They know that the person that they are targeting is making money. They make conversation in the first few minutes, and work on making the target feel comfortable and flattered. Before you know it, you're pulling out a card and giving them a number. They promise a welcome package, a list of magazines you can change to; they give you a period of time you'll be paying off the magazines at a discounted rate. You don't even realize that they've gotten more than enough information to own you.
The welcome package never arrives.By the time any magazines arrive, you forget which ones you ordered. Sometimes, only one arrives in the mail, and you know it wasn't one that you'd picked in that whirlwind conversation.'Entrepreneur? I never asked for Entrepreneur magazine... Didn't I ask for Cosmo or Seventeen or Vogue?'
The payment goes out automatically each month. They're getting paid for having scammed you. It's fine for a while, but then something changes - a new car payment, a pregnancy, moving, quitting your job... You need that money. You need that money NOW, but you already know you're not getting anything back; the best you can hope for is to stop it.
Maybe there's a month where you have to choose between your car payment and not paying the magazine company, but the magazine company has your card tight in its clutches; the loan company is at least willing to work with you. You call the magazine company, explain; say that you want to stop paying them for the magazines you never receive, say that you want to stop your subscriptions.
You can't? Why? Contract? Signature? No way out?
Oh. You can pay off the remainder of your obligation faster. Same amount of money - or maybe a little bit less - in a shorter amount of time. And you try and keep up with the number of payments you have left until this thrice-cursed chain is no longer wound around your neck like a noose, until you can take that money that's rightfully yours and start saving it. You get more calls - people trying to win you back, put you back into your blissfully ignorant stasis, but you put them off, keep moving forward... Eventually, you do finish paying them.
'Finally!'
And so you forget about them and move on, until...
'What?
Why is that charge there? I know that I didn't... I've been careful!'
But there is a new charge on your credit or debit card, with that same telephone number, the same initials. It's less, but you're pissed. You call the customer service and you yell and scream.
Apparently, you got a super trial offer in the mail - YAY! All you had to do was call and cancel when you first got it, but since you didn't, it's now a new regular payment at a super-low price, just for those customers that are in such good credit standing with the company!
They still have your information - the address you provided them, the card number. You can change your cards and cut off the old one, and let them know you no longer want their service, but you know they'll keep calling. You let them know that you've moved - but not where. You let them know that you never received their cursed trial offer.
But you still can't change the money they charged you because of that single first contract that exchanged your soul for a couple of magazines you never even got.
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