So, remember when I turned into someone else? Someone who turns her brain off and holds out her checkbook and nods yes to any random person who comes to the door?

I know things are going to turn out okay here, so I feel free to post all this now. The guy who came to my door said he lived in my neighborhood. He said I’ve probably seen his mom out walking their little white poodle. He said my neighbor two doors down sent him over to see me.
He also said he was a student at St. Louis University and gave details such as his department and degree and future goals. I know. All stuff that doesn’t really lend that much credibility, but nevertheless, I lost my brain during that 7 minute slot of my life (maybe it was an alien abduction and I’m vindicated all along…).

After he left, the spacecraft returned me to Earth and I woke up from that weird state I was in, and immediately shot off an email to the Communications department of SLU who assured me they had no students selling magazines to earn money for a trip to London. I also took another look at my receipt in which the sales guy just wrote “Mike Y.” and didn’t bother to give even his full name for me to check up on. I did some quick research on World Wide Circulation and found nothing positive on them. Not one single thing. So that’s when I placed the stop payment order on my check.

I also sent in the cancellation request because the receipt said I had three days to back out.
Today I got a letter from World Wide Circulation, saying they had cancelled my order and they enclosed my check, so whew! I guess I didn’t really need to order the stop payment after all. And probably, regardless of what the scammer was up to in selling the magazines, I would have received a subscription anyway, even though he we deceitful in how he got it out of me.

But upon a closer examination of my check, I noticed he wrote down the name of a magazine. It was not the one I agreed to. I agreed to two years worth of the Smithsonian, and wrote him a check for an embarrassing amount of money, but now that I look at what two years worth of the Smithsonian would have cost, I realize what I paid would have been comparable to what I would have paid for it anywhere else. If. If he had submitted my order for that magazine. In fact, he submitted my order for two years worth of Family Fun, which is a fine magazine, but certainly not worth what I paid.

So he was a scammer. He took my money for a higher value magazine under false pretenses, and then submitted my order for a low cost magazine. On my returned check, he had written his name so he could get credit for it. His name is Mike Yother and I’m posting it here in case anyone else in St. Louis gets temporarily abducted by the World Wide Circulations aliens and upon being returned to Earth want to do some research to see if that experience was real or not. I tell you, send in your cancellation request immediately. And avoid the World Wide Circulations people like the plague.

Having experienced the alien abduction once, I will be hip to it next time. I will leave my checkbook at home.