The Entertainment Weekly scam is coming back.  Next week, the company is planning to roll out the EW "Free 8 issue, silence is acceptance" trial and force us to ask every guest if they'd like Entertainment Weekly.  This is a practice which requires 100 percent compliance, so they're firing and writing those people up who aren't asking, and cutting the hours of those who don't get people to sign up for it.

Here are more of the tipster's complaints, which may not upset those of you who haven't worked in retail—but those who have will feel his pain:

• Store-level employees are sometimes sent to cover shifts at other stores at the district manager's request. They're threatened with write-ups, reduced hours, or termination if they don't agree. The employees aren't reimbursed for mileage or gas, however.
• Quotas are being stringently enforced on upsells including the $10.99 bundle, movie sales, late fees, and Playguards (rental insurance).
• The Starlight Foundation no longer gets a cut of the Playguard fee ("The Playguards are pure profit to the company," he writes), but employees aren't allowed to mention that when pushing Playguard.
• Late fees are no longer "tracked," but dollars per ticket are, "so for people low in those numbers, forcing people to pay late fees is very helpful." Employees can no longer remove late fees.
• "If a guest returns a movie more than 12 days late, it goes to a separate screen, which serves to frustrate guests who believed that they'd paid all of their fees.  We're basically allowed to keep them confused to a certain point, as long as they're not outright lied to."
• "They've also stopped printing receipts in certain stores for certain purchases, so it's beneficial for those who choose to shop there to make sure the transaction happens on their account rather than on the Cash Sale account (MR. CASH)."
• And, finally, the magazine "offer" is supposedly coming back.

 
We don't know if these complaints pertain to every store or just the one where our tipster works. For the most part, they sound like the sorts of things a company does when it's desperately trying to generate revenue, so we're not really that surprised. But the magazine offer? Really? Has that ever been well-received by a customer who didn't expect to be signed up for it?

If you're in Hollywood Video next week, let us know if you get the magazine offer.

(Photo: Sister72)

I'm currently out of town on a long business trip, and my wife told me about a somewhat disturbing thing that happened.

While I've been gone, I started receiving issues of Entertainment Weekly (which neither I nor my wife have any interest in reading). The label had my name on it, so it wasn't a matter of us getting someone else's magazine. My wife, who is rather wary of such things, called up EW and asked what was going on. The EW employee with whom she spoke told her that Hollywood Video had run a promotion, where customers received eight free issues of EW. The next logical question, of course, was "what happens after those eight issues?"

My wife was told that unless the customer canceled, they would be billed for a one-year subscription of EW. Now, I had never heard of the promotion, and never would have agreed to receive the free issues in the first place even if they had been offered to me. I don't know whether this has happened to anybody else, or whether this is an isolated incident, but I thought it might be worth sending in.

Thanks,
Ammon

My wife recently set up an account at the local Hollywood Video branch. We haven't had this membership two weeks and today I got what looked like an advertisement from Entertainment Weekly Magazine in the mail. It was a glossy post card that I almost threw away. Instead I read it and noticed that it was a notice about my "subscription" to Entertainment Weekly and it had a Hollywood Video logo on the front of it.

Apparently when my wife signed up for the video rental account they automatically (as in without asking her permission) signed her up for a subscription to Entertainment Weekly. The notice I received said we would be getting 8 free issues and then they would bill our credit card $29.95 under the Automatic Renewal program if she didn't cancel. I wondered how they would bill a credit card number they didn't have so I went to the website they pointed me to, http://ww.ew.com/customerservice and logged in with the account number on the post card. Sure enough there was my credit card number and an outstanding balance of $29.95. I quickly canceled my "account" with EW.

I can't believe Hollywood Video would be so bold as to hand over my credit card number to another company without even asking first. If this isn't dirty I don't know what is.

Thought you guys might like to know.

Stephen

Has this happened to anyone else? Please tell us about it at tips@consumerist.com. Put "Hollywood Video" in the subject.

(Photo:Sister72)