Welcome Gift for You
Another letter that clearly says scam to me. A yellow postcard like size with a machine printed front and machine printed back with a font that mimics human hand writing. Additionally, a common woman's name with a smiley face to prey on emotion. Though, the ugly red font "FINAL ATTEMPT" sealed the fate of a clear scam.
The text verbatim is
Welcome to your new home. I have a welcome gift for you. Please give me a call at - 877-927-2360.
Thank you, Alicia :)
I unforunately only took a photo of this letter, but I had gotten many just like it. All with the same exact pattern - some form of message saying I have a gift, that I had just missed and signed with a woman's name.
It didn't take long searching this phone number to come upon a news article titled: 7 Investigates: Housewarming "gifts" tricking homeowners. Which led me to Nu Home Promotions, LLC behind the phone number.
This, according to Glassdoor, is a company in Arizona with over 200 employees who specialize in telemarketing for which I presume is a call center. Too bad their website is just dead at this time. The history of websites paint a story of how this company used to operate.
Thankfully the news article above sheds some light on this technique. A free gift at the door with a complex set of legal bindings inside. Should you call the number and enter the confirmation code attached on the gift and you'll find your information sold to all the agencies.
Though what happened to that business model? I didn't get a welcome box, but I got the letter for the gift. My guess being that sending the gift doesn't have much return vs waiting for an explicit "reaching out" from the victim to the company.
We can also peek what the archive shows when the website changed in 2017.
It appears the company pivoted from just products and services to helping homeowners knock out any of the never ending lists of tasks that appear when owning a home.
Though we have to pause a bit, the reason nuhome.com website is offline is an interesting tale.
Some employees said they were asked to clear off their desks on Monday. In a letter handed to staff members, dated January 30, company officials said they have been "trying for some time to acquire additional financing required to continue its business operations", but that the efforts were unsuccessful.
Hundreds out of a job following company closure - Fox 10, Feb 2017
What bugs me is that this happened in February of 2017. Yet I'm getting letters in the mail in 2021 that follow the same exact pattern described above and even match the phone numbers for the company.
An executive for the company declined to speak on camera Wednesday, and would not confirm the number of people affected by the closure.
Fox 10 Phoenix, Feb 2017
My gut feeling is that the company was just bleeding money with a borderline gray area scam that could not stay profitable, but the idea could work with less than a few folks. The masses were probably fired and the business fell down to the bare essentials in both brick and mortar and personnel.