A couple of weeks ago, I got a phone call from a very pleasant gentleman with great news: I was one of the lucky 15 percent of loyal customers set to receive a rebate on my subscription to Rolling Stone magazine.

In addition to a great low price on a one-year renewal, I would be receiving subscriptions for five years worth of two magazines, for free. All for just one-half payment of $29.40 every quarter-dozen days as long as the moon was full and the day of the week was divisible by 13. Or something close to that, the math the guy gave me sounded as if he was speaking Latin.

Whatever it was, it sure sounded like a steal.

File this one under "should have known better."

Days later, I got a hard copy in the mail of the proposal from the company, Taylor-Geoffrey, Inc. As my eyes tried to make out the text of the letter, which was marred with two white streaks from a terrible print job, I finally found what I was looking for: the bill.

"The total cost of your order is $294." Wait a second, that isn't the less than $40 the nice man on the phone made it sound like.

A few calculations later, I figured out that if I purchased the same magazine subscriptions directly from the companies themselves, my total cost would be $162.97.

Where the heck did my rebate go?

Looking back to the conversation I had with the company rep, I tried to figure out what went wrong. Did he say the company was getting the rebate by taking my money? Should I have questioned the fact that he asked if he could tape record the conversation? Should I have been more suspicious when he told me he was a journalism major who never made it?

(I'm guessing it was the ethics course that got him.)

Now, before you write me off as a total idiot, a little background information is in order. I was partially taken in by this scam because I've actually been a "loyal" magazine subscriber for more than 10 years. My first subscription was to GamePro, a video game magazine. Huddled in a corner, reading about my favorite hobby, I was enthralled. Finishing each issue month after month, I couldn't help but want more.

From those humble beginnings, I slowly expanded my magazine empire. Somehow I managed to coerce my parents to subscribe to more and more, until eventually I was getting five video game magazines, Rolling Stone and three, ahem, "men's magazines." I was a magazine monster.

So to hear this man, who even told me to call him by his nickname "Jiggs," tell me that I was a loyal customer being rewarded for my decade of dedication to worthless text and flashy pictures was validating, to say the least. I was no longer just a faceless wad of cash to at least one corporation. Hooray capitalism!

Looking at this bill again, you'll forgive me if I feel slightly betrayed. Forget Enron, this corporate scandal has shaken the foundation of corporate America's integrity. Who would have believed they would attempt to hornswoggle money from an innocent little consumer like myself?

Fortunately, I wasn't caught totally off guard by the bullies over at Taylor-Geoffrey. According to their own policy, you have three business days to cancel for any reason. I called them up and politely mentioned that the order wasn't exactly representative of the "rebate" I had been offered on the phone and was terminating our relationship. No questions asked, they accepted.

Not satisfied with just canceling my order, I decided to find out a little more about the company, so that I could warn the world about this blatant fleecing. I looked on the literature they sent me, but found no listing for a website. I then spent about an hour on Google, wandering the vast wasteland of the internet in search of this company.

My results? Nada. Not a single search on Google turned up anything about this company. Different variations of words were no help and eventually, I gave up.

Even my cat got 4,324 results from a Google search, but this phantom company exists only according to two faded sheets of paper.

But my searching wasn't totally spent in vain. I did find a great deal for a real estate investment sure to bring in loads of money. You see, there's this bridge down in Brooklyn...