You can now add “pushups” to the conman’s arsenal you need to watch out for. A Raleigh woman says that’s what convinced her to sign up for $110 worth of magazine subscriptions from a desperate young door-to-door salesman. That and the fact that he said she could cancel the sale later, he just needed the credit on his record to earn a free trip to Europe and a grant to start his own company.

“When I told him I could only buy one, he said, ‘Please, please, I’ll do 500 pushups,”
she told WRAL. “He gets on the ground and starts doing pushups. He says, ‘This is how bad I need it.'”

She then gave him $110 and he gave her two receipts he wrote on old credit card slips.

“He’s like, ‘See ya,’ and he walks off very fast down the road,” she said. “I say, ‘OK, something is not right.’ That’s when I looked it up, and I found everything.”

A quick Googling revealed complaints from other customers who had similar stories of ordering magazines from the same company, the same eager salespeople, who then never received their magazines.

When she went to the company’s website to cancel, a message told her her receipt didn’t match the company’s records. Because she paid in cash, there’s no credit card chargeback to make or check to cancel.

These folks usually work in roving gangs that travel the country. They’ve probably moved on by now. The best way to deal with them is to not open your door to unidentified people, police say.

Raleigh woman victim of magazine scheme [WRAL] (Thanks to Amanda!)

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