I just received a letter from NAITPA sending me my membership card, and thanking me for my support. I have a membership number, a receipt number and a due date on this nice letter. They also include a handy payment stub for my $231.00 annual payment along with my membership card.
What’s interesting is that until now, I’d never heard of them. The mailing sure looks like a statement, and it doesn’t include any marketing materials to help educate me about their site / organization, so I guess I’m supposed to assume that I just pay them and “continue” my membership.
This has all the appearances of a scam. If you look on the back, there is a disclaimer:
“By accepting this offer, you agree not to hold NAITPA liable for any part thereof. Note: THIS IS NOT A BILL. This is solicitation. You are under no obligation to pay the amounts stated unless you accept this offer. The information in this letter contains confidential and/or legally privileged information from the notification processing department of the NAITPA…”
So there we have it. These people are up there with those that send you invoices for copier supplies, even though you don’t have a copier. Also, in the disclaimer, they state that you agree not to hold NAITPA liable for any part thereof – I think this means that they are saying that you have no recourse if they don’t provide any of the services they claim to offer.
On the payment stub, it has another disclaimer that “my membership is NOT transferable and NOT refundable", but on the disclaimer side they say that “you may request a refund within 30 days”. Yup, sure you can. Doesn’t mean they have to give it to you.
Finally, while there web site says “After another successful year…”, checking on the Internet shows that their domain was registered on February 11, 2009.
For all I know, NAITPA might be a legitimate organization, but it has many signs of being fake.
Heh, at the end of writing this post, I used Bing (Google found nothing other than their web site) to search them, and found this other post: http://empoprise-bi.blogspot.com/2009/08/naitpa-professional-association.html
If you want a real organization, check out the Association for Computing Machinery.
Pretty Stupid For a Smart Guy 
I received an identical bill with a due date of 8/17/2009. I\’m glad I found your blog entry. This is definitely a scam, on par with those domain renewal notice that I keep receiving.