Ah, yes... another day, another unexpected annoyance. What makes this particular annoyance different from many others is that it includes a large bill and possible legal problems. Yes, you read that correctly: a large bill (many hundreds of dollars) and possible legal problems (threats of liens, lawsuits, et al.).
What makes this annoying is that it's all balderdash, baloney, bilge, bull, claptrap, flummery, garbage, hogwash, hooey, horsefeathers, poppycock, tommyrot... I think you get the idea. Unfortunately, it is a large steaming pile of something that is extremely difficult to fight against.
Many years ago (last century, in fact) before I had Caller ID on my phone line, I answered my home phone and found myself talking to a very pleasant young man who was selling magazines. Being (much) younger and (very much) more impressionable at the time, I decided his sales spiel sounded good enough to sign up for a few magazines through the service he represented.
Note to self: NEVER do that again.
That long-ago day turned out to be just the first in a nightmare that extended through the next two decades, a costly and unpleasant episode in my life that I thought I had finally brought to a close but which has recently come rushing unexpectedly out of the shadows beside the road and attempted to (once again) bite me in my nether regions.
This is what I was told would happen: The magazine subscription service charged X dollars per month for each subscription, but would charge me 2X dollars each month for the first half of the subscription period, and then I would be free and clear of any further fiscal responsibilities to them while the magazines would continue arriving in my mailbox for the full length of the purchased subscription.
This is what actually happened: Everything in the preceding paragraph -- with the notable exceptions of "free and clear" and "purchased subscription."
Beginning not too long after that first call, I began getting calls from the same company (a different man or woman every time) asking if I was satisfied, if all the magazines were arriving on time, etc. etc. etc. oh and by the way we were notified that subscription rates are going up so we extended your subscription for you free of charge youjusthavetopaytheadditionalfees please feel free to use us as a credit reference, here's my supervisor... Sometimes, just to keep me from being bored, they would call and tell me their computer had just chosen me at random for a free bonus youjusthavetopaytheadditionalfees here's my supervisor... I also began getting calls from what I later found out were other companies providing the same "service" and using the same scripts.
Note: More recent online research has shown that many of these companies are related, either owned by close relatives or all under a single parent company; a few are simply the same company that is re-named every once in a while; and some are the owner & employees of a company that was shut down for legal reasons operating under a new name as a "new" company. I also learned that many of those pleasant young men & women I was speaking with were incarcerated at the time they were speaking with me.
Even when I had finally learned how to cut off the callers before I was signed up for a new subscription -- I would wait until the "supervisor" to begin recording the conversation, then loudly tell them I did NOT want the deal being offered, hang up and avoid the ringing phone for the next hour -- at least one of the magazine subscription companies managed to bilk me with a script that fooled me into thinking I was paying off the remainder of my balance when I was actually signing up for new subscriptions.
Eventually, the costs reached into a four-digit number... and I could never get anything resolved on the phone, all business had to be transacted in writing but somehow, for reasons none of the callers could ever understand, the U.S. Postal Service always misdirected or lost anything I sent them. The callers were always friendly, polite, interested in my well-being, well-versed in the constantly increasing cost of independent magazine subscriptions, and happily desperate to have me accept more extensions and "free" bonuses. (One young woman who sounded like she was calling from the environs of Mumbai literally begged me to sign up for at least one more magazine.)
The tsunami of glossy paper pouring from my mailbox reached its peak the day I found a postcard from the publishers of U.S. News & World Report telling me I needed to stop renewing my subscription because it now extended beyond the range of dates their system currently handled. (No, I did not make that up.)
I finally learned to not agree to ANYTHING with any of these callers, and my outstanding balance finally began to decrease. It also became easier to avoid the calls once I added Caller ID to my home phone line, but there were times I either was not paying attention (or when my curiosity got the better of me) and I would answer the phone when I knew it was one of them calling. I even developed a script of my own; as soon as the niceties were over and the sales spiel began, I would simply keep repeating, "No changes, additions, extensions, renewals or bonuses. I want everything to expire" over and over and over until the caller gave up and ended the call. (It was actually kind of fun, when I had the time to kill.)
However, I had not counted on the malicious deviousness of these "businesses" when it came to taking money. I soon began receiving very different calls -- collection agencies telling me this, that or the other magazine subscription service had hired them to collect unpaid balances running into the hundreds of dollars. This unpleasant phase lasted a couple of years, and finally came to a close when I received a letter from the last one saying the $250 (approx.) they had received from me left me free and clear of any further debt to the last of the magazine subscription services.
Imagine my surprise (and annoyance) when, after a recent spate of "out of area" or "unavailable" notices in Caller ID, I finally became curious enough to answer one of the calls only to find myself speaking with a gentleman telling me he was calling from a collection agency hired by one of the magazine subscription services, and his task was to collect an outstanding debt of several hundred dollars.
I have to admit I was a good deal less polite than might have been absolutely necessary when I ended the call. Once I calmed down, I realized the caller had never given me any information about what agency he worked for, only the name of a magazine subscription service -- one of those I had managed to "close out" my account with a long time ago. I thought that perhaps I could contact the service and find out why there was a misunderstanding -- after all, they had told me my account was paid in full, and none of the magazines I had ordered through them is being delivered any longer -- but I have not yet been able to find the paperwork I had put away "to file later on."
Why not do an online search, you ask... Well, I did. They are based in Utah. Or maybe Florida. Oh, no, it looks like California. Unless it's Washington... or perhaps... Utah...
ANNOYING.
(More, I'm sure, to follow...)
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