Included with my CitiCard bills are continuous Certificates for 3 month subscriptions for a variety of magazines. Supposedly, my credit card purchases earned me points that I could redeem by filling out the enclosed form. According to the amount of earned points; I could order an allotment of various magazines, depending upon the annual cost of each subscription.
The promotion is entirely misleading. All of us suckers are led to believe this company is associated with our credit card company. Why else would this scam be included with our bills? Why else would we earn points (supposedly) according to our credit card purchases? Our credit card companies wouldn't divulge information regarding our purchases to a non-affiliate company, would they? Our credit card company certainly wouldn't place redeemable points for products by a promotion for a non-affiliate company with their bills, would they?
Why, yes they would; Much to my utter astonishment! After you are eventually sucked into redeeming your points for 3 "Free" months of magazine subscriptions; imagine the shock when you receive your next billing statement. You will find charges of $100.00-$200.00, that shouldn't be there.
Call your creidt card customer service number. Their clerks will not be informed of this promotion in their customers' billing statements. They are not affiliated and have no other numbers for contacting the magazine company than the same numbers that appear on your billing statement, beside the listed charge.
Of course, try calling any and all of these numbers and there is no possibility of human contact. The computer voice choices offered; are confusing. They, also, repeat various ways to continue receiving the magazine at no charge. Every attempt by the victim to cancel the subscription, to be re-imbursed are thwarted by misleading jargon. Cancelling is pretty much impossible. Human contact IS impossible.
It took many calls to my credit card customer service to eventually, retify the problem. Both my service representative and myself called the company's listed phone numbers to no avail.
I was first told by my credit card representative to subtract the magazine charges appearing on my statement from my total credit card bill. Meanwhile, she would file a dispute regarding the matter and try to follow up and get the subscriptions cancelled.
The following month, the charges for the magazines still appeared on my statement. Along with these charges, I rec'd finance charges. Not just one finance charge, finance charges for not paying my bill in full for the prior month along with another finance charge to cover the period of time that passed during billing and mailing bill to me. More than likely, I'd have rec'd another finance charge for the amount of days that passed after paying the bill and it's travelling in the mail to CitiCards!
My next encounter, the CitiCard representative advised me that I must pay the entire bill in full. Meanwhile, she would again submit dispute claims to the magazine company and would credit me for the finance charges.
Of course, the following month, once again, I had to call CitiCard customer service and again go through all of the above. I also, spoke with this representative regarding how disappointed, shocked, and disgruntled I was that they would include such a scam in their billing statements.
I wrote the company regarding all of the above and placed a complaint regarding such practices by a credit card company that, previously, I had trusted, had faith in, and high regards for. This scam is a travesty.
Nope, you guessed it. Of course, I rec'd no reply from Citicards and no acknowledgement that my complaint had even been rec'd.
Eventually, I was credited for the magazine charges. All phone calls and attempts to contact NewSub Magazine Services, proved futile. No telling how much longer I will be receiving cancelled magazines.
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