My husband receives a telephone call from a company claiming to be our magazine subscription service, doing a routine update of our magazines and information for an account that we already had. Since we were unhappy with the selections we currently had, he spoke with the woman and updated what he thought was our pre-existing account, gaining his trust by giving him our credit card number that they 'had on file'. During the interview, she mentioned off-hand about a new account, and he asked several times for her to repeat the name of her company so he could conduct a records check. She slurred over their name and hung up, promising customer service would call him back. One week later we received a contract from the "new" company for new services she stated that he completely agreed to. On the tape-recording, he is clearly heard to say, "Wait, Stop" and then the tape magically cuts out.
After a careful review of the contract, I filled out the cancellation notice and returned it to them and an address of their parent company I found on this site by certified mail within their required timeframe. I then proceeded to call them. After many attempts to get through, I finally spoke with, "Nancy" who told me that no fraudulent activity had occurred, and why would they "lie", and they absolutely would not cancel our account regardless of the timeframe or our refusal of services. She was nasty, rude, and belligerent. I was told by our actual magazine company that their marketing department had sold our information to this "pirate" company, and this was their latest scam.
After she played the tape for me and I found it to have been lacking in any of the criteria she had described as consent, I filed complaints with the Attorney General's Office in Kansas and New York, and I cancelled the credit card that she had information for. She continued to refuse to cancel this fraudulent subscription, threatening to send this account to collections. Only after I told her that I was an attorney-turned-housewife that had nothing better to do than to make it my life's work to see it through would she agree to cancel this account.
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