Calling Publisher's Clearing House...Part I

As many of you know, I tend to get real excited about something and then go way overboard with it. Whether it's discovering a new dish that I've eaten somewhere and then tried to replicate at home, over, and over, and over again until I am completely sick of it. (The latest flavor of the month was a ham and cheddar potato casserole that I've eaten about six times in the last two weeks. Now, I don't even want to eat a potato, which for me is something truly rare.) Or, it could be reading about an event such as an upcoming 10K road race that I want to train for (Okay, maybe not), but you get the drift. My obsession this time around is magazine subscriptions. It all started a few years ago when my niece sold subscriptions to raise money for her school. I purchased two or three like any good aunt would do and then got trapped. Yep, you know what happens when you get on some company's list: they send you solicitation after solicitation after solicitation and they won't stop. One day, I actually opened (my bad) a letter and read the offer: get two years of Vogue magazine for only $10. What a deal! I've never subscribed to it before, nor have I even looked at one, so why not try it? And that's what I did. Well, that subscription led to more solicitations and now I have a stack of magazines approaching two feet high that I haven't even turned a page in. (I'm sure the publishers love me and I'm definitely sure the mailman doesn't. LOL) Anyhow, everything wasn't too bad until I got my Publisher's Clearing House official entry. I'm sure I read somewhere that a purchase isn't necessary to win but I also think I read somewhere else that making a purchase (buying magazines) might definitely help. And talk about deals: 2-for-1 deals, multi-year deals, buy a product and get a lifetime subscription. Man, my eyes had glazed over before I stopped pasting those little stickers to the official entry form--I don't know which magazines I selected, but I'm sure it was 4 or 5. A few weeks later I received an invoice from Publisher's Clearing House and Vanity Fair on the same day. The bill from Publisher's was for $75-something and the Vanity Fair was for $16-something. Hmm. Am I being double-billed? Of course, I didn't write down the magazines that I bought from Publisher's Clearing House and I don't remember anything about Vanity Fair but that doesn't mean that I didn't. (My memory seems to be lost somewhere in the past these days.) The invoice had an 800-number to call for any questions and after multiple prompts for passwords, credit card info, my shoe-size and my high school mascot's name I found myself talking to a live person...