General Story: Some random company calls saying that because of your visa/mc or your magazine subscriptions, you’re eligble for a 00 online shopping spree & some “discounted” magazines (that are actually more than a regular subscription). If you’re so foolish as to get all the way through and give them your credit card information, you’ll find yourself being charged some crazy random fee.

In my case, I didn’t give them anything, but I had been receiving calls from this number for at least a week, but when I call back, it sends me straight to a tone. This time, I answered and was told that because of my relationship with “the publishers, ” I was eligble for a 00 online shopping gift certificate and 60 issue subscriptions to 5 national magazines (two of which, I alreay subscribe to, so they clearly weren’t in league with the actual publishers). They told me that 3 were free, and 2 would be at a discounted fee of .83 a week, to be billed monthly. But their behavior and questions seemed very off. They were clearly in possession of my full name, my phone number, and my address.

The first person, Danielle, failed to adequately answer my questions, claiming she was new. She said she couldn’t give me a company name better than NCP, although she started to say Nature Coast, and then corrected herself. She asked what I do for a living and my age, in order to help the publishers better target consumers. I was very skeptical, but she said there were no automatic payments and that some information would come in the mail. Then she told me her supervisor would call back to confirm some information. She said that the order had already been put through and that my order number was…. 1221.

When the gentleman, Nathan, called back momentarily, he repeated the profession and age I gave the first person and asked what the name of my company was and what year I had been born. When I told him that I wanted more information from them before I was willing to give him the information, he said “This is just for the records. I could care less. For all I care, you can make something up.” When I continued to question him, he screamed “Ya’ know what? We don’t need your business, ” and hung up on me. This is clearly and evidently not normal.