I was contacted by this company because I had entered a sweepstakes with my Visa card. They called me in February and told me about this great offer they wanted to make me. I could get a 3 year subscription to five different magazines and a weekly magazine for FREE, all I had to do was pay them the shipping and handling charges for a five year subscription to a weekly magazine of my choice.
I first agreed to give them my info before they told me I would have to pay the shipping and handling for the weekly magazine, so when they told me I would be paying $75.00 a month for 12 months, I told them I was no longer interested and that I would not be able to pay, but they would not give up. They transferred me to their "supervisors" repeatedly and I ended up giving in to an offer of 12 monthly payment of $37.50 (mostly so I could get off the phone).
They told me that they would be paying the magazine publisher and asked that I honor my agreement to make the payments. They never mentioned that I would not be able to break this contract, under any circumstances. I agreed and they said that my magazines should arrive within 6-8 weeks.
In the following two months I received a few magazines sparatically but I had not received any bills, and then in April I moved. I sent in my change of adress with my payment of $112.50, which was past due because it was the first invoice I received just before I moved.
I waited for the change of address to take effect which was supposed to be another 6-8 weeks.in June I started recieving calls from the "loss prevention" people saying that my account was past due and that I needed to pay immediately or I my case would be sent to the collection agents. I did not actually speak to anyone until July, as I work 9-5 and they usually called around 10:30 am and left a message to call them back by 2:30 pm.
When I did speak to someone I told them that I had not received any magazines in almost three months and he told me that they had not recieved my change of address, which is odd since they recieved my payment just fine. At this point I told him that I really didn't want the service anymore and asked him to cancel my account. He told me that that was not a possibility, as I had entered a verbal agreement with the company on the phone the day I set up my service.
After I argued heatedly with him that I refuse to pay for something that I am not recieving, he finally gave up trying to make me pay anything on that very day. He entered my change of address in the system and told me that he would put my payments on hold for the 6-8 weeks it was supposed to take until the change of address took effect.
Within three weeks I was receiving calls again. They left me messages telling me to contact them between 10:30 am and 2:30 pm, which was really not a possibility for me, as I was working. The next time I spoke to someone was in September and it had only been 5 weeks since I had filed my change of address. They told me that I would have to wait 1-3 more weeks before the magazines would come and I said that I would not be making any payments until then.
Now it is November (almost December!) and I still have not recieved any magazines. A few days ago I was eating dinner with a friend who is an attorney when they called. She answered and said that she was my attorney and would be handling the case. They got all flustered and transferred us a couple of times. They said that we would need to fax them a letter authorizing her to represent me before they could speak with her on the issue (interesting that a verbal agreement on the phone is enough to have debt collectors calling me 4 times a day, but not enough to authorize my attorney to talk to them).
Today I got a message saying that this is the last day for me to take care of this or my account will be sent to the next level of collections. I called them back, because I had a moment at work to do so. I spoke with a "loss prevetion" agent about my case, but she was really no help. She kept telling me she understood my frustration, etc., but she wasn't going to let me not pay.
I argued with her for 20 minutes and she told me that the magazines are actually sent out by the publisher, so maybe they have the wrong address. She verified my new address, which was correct in her system and told me she would send a service request to the publisher and that it could take up to a month for the magazines to arrive at my house, at which point it will have been 8 months since I recieved any magazines. She told me that she was going to transfer me to a supervisor because she didn't want to end the call unless I was 100% satisfied (yeah, right!), but I was disconnected during the transfer (which has happened many times before with these people).
I don't know what's going to happen, but I recommend that you stay away from Area Circulation, Inc. And their enticing offers. It's a scam!!!
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