WORLD WIDE READERS SERVICE Fraudulent Company Identity and Sales practices Lakewood, Colorado

On April 1, 2009 I received a phone call from a gentleman by the name of Chris and he said he was with Publisher’s Clearing House.  He said that I had won 2 round trip plane tickets. When I asked for what, he told me for just paying my Visa credit card on time.  I thought that was a little fishy but I decided to get more information.  He told me all I needed to do was to give him my address so he could send me the plane tickets.  I gave him that information and he proceeded to tell me that in order to get the tickets I had to purchase magazines.  Before I could say anything he said “I see you are using a Visa beginning with the number “4” would you like to use that card for the magazines”. I felt that they must already have my credit information and so in believing him, I gave him my credit card information.  The phone call then went into a “verbal agreement” That I had to say yes to.  At no time was I told how much the subscription amount would be or that my verbal agreement for a binding contract for two years. I assumed that something would be sent to me in the mail that I would need to sign if I decided to finalize the subscription.

I did receive something in the mail and it appeared to be junk mail, something about plane tickets and that I needed to mark what magazines I wanted. Thinking this was the piece of mail I needed to send back in with my signature, I decided not to finalize the subscription and just threw it away thinking that I was done with the whole situation.

After tax returns, I paid off my credit card for my upcoming wedding and honeymoon.  In July I had opened my credit card statement just to make sure everything was still ok and I noticed there were close to $200.00 in charges on my card.  I called my credit card company asking what the charges were for and they told me that the number next to the name was a phone number and that I should call it.  I called the number and it was World Wide Reader’s Service Inc. I told them my situation and that there was a mistake for them charging my credit card that they must have the wrong person.  The woman put me on hold, and then hung up on me.  I called back and she hung up on me again!  I then called my credit card company again and told them I needed to report these charges as being fraudulent.  They disputed all the charges made from that company and also gave me a brand new card. 

Thinking that had done the trick I didn’t worry about that company anymore until on October 16, 2009. I received a bill in the mail saying that I owe this same company $159.60.  I called the company on October 28, 2009 and there was no answer so I left a message explaining to them that they need to call me back because this was an urgent matter.  I received no phone call so finally I called again and reached someone.  I asked the woman at first if their company was affiliated with Publisher’s Clearing House and she told me no.  She put me on hold and when she came back she changed her answer and said yes they were.  I explained my situation yet again and stated that last time I had talked to someone from this company they hung up on me.  The woman didn’t apologize and just told me that she would have her supervisor call me back.  About half an hour later I get a phone call from a woman screaming at me in regard to the amount that she felt I owed them.  I tried telling her that I never finalized the subscription and she said “too bad” and that I had two options.  That I had to either continue to pay for the subscriptions or do a buy out.  I told her I have never received any magazines and she just continued to scream at me, changing the subject off the magazines. She said that if you do a buy out I will take off $100.00 from the total of the two year price which she said was $827.00 (per phone call on October 28, 2009).  I told her that doesn’t make sense because the total price of the magazines would be over $900 doing the math somewhat quickly in my head.  She then proceeded to scream at me, threatening to send the total bill for the subscription amount of $827.00 into collections if I didn’t pay the total amount of the bill by the 30^th of October, even though the bill stated that it is due November 1.  Yet again more screaming, so I told her I would pay the bill if she would just leave me alone.  She said “well what credit card are you paying with because the one we have on file isn’t working”.  I told her I closed it because of their company and then I also told her I wasn’t giving her another card number over the phone.  I said that she could send me something in the mail, again just to get her off the phone.  She told me that that was illegal (I don’t know why she would say that).  I then hung up the phone and proceeded to call everyone I knew that could possibly help me.