Within the past several years, one of my sisters has a few times ordered and paid for several gift subscriptions to magazines from this company (which until recently went by the name "MagSelect.com") for many family members at Christmastime. We each receive a yellow card in the mail wishing us "Season's Greetings" and advising that a gift subscription to a specific magazine will be sent to us within 6 to 12 weeks. The magazines never come and by the time anyone realizes it (usually, everyone forgets), it's too late for my sister to get her money back.

I have advised my sister not to deal with this company but apparently each time it's been long enough that she forgets and does so again.

It took quite some time searching the Web for the company's phone number, but whenever I call I receive a recording that the business is "no longer in service".

I have e-mailed customer service several times, only to be told, when I receive a response, that the company does not have any of the information needed to fill the orders (information used to send each of us a yellow card months before), and that I must provide them the names and addresses of each person, along with the name of each magazine to which my sister ordered a gift subscription.

Based on past experience as a small business owner and more than 30-plus years dealing with other, legitimate businesses, I found that only those companies later charged with fraud, etc., did not have working telephone numbers, did not reply to customer e-mails or faxes, had no "physical" address and did not retain records of orders or monies received.

The reason? The company never intended to provide the service or product for which orders and monies were received.