I know this has been brought up before , but thought I would do it again for new folks. Today I got a notice about my MR subsciption to renew/new order. Please everyone remember this is a fraud and MR subsciptions are ONLY thru MR directly.
Not True.
For the past four years I have renewed my MR subscription from other sources at about one-third off. Do a web search for Model Railroader Magazine and you will turn up magazine vendors who can and will renew your MR subscription. Of course you have to be select in picking a reputable company.
you know i have seen this type of stuff before and was always told i needed to go thru MR. maybe I was mislead.
The one that starts off new subscription/reorder and looks like a bill IS a scam. I verified that with the BBB in Reno, NV, the city where the return envelope goes (or did on the one I got last year.) Another address I was given, here in Las Vegas, proved to be one of those, “Mailboxes are us” storefronts. The alleged suite number was a lock box - 700 number in a one-story building.
If YOU go looking for deals and find one, it may be legit. If a deal comes looking for you, odds are, it isn’t. Caveat emptor.
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
the one i got today was returned to Reno NV
Although I have gotten MANY! seperate letters, & seen the inside ads from MRR & RMC/former Journal, I dont believe I have been approched or considered it a scam. Yes, some of the ‘Mint’ ones surely taste that way, if a person really wonders, do an address lookup on the internet, or call them…
If it sounds questionable, perhaps it is, it may be worth your 10 minutes to save $20-60 bucks, no? Cuz we got the tools to check, - - -if we want to…
Next time I have a letter from some one like Milwaukee (based) MRR & asks to send payment to the ‘new’ place in the carribean, well, not gonna, not gonna do that!
Don’t let people in your house either, unless you are one heck of a fast draw Earp or Doc Holiday relation!
Scams are getting more mature, & severe… It is really too bad, but that is where we are.
Wish you green lights! (& that is not a scam)
Some of them are scams, and some of them are just snake-oil salesmen. Publishers Access Service and other companies in Florida will, in fact, forward your renewal to MR… but you actually pay a little more than the subscriber rate, AND they try to get you to renew every year for 2-3 years. One of my employees got caught in this and ended up with a 21 year subscription to a magazine (because 3 different flavors of that same company got him).
I also like the yutzes who call you and say, “I see you’ve been receiving your subscription to Motor Trend”. I reply that I haven’t subscribed to Motor Trend for ten years. “Oh, well, your Car and Driver has been arriving regularly.” No, I haven’t subscribed to that in ten years either. “Then you have a subscription to…” and I say, “Just how dumb do you think I am? Take my name off your list and don’t call me again.”
You weren’t misled. I get MR subscription renewal notices from a couple of other source and I haven’t had a MR subscription since before 2002.
If it’s post-paid, return it empty. That way they’ll have to pay for it. I’m not sure if the post office works the way it used to, but people used to glue these things to bricks and send them back, with the idea that the recipient had to pay the first class rate for the whole brick.
If you leave the country, try mailing it from some exotic location. Even if it doesn’t work, you can at least have the satisfaction of thinking that it might.
Hm…I got one recently. It seemed to be from Kalmbach. I just checked when my subscription runs out and it appears that the check I wrote to Kalmbach got cashed and now my subscription indicates it expires in 2013. I must have received a legitimate one.
[quote]
According to rule 917.243(b) in the Domestic Mail Manual, when a business reply card is “improperly used as a label” — e.g., when it’s affixed to a brick — the item so labeled may be treated as “waste.” That means the post office can toss it in the trash without further ado.
Once upon a time things were different. Years ago, they tell me, postal regulations required that all business reply mail be delivered, whether the cards were affixed to bricks, 2x4s, or hand grenades. Furthermore, the recipient was required to pay full first-class postage (a good buck, in the case of a brick) plus 18 cents handling per piece. However, the direct-mail firms usually worked out a deal with the local postmaster whereby unwanted building materials and whatnot (believe it or not, Win, you’re not the first person to think of this) somehow became “lost” (heh-heh), getting the mailing firm off the hook.
The current regulation makes i
Darn, And I have access to a bunch of building material!