I should have known better but being an offshoot of Consumer Reports I trusted their offer of a free gift. No where did I see a statement that accepting the free gift would result in subscription. Apparently, they chose to see it that way and sent me an invoice today! I am poor and certainly don't want to pay for a product I was not intending to buy. I wrote cancel but I find it highly ironic that a magazine that reports on how you can be scammed and how to avoid it- and yet perpetrates its own scam!
I too received this scam today. Since I have my credit card alert send me an email whenever an internet charge appears, I called the credit card company, blocked the charge, cancelled the card, and eliminated the problem.
It does happen and I was not shaken to see a "consumer reports" association. The moral of this story is that each person needs to have a credit card company with alert messages for charges turned on and watch for anything unusual that comes in.