The Great Magazine Identity Theft

A few tiny red flags go up in my house when we start receiving more than 6 new magazine subscriptions within three days...none of which we have actually subscribed to.

My brother & sis-in-law kindly get us Smithsonian, National Geographic for Kids, and Shallow Water Angler every year for Christmas, and I was warned about a month ago that the company may have screwed things up.

But a month ago can be a very long time you know, and I frankly didn't remember that whole conversation. So last night, I sat down with said influx of new magazines and began calling their subscription departments.


Q: "Um, I'm now receiving your magazine and I didn't buy this. What's going on here?"
A: "Well, the magazine was purchased in September and right after, the subscription was changed to someone else's name and address."


Of course after calling magazine office after magazine office to hear the same answer to my panicked question...and being given the name of the same bogus-sounding company that was the conduit for the subscription purchases...I began to sweat, swear and wrangle husband into the entire maddening affair.

I immediately feel the flames of danger as the Identity Theft Gods sent a feverish panic to my mind. After all, I have listened to several (not one, not two, but three) separate presentations on identity theft at work lately. According to what I'd heard, a common scenario is for people to steal your card number, buy something in your name (with your billing address) and immediately transfer the goods or service to their address. Most of the time, this all goes down before the innocent victim even knows.

I was already calculating how difficult it was going to be to clear my name and the other unknown purchases that were probably made. After a brief moment of calmness, I remembered the little conversation with sis-in-law from a month ago and left a voice mail for her with an emergency message.

Turns out, she'd purchased 14 different subscriptions from a Girl Scout mom in her office, and the benevolent company decided that my household needed all of them instead of spreading the love to the intended recipients. After realizing the error, it apparently started cancelling subscriptions to us and sending them to the right people...or at least we hope.

As she listened to me trying to talk through all this, my sis-in-law was getting really quiet--an obvious precurser to some serious rage. (Don't confront someone who's getting ready to move to Texas.) I'm pretty confident she's going to rip the company a new ass. Too bad they already have her dinero.

As for me, I've got tons of reading material and will enjoy my first and only edition of Self, Outdoor World, National Wildlife Federation, Field and Stream and the myriad of other magazines I have for the month.