On August 9, I received a telephone call at 5:30pm saying that I had just won $250 in gift cards. I was so excited because I'm a college student and I could us those gift cards on textbooks, clothes, and dorm room supplies. The rep was extremely nice and told me that she was new. After I accepted my "prize", I received a call from a supervisor to verify my address, age, and telephone number. I was also offered a magazine subscription for $39.90/mo for 25 months and no payment after that for the rest of the service. The supervisor was talking so fast that I could barely understand what she was saying. I was still on cloud 9 from winning $250 in gift cards and I thought she was offering me a subscription for 25 months that included a free trial. I realized that it wasn't a free trial 6 days later when I saw a charge for $39.90 on my debit card statement so I called Great American Readers to explain what had happened and to see if they would refund the money or just cancel the subscription. I told the supervision (a male this time) that I had misunderstood the last supervisor and did not know that I would be charged and that I was a college student so I was not able to make the payments. He very rudely told me that he doesn't understand how I misunderstood because they never mentioned the words "free" nor "trial" when they spoke to me and that I was not able to cancel my subscription because they've already made a commitment on my behave (even though their cancellation policy states that I can cancel my subscription and receive a refund within 7 days of my first initial payment). He then tried to lower the price by $10 so I just hung up the phone. I tried calling again today (8/20) and asked to speak to someone about cancelling my subscription. I was put on hold for a few minutes and then was told that all supervisors were busy so they would give me a call back. That was about 6 hours ago and I still have not received a call back. I filed a complaint last week with my bank and they are working to get me a refund and they have blocked GAR from charging my card again; I have also sent in written letter of cancellation to Great American Readers.
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