You know we’re at death’s door for the print industry when they have to resort to a sleazy subscription tactic like this debt collection warning New York Mag sent Keith’s wife for a subscription she believes she never signed up for. Keith called the number on the back of the card and a customer service rep said that an “affiliate” put in the order. Dawn let Keith cancel the order without fuss. When Keith asked why the company was threatening to send people to collections for something they never ordered , “Dawn” said, “Don’t worry…it doesn’t make a difference since we don’t have your social security number and we will never ask for it.” As if that’s going to protect you from a debt collector. UPDATE: NYmag says the subscription renewal was valid and the customer must have forgotten about it. Full response inside.
Has anyone else ever gotten a debt collection notice for a magazine they never ordered or received?
In response to this post, New York Mag’s Communications Manager, Lauren Starke, said, “[T]he invoice in question was for a valid renewal order made for the magazine (which has since been cancelled through customer service and the subscriber won’t receive further invoices). I know it’s easy to lose track of everything one orders…Based on the name and zip code our circulation department was able to locate this customer’s account. In this case, the specific code on the account was from a renewal offer that was mailed to her and mailed back to us.”
We asked Keith for a followup response to see if there was any way his wife had somehow forgotten that she sent in a renewal, or if they even had ordered NYMag in the past at all. He says, “My wife says that when she signed up for a website http://www.vault.com, she started to received New York Magazine. They never charged her for it (and we barely glanced at it). When I called them (NY Mag) yesterday (shortly before I e-mailed you) the representative said (in no uncertain terms) that the subscription was made through an affiliate (no doubt, vault.com). To be clear, she has never, ever, not even once ordered or paid for a New York Magazine (subscription or otherwise).”
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@mrbill: Yeah, Wired did the same thing to me!
@Jmatthew: Yes, my wife did start getting the magazine. @chgoeditor: Apparently after she signed up on the web site for Vault it said that she’d be receiving a complimentary subscription for NY Mag. In other words, they sent it and didn’t give her an opt-out.
I occasionally get a bill from some outfit that essentially thanks me for my first payment for a subscription to a magazine I get, but demands a second payment.
The catches are that there was no first payment made and that the second payment is incredibly high – about 3 times greater than the normal subscription renewal price. These always pop up several months before my renewal is due. Some of these have sent second and third notices as if they’re threatening collections.
It’s just a scam to fool the consumer into renewing their subscriptions at a insanely high price. They are bogus. The MN State Attorney General has issued a cease and desist order and is working on a suit.
For this particular magazine, I order the subscription direct from the publisher and since I’m a long term subscriber, I get the best value from them.
This happens a lot. I’m a librarian and I see this sort of thing all the time. You can just write (in HUGE letters) CANCEL on the invoice and stick it back in the mail to them.
Also – another scam is to send you an invoice that appears to be a continuation or renewal of a publication – even though you’ve never subscribed to it. Usually they send you a trial out of the blue and then the invoice.
I’ve never had a collection agency call me for ignoring the sort of invoice pictured above, but your mileage may vary. I figure if the “collections” notice doesn’t even have a phone number on it, I’m gonna toss it.
I always drop or add a few letters in my name when i subscribe to magazines, this way when the fake notices or junk mail come i know exactly who sold what information to a 3rd party and if it is a scam or not.
The fuckers at Popular Science did the same thing to me when my first subscription expired. Guess that’s what I get for subscribing for one year of the world’s most boring magazine.
I had a similar experience with GQ. I had subscribed for a year and as my subscription was winding down I decided I wasn’t going to renew. Well GQ kept sending me issues and billing notices saying “your subscription is expired, please renew.” After 3 or 4 of these, I called GQ and told them I did not want to resubscribe and to please stop contacting me. Two months later I get a collection notice in the mail and was furious. I call them that night and demanded this be retracted. Conveniently, GQ had no record of my calling to tell them I did not want to resubscribe and turned my non-payment over to their collections agency.
What really pissed me off is that when I subscribed originally, it was on one of those postcard inserts and there were no terms that said I would be auto-subscribed.
Doug writes:
“
I had something similar happen to me this past fall. I started receiving Time Out NY, which I don’t–and didn’t–subscribe to. I called to find out why I’d received it. I was informed that the subscription was a “gift” from a company I’d never heard of or even been in contact with. I requested the subscription be cancelled, and asked how they got my info. The customer service agent had no idea, but did inform me that the company had “gifted” a lot of people. Why? I asked. Whispering, the agent said, It’s some kind of scam. I asked how it worked, but he didn’t know. I cancelled the sub and haven’t received issues since.”
@Ben Popken: The proof that NY Mag sent was a blank postcard with two options (neither of which was checked) and no name or address on the card. Is this a joke?
No I haven’t gotten this from magazines, but I have gotten notices from Sprint after they lost my payment; not fun.