PSA: Underhanded marketing tactics

[unixronin]

I got what looked for all the world like a bill for a National Geographic subscription renewal today.

There's just one problem ... we don't subscribe to National Geographic, and haven't entered a new order recently.  Careful examination revealed an explanation buried in the small print that says a renewal or new subscription will automatically be entered upon receipt of payment.  Unless I miss my guess, National Geographic is banking on people not looking closely at it, assuming another family member entered the order, and just paying it on the assumption that since it looks legit, it must be legit.  Hell, looking legitimate works for identity-stealing phishers, why shouldn't it work for selling subscriptions?

This is a dirty, underhanded trick, and my opinion of National Geographic just went down a big notch.

Comments

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

I ordered a year of Reader's Digest for my mother for Christmas one year (I SWEAR I am adopted).

The next year they started billing me for the second year.... dunning letters started coming.

I called Reader's Digest to explain that I had paid for a year and only wanted a year and that they were scumbags for trying to strong arm me into continuing my mother's subscription.

They so didn't see it that way. "You needed to call and cancel at the end of the year."

Choking back words that never appear in Reader's Digest I decided that 9.00 was a small price to pay for another year of bathroom reading for mom. "Fine, here's my credit card number for this year's subscription. Now I want to cancel. She best get your crappy magazine until December and I best not ever get another bill from you."

It's a scam to prey on old people who won't read the fine print or call up and bitch.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

They got one extra year out of you .... so it worked.

You signed up for a one-year term. If you did not explicitly renew it, and notified them as soon as they started trying to bill you for renewal, my understanding of the law is that you are legally entitled to regard any additional copies that you did not order as an unsolicited gift, unless you SPECIFICALLY AGREED that your subscription was to be automatically renewed until cancelled.

[nephthys510.livejournal.com]

Which makes perfect sense...

unless you live in my world, where if you ignore dunning letters they give up and leave you alone. (or so the theory goes)

I ignored them much too long and was feeling more sheepish than pissed by the time I got around to realizing they weren't going to go away.

[sierra-nevada.livejournal.com]

This scam got written up in the SF Chronicle w.r.t. Wired about four months ago. I suspect this is a new thing in the magazine publishing biz that everyone is trying to see if they can get away with it.