Now They’re Playing With My Emotions

Sometime around early March I received the following letter in the mail (extremely condensed for your sanity):

EXCITING NEWS..... [MY FULL NAME HERE]! You did it! You are now a semi-finalist in the cutest pet photo contest! After our judging staff compared your photo to the other entries we received, we unanimously agreed your photo of Willie will advance to the final round of judging. It’s not too early to start thinking about how you are going to spend the $1,000.00 Grand Prize!

I'VE GOT MORE GOOD NEWS.....

We have chosen to publish your photograph of Willie in the "Cutest Pets Around the World" photo book. (ISBN#0-9770401-2-7) The book will be a collection of some of the cutest pet photos from around the world and only the best of the best photos are allowed to appear in this timeless treasure. The photo of Agnes has qualified and will be one of our "Featured Pets" in the book. In addition, every book will have a special pet "Biography" section. This is a section set up for you to tell the world about yourself and your photo.


Here’s the deal. I did submit Willie’s picture for a cutest pet contest. The dog needs to be discovered, it’s just a matter of time. So when I received this letter I assumed it was legitimate because I remembered submitting the photo. They said that he has been chosen for a book that will be publishing in the spring of 2006.

Scam clue #1: I received the letter in the spring.

They said that the photo would appear in the book at no cost to me. I could also receive a 50% discount if I wanted to order myself a copy of the book.

Scam clue #2: They’re asking for money.

So I let some time go by and completely forgot about the letter. Yesterday I received an email that was a duplicate of the letter I got. Again, it said that the book will be publishing in the spring.

Scam clue #3: It’s almost May. When are they going to publish this thing already?

At this point I became suspicious. So I decided to Google “International pet owner’s club”, where the letter came from. The first search result was a discussion forum on whether or not this was a scam.

Scam clue #4: When the scam site comes up BEFORE the company’s site, that’s a red flag.

The discussion board didn’t have a definitive answer, and some assholes decided it would be funny to post stories about the horrible things they have done to their dogs. But the legitimate posts all got the same letter.

What could this be about? Are they only going to publish a single book when somebody sends them money? I looked up the book on Amazon and they didn’t have it, but supposedly the company published one last year, or so they claim. I just don’t get what’s behind all this.

2 comments:

Unknown said...

poor AB! They did the same thing to me with a poem I wrote one time...I could buy a book with my poem in it...what a scam

Anonymous said...

Hey, I got the same mails as you did. I think it's for the book called "Cutest pets around the world" and set to publish around 7/1/2006. They published one last year, too.
But I don't like the idea of paying that much for a book.
The book the published early this year "cutest pets of 2005" didn't get good reviews on amazon.com...