into an archive of my snail-mail, here is an “invoice” I got the other day, for a magazine I used to have a gift subscription to years-and-years ago.
As I post this, it should go without saying that I have not signed up for any subscriptions. I feel comfortable calling this a plain old scam, but it leaves open the question of who.
In the most common magazine subscription scam, an entity with no actual connection to the magazine offers a super deal on a subscription, often via pushy door-to-door scammers, aggressive telemarketing calls, or offers in the mail. These then either put in a subscription on the mark’s behalf at a significant markup and pocket the difference, or more commonly, just take the money and disappear.
At first glance, this one appears a bit different. The mailing claims to be from:
Kalmbach Media
PO Box 850 Lincolnshire IL 60069-0850
The actual mailing ZIP code is 50323 (somewhere in Iowa).
Now, Kalmbach Media, which has some history of its own, is (was) the legitimate owner of the Discover brand, its last actual magazine, as of 2024. However, Discover was sold off in May 2024, and Kalmbach itself was dissolved November 2024. Finding the owner of a PO Box involves writing letters to the Postmaster with some pinky-swears and an implication of impending legal process, which was a bit much for a quick blog post, but a quick web search turns up a long history of this box # being used by a company going as “Home Warranty of America”, with a laundry list of complaints and 1-star reviews. This doesn’t necessarily mean anything as PO boxes can and do change hands, but it appears to be the usual scam after all (i.e. the magazine itself is uninvolved).
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