Referring to a source such as Seventeen magazine might have conferred legitimacy, had this company been selling the actual dress shown in the pages of Seventeen:
The vocabulary choices made by the advertisers failed to impress our students, but what really turned our students off was the fact that this company required an antiquated set of money orders for payment:
This advertisement left me scratching my head; why would scammers try to reach teenagers' bank accounts through an antiquated medium like print advertising? A quick Google search offered a possible explanation: news coverage has made it harder to perpetrate prom dress scams online:
While this company probably didn't intend for their advertisement to serve as a lesson, I was happy to use it as one, and very pleased that our students could spot a scam.
