Area Circulation ripoff, evasive speaking, refusing change Virginia Beach Virginia

In the case I'm responding to here listed on this site, Michelle gives an example, in that the company lowered her payments to try to satisfy her. I found the record indicating that within one week of ordering, she called back and we lowered her payments to help her situation that had apparently changed in that week.

The rest of the description is a horror story that I talked to our customer service manager about, who couldn't understand how what she described, could have happened. If a person calls in to change magazines, they talk to customer service, not a sales person.

We do however, call customers back and offer them other deals that we think they may be interested in, and if some how Michelle talked to someone about that, it may be a possible place where a misunderstanding occurred. We can't imagine it, but that's the only place we could think it could possibly have occurred (as she describes, it isn't feasible, so maybe as she says it was a long time ago, her memory missed some detail. According to our records, we cancelled her account 2 weeks after she started it, and this complaint was registered here two months later).

The customer who wrote to this site says that she is being billed $60 a month.

We keep our customer information very close, and we don't talk about other people's finances. Without disclosing details, I can tell you that our computer records show good detail, and includes notes about the account.

The details Michelle lists in her complaint don't match our records, and after reviewing the notes and comparing them to the description, I can only conclude her response was to some misunderstanding on her part. In other words, it may be we did not make everything perfectly clear in a way she needed to hear it.

From our perspective it is not accurate to say she was billed $60 a month, because the account was cancelled within two weeks of it's inception. After the first week we cut it in half to help her out, and a week later she cancelled altogether.

I do find it hard to understand why she would say this happened a long time ago, and that they were being billed at $60 a month. Those allegations are completely false, and since we cancelled the account within two weeks, there is no way that two months later she was being billed.

Michelle, you are welcome to call and ask for a supervisor, and we can explain everything to you, and go over anything you consider a problem. I can only tell you for sure that no one here would set up another account for you without your express authorization, and if such improper employee conduct was discovered, that person would be released from our employment immediately.

If you suspect such a thing you can talk to a supervisor, and if you aren't completely satisfied, I will make sure a manager talks to you directly.

We have no records other than your creating an account with us, and then cancelling it two weeks later. We apologize for any inconvenience the process caused you!

If perhaps another magazine company approached you (I'm shooting in the dark trying to be helpful), perhaps there was some confusion. But we always stand ready to help our customers. Since you asked us to put you on our do not call list, we can't call you to help resolve this.

If you are in some way being billed, it is not by us (unless you moved, changed names, or have another account using a different name).

I realize this complaint is two years old, but I don't want it to tarnish our companies name, and our official response is this is false information, and we would be horrified at the possibility that someone would defraud you as you describe. We therefore remain open to any dialogue necessary to clear up anything. We certainly know we did not make any credit complaints about you. We cancelled your account as you requested and put you on our do not call list, with no hard feelings on our part.

Below I have written up some information about our company, and submit it as my perspective on Area Circulation and how they do business. You may find it interesting.



Hi, I'm Burt Bellows, and I work for Area Circulation.

I am the Head of the newly created IT Dept., and after seeing this report as I was checking into a greater web presence, I talked to the owner and decided it may be time to start responding to public complaints like this.

As a newcomer to the company, I've had to spend a lot of time getting to know the IT systems, the people, and especially the work flow/Data aspect.

After four months of absorbing the incredible amount of information here, and getting to know the people, I was surprised to find this report after trying a google search on our company.

It was then I discussed the possibility of having a non prejudicial look at the logistics and policies, as well as how effectively they are carried out in practical day to day situations.

I'd like to report to you my findings, and give you my personal opinions regarding the company, and my understanding after doing the research.

What did I do?

I went as far as performing QA on our people by calling in under false names and going through the processes. I bugged every manager from sales to collections, from QA to Renewals, to find out what we do when a customer has a problem. I found out much more than I wanted to know, honestly.

After digging deeply , I was surprised at the statistics (as I said, this is not my area of expertise, so I didn't know what to expect). Of hundreds of thousands of yearly contacts with people, over a three year period we only had 120 BBB complaints. That percentage is amazing in light of facts like Sears at one time led in BBB complaints, simply because of it's huge customer base.

That amounts to 40 complaints out of perhaps 150K contacts. I expected a much higher percentage.

I was also surprised to discover the lengths at which the company goes to insure that the customer is fully apprised of the terms of the agreement, and every detail regarding the prizes and various gift offerings.

A new customer is given the information, and if they agree, are transferred to another department that makes sure they are told again, recording the conversation for future reference, and actually asking the customer to repeat back the information so they know the exactly what they are agreeing to.

After reading a few of the complaint e-mails we get daily (very few, another surprising fact given our volume), I saw patterns.

First, it was apparent that many people, upon hearing the incredible price of $3.6 or so per week for 5 magazines, seem to do what I would do, i.e., really just want to get the deal and get off the phone, not really paying attention to the full details.

I listened for several hours to our reps (not all at once, but over maybe a month), and discovered that they pick up on this, and talk very quickly to try to get through the things they need to say legally, so the poor customer doesn't lose patience.

I could go on about how the laws have actually caused more problems than they have solved, but I also understand the necessity of them to avoid consumer scamming.

