Viking Magazine Service, Inc. High pressure magazine sales over twice regular subscription price Bloomington, Illinois

Viking Magazine Service cold-called us and persuaded us to subscribe to six magazines for five years.  They got $137.92, and are billing us for $896.48 more.  The subscription prices for these magazines, as found on the internet sites of the magazines, total $459.50 when purchased a year at a time!

We (as have others) have attempted to cancel the subscriptions, and have been told it cannot be done, as they already paid the publishers.  But, they offered to give us a different magazine if we didn't like the selection!  (So the subscriptions can be canceled!!)

Two months have passed.  We have received none of the magazines agreed to, but have received one or two copies each of ten other magazines which are totally not of interest.

We made a number of phone calls, and discovered that there were at least 17 additional magazines for which subscriptions were entered for varying periods of 1 year or more.  The explanation, in part, is that this increases the circulations of these magazines (and consequently the supposed value to advertisers)!  Not only are these additional magazines an environmental waste (of course, we will recycle them), but they lead to misleading circulation figures.

This organization has an "A+" rating with the Minnesota Better Business Bureau (and a bunch of complaints)!  We are filing complaints with BBB, the Postal Inspector, and others.