While getting ready to cancel my mothers credit card, I came across some charges that neither she nor I were familiar with.in investigating further I found that in Dec. Of 2004 when I had gone to purchase a camera through Ritz Camera they had made me an offer of receiving a subscription to 3 magazines for free. I was never told that after a certain time these magazines would stop being free and we would be charged unless we cancelled.
As my father paid for the camera, the credit card on file was his and the address on file was mine.initially I did receive TIME, Entertainment Weekly and American Photo. I soon stopped receiving TIME (the only subscription I received where I was sent a cancellation card). Not long after, I stopped receiving Entertainment Weekly (I went on to purchase this magazine myself on my credit card). To this day I am still however receiving American Photo.
When I finally investigated the charges on my parents credit card today, I discovered that we had been charged since at least as far back as early 2006 (can't get back to 2005 to investigate) for subscriptions for all three magazines... My mother had previously disputed the charges with AMEX occasionally receiving credit but then being recharged for the same subscriptions.
As I was receiving American Photo and initially TIME and EW at my home and they were being charged on my parents credit card neither my family or I had any clue to what was happening at each address.
Through my investigation I concluded that my parents had been charged approximately $400 over the course of 3 yrs. (probably more if we find information on 2005) without any resolution either through NSS/TWX or AMEX. Finally today after lengthy calls to both NSS/TWX and AMEX we discovered what had been happening, how long this has been going on, that we weren't receiving 2 out of the 3 magazines we kept getting charged for, etc. AMEX was kind enough to tell us that they would be further investigating this matter and that thankfully we may be able to receive some of our money back. NSS/TWX was strongly advised to cancel anything that alleges that we have any subscriptions with them and an agent (who after taking the longest time to get ahold of) also said that she would see if there was anything that she could do on her end (although that sounded highly unlikely and certainly less promising).
Let it be known that I like most of the persons writing consumer complaintss on this company fall into the same category of being too easily swayed by an offer... It really is true that if something sounds to good to be true it likely is. Not once in my dealings with RITZ was I advised about the cancellation policy of this company NSS/TWX nor did I ever sign anything and I certainly never gave anyone at RITZ my authorization to allow them to charge my credit card for anything nor to "sell my credit card information" to NSS/TWX.
If anything can come from this, I strongly advise people who ever get a "free magazine" offer to turn it down so that you too won't get burned by these rip-off artists. I would also suggest that any time you see those magazine offers made available by stores such as RITZ, BEST BUY, etc. That you advise management at these stores of the terrible disservice that they are doing to their customers by participating in a scam that defrauds customers of their money.
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