I thought this should be run past the members as I have nearly just been caught out.

I just got a letter through the post that I thought was from the Dallas Safari Club regarding the listing of Athina Sporting in its exhibitors directory. It was worded in such a way as to be initially mistaken as a letter checking the update of my company data for the purposes of a DSC listing. This I was happy to do for the purposes of maintaining a valued relationship with DSC.

After filling in the form and looking at the prepaid envelope (that was addressed to France), I then looked closer as something just didn't seem right to me and I read the small print which is on the back of the form. Details written in very feint grey on white (like a watermark) stated that completion of the form was a purchase order, but still no price.

Back to the "smaller" small print on the front page to find

"This order is payable and irrevocable unless revoked by registered letter within twelve days of the date of subscription. The three year Duration begins with the date of the first invoice. Cost per year amounts to 1271 Euros or its monetary equivalent in Mexican Pesos according to the exchange rate on the day of purchase"

I filled in the form and was put off by the type of "statistical data" they were looking to collect as I thought it didn't sound like a DSC type correspondence.

The upshot is that given I was pressed for time and I trust correspondence that comes from DSC I would quite happily have signed the "Update Form" and popped it back into the post without realising I was committing myself to several thousand pounds of commitments.

To cap it all off "applicable law is exclusively Mexican"

I don't know if DSC is aware of the mailshot, even though on the header of the letter is says "Organised By Dallas Safari Club"

Even though all the warnings are there and information is available it is most definitely put out there up front and obvious so watch out.

Rgds,
K

Thanks for the alert. I'll make sure that the DSC office is aware of this. It is most certainly not a DSC sanctioned program.

Nope. It has nothing to do with DSC

May be DSC should give them a call and stop them using their name?

Guys,

I was certain that this had nothing to do with DSC directly hence my concern. Thanks for letting the guys in the office know. I was just about to call Terri and give her a heads up.

I am trying to scan the documents but at 200 dpi the feint grey is not being picked up by the scanner. I will retry at a higher resolution and see if I can get the images posted her accurately. I don't really want to post them if I can't show a clear example of how they look.

Rgds,
K

Guys,

I have tried to scan the docs up to 1200DPI in colour and it doesn't pick up the watermark grey or the header.

To be honest I didn't see it until I really started examining the papers.

With the help of Google I found the following which goes to show how far this goes:

This

And This

And This...

There are pages of reports on the subject and across a whole heap of industries.

I hope no one else has been caught out by this, as I am sure you wont receive the invoice until the twelve day cooling off period is up.

Rgds,
Kiri

Thanks Kiri. DSC is on it.

Hiya Richard, that's great.

Thanks again,
Kiri