Because people tend to hear the deal and want to get off the phone, the company transfers the person to another Dept., where they are asked the pertinent questions regarding the agreement. Specifically they are asked to repeat back the monthly payments.

Since these are all recorded and saved for years, we can go back and listen to the recordings, and play them for the customers. And for the few that do complain, it is almost universally true that they cannot believe the recording exists with their own voice agreeing to and repeating back the details of the agreement.

One of the basic 'deals' is very simple on paper, but confusing to some people, so here it is. For around $3.64 or so a week (we have other deals), you get 5 magazines per week, for 5 years. Wow... That's less than a dollar per mag, and we are talking high quality nation wide subscriptions.

We have a deal with the magazines we work with, and to get these great deals for our customers, we have to meet certain criteria.

The magazines are looking for long term customers to increase their subscription, and therefore advertising value.

The long story short, is to make this incredible deal happen and for everyone be happy in the end, we ask for customers to pay the $900 total (5 mags times 52 weeks, times 5 years), within the first year in monthly payments of around $74.

So you pay for a year, and then it's done, over, finito. You get 4 more years of 5 magazines a month, already paid for. AND, you can change which magazines you get at any time, from a huge list of nationally known magazines covering every walk of life (visit our site for a current list, but get ready for eye glaze as you read from it).

Now it doesn't end there, because there is always more to offer. The magazines are willing to really go off the charts cheap, for customers willing to extend that 5 years even farther. You can count on the fact that sometime before your 5 years are up, we will call, find out if you are happy, and ask if we can give you an even better deal. We give prizes and offer anything we can find or think of to make you glad you are our customer.

That's the way it goes for most of our customers, and it's the bread and butter of our business. We get people magazines, for CHEAP!

However, there are things that make life difficult for us, and we try to work with them. For instance, telling someone the magazine companies will get those out between 8-12 weeks, is a tough one. It's a fact easily forgotten when the bill comes, and no magazines are in your hands yet. This is in my mind the greatest difficulty for people who see in very practical terms. I've paid you, where is my magazine?

And why some people don't hear the $74 for the first year, I blame genetics. Once I hear a deal, I'm done, lets shake, and move on with life. Don't waste my time, you sold me, it's over.

Before my current career as a network Admin, I was in sales for ten years. I am very aware of how memory is very emotional in nature. An extreme instance is a personal photograph that a friend of mine saw, who absolutely declared it was a fake. It turns out we don't remember facts, but our perception of facts. Our minds also tend to fill in non-existent details. A web search on the subject was enlightening. A month after the fact when you get a bill and no magazines have shown up, you forget you are paying off 5 years in 1 year, and you think maybe you were ripped off because here you are paying for something not yet in your hand!

I've seen the company bend over backwards, losing money in many cases, just to satisfy the customer, who was completely in error.

I spoke with several of our affiliates, and across the board they all agree. We lose a lot of money we shouldn't, to keep good relations.

We are very sorry to hear complaints, but some of them are clearly so outrageous, it's just matter of time before in calling hundreds of thousands of people that you find someone who takes out their frustrations in a way impossible to deal with.

The few BBB complaints we get for instance, more often than not, come from customers who are so upset they won't talk to us. We would love to make them happy, but some people are simply not in a place in their lives that they can deal with one more possibly negative contact.

Area Circulation is a fine company that strives and succeeds in customer service beyond my expectations. I'm more than willing to put my personal reputation in with the quality of the company, and especially the owner.

In my 48 years of life, I've never been happier at a job. I find myself daily amazed at the way the owner treats his employee's, and his demeanor in the face of challenges other men would easily lose their tempers.

When customers complain, he's right there on top of it, always trying to massage the system into a perfectly running, living system that can respond to every kind of person.

Unfortunately He's overworked and busier than anyone I've ever met. That is one of the reasons I volunteered to see what we could do to help our customers get a proper view of us on the web.

Our initial website was out sourced and quite frankly needs a lot of work. I've taken that task on and within a few months intend to make a lot of additions and changes. I'd like our customers to be able to change their magazine subscriptions online rather than calling in.

I'd like to get some fun stuff out there, and let people know we are an open minded company that just want to perform a service that you really can't beat.

I'd like to create a chat forum where managers can respond to suggestions and comments, and I'd like to make our web site something people would even want to use as a home page (I'll have to be creative for that one).

Since I'm now a full fledged supporter of ACI (Area Circulation Inc), I can say we are really sorry for anyone that slips through the cracks and becomes unhappy for any reasons.

We want more customers, not less. We want people to want to recommend us to their friends. That's how we make money... upset people don't help us at all, and we don't want anyone to be upset.

We recently contacted an IT admin accidentally, in that his new phone was an old customer who had missed some payments. By the time we were done talking to him, he went from being downright angry for our call, to asking to get in on the deal. In his case the magazines he liked were very expensive, and it cost him less to pay for 5 years in one year, than his current monthly subscriptions were!

Now I can relate to that.

I'd like you to relate to that too, and add you to our happy customer list.

In the mean time, I'm going to get back to web development, now that I've built a great disaster recovery plan and made our network secure and more efficient. Your data is safe, secure, and backed up on and off site.

Good things are coming!


Sincerely,

Burt Bellows
Area Circulation
Director of IT