Community Reading Club, Blue Whale Publications, INC High Pressure Sales, Poor customer service, misleading tactics. Rip-off! Fort Lauderdale Florida

My Story is similar to others who have been involved with Community Reading Club type companies. My wife received a phone call shortly before Christmas from a telemarketer. She already knew our credit card number and said that we had already signed up for a magazine subscription and they just needed to verify some information.

We had recently signed up for a subscription, but not with this company. My wife finally agreed to provide the telemarketer the info she wanted, just to get her off the phone. We planned to call later and just cancel whatever we had signed up for. A week later we received a letter detailing the 20 monthly payments of $39.80 we had "agreed to", and a second page offering us a "Diamond Watch". At this point, we were sure we did not want to have anything to do with this company or want $800 worth of magazines, so I called to try to cancel.

Through a long string of confusing phone conversations, the company initially told us they would not cancel our account, then later told us that the account can be closed if we pay an additional $80 settlement fee. This fee feels a bit like extortion... "Pay us $80, and we won't charge you $800".

I finally dug around on the internet and found the address and President's name for Blue Whale Publications, the telemarketing company who tried to sell us the subscriptions.

I then mailed a letter to them requesting they cancel our account and refund the charges against our credit card.

*This is the KEY. I think they have to see the request in writing.* ClarkHoward.com has a good example of a business letter.

Here is a link to Periodical Publishers Service Bureau, INC. This company licenses Community Reading Club, International Magazine Service, International Readers League. They also license door to door sales.

Our credit card would not allow us to dispute the charge so the only way we were going to be able to get out from under this was to pay the $80 settlement fee. However, submitting the cancellation request in writing seems to have worked.

Will
Lynchburg, Virginia
U.S.A.