I had almost forgot about this company, but I came across the company name and other complaints of magazine subscriptions and it all came back to me.
I was called back in the summer of 2001 to subscribe for these magazines—normally I hang up, but I must have been out of it b/c I agreed to the $12/month plan, as long as they would wait 2 weeks to charge the first one. The said they would have to call back at that time for verification.
In the next two days I must have received 6 calls from them, with (not too nice) messages to call them back immediately. It made me so mad that I called them back and told them that I didn't want to deal with their company after all and I never confirmed my order. The good news is I didn't end up paying for their magazines.
The bad news is that a few months later I started getting $60 charges on my credit card from a different company. After making a half dozen calls, I found out that one company was charging my credit card on behalf of another company that had me signed up for a long distance plan that I had no info on and had never even used.
It turns out that Consolidated had give not just my address and phone number to other companies, but also my credit card number. (I received two other program fliers in the mail that Consolidated had sent my info too—luckily I cancelled these before charges were made to my card.)
I had to file a fraud charge on my credit card and they had to issue me a new one but I ended up losing somewhere between $60 and $120. I consider it an expensive lesson learned to never, ever, give any information out over the phone.
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