Highlights Magazine RMCB Collection Agency, Retrieval Masters Creditors Bureau, Inc. Received BOGUS COLLECTION NOTICE for subscription never ordered/never sent! I called/researched-It's a SCAM! They send an UNREQUESTED sample followed up with scary, official-looking COLLECTION NOTICE, Elmsford, New York

I was sent this customer's complaint by the magazine's editor, who received it via Facebook yesterday. Below is some of the reply I sent her, although I've redacted the parts that specifically address her account transactions in order to protect her privacy. If she would like to share that part of the response here as well, she can post an update. We sent a full reply a few hours after our editor promised we would look into it. I hope the original poster will contact me directly if she still has questions. 

This is included below, but I want to say clearly and up front that we absolutely do not engage in the marketing practice this customer suspects. More information about our policies is included in the response below.

Hillary Bates

Manager, Communications

Highlights for Children

We do not process any orders unless we receive a request. However, it is often difficult to determine whether orders are legitimate. As a result, we process all orders we receive in good faith. If we are informed that an order was not legitimate, it is our practice to immediately cancel the order and remove all charges. It is never our intention to force a customer to pay for something that they did not authorize. 

RMCB is a third-party collection agency; we do not own them, but do contract with them for some billing efforts. We refer accounts to RMCB only after our own internal billing efforts have failed to receive a response.

I want to say clearly that we do not engage in the marketing practice you outlined. It is, in fact, counter to all of our policies. One of the things I am most proud of about working for Highlights is that this company has a long history of trying to do the right thing for our customers. We are members of multiple Trade Associations, the Council of Better Business Bureaus, and the Central Ohio Better Business Bureau. The company has been working very hard to ensure that our record with the Better Business Bureau has remained untarnished (with no unresolved complaints) since the 1940s.