Columbia House Music & DVD Club Impossible to contact- quick to hurt customers- overpriced shipping Terre Haute Indiana

First off, if you email these clowns your question, they send a "canned" reply that typically doesn't even come close to answering your question - you're lucky if the canned reply is even regarding the same TOPIC. Secondly, reading comprehension or perhaps even ENGLISH comprehension seems to be a really big problem there. It's nice to know that Columbia House staffs their "customer service" lines with the illiterate - they, too, need employment.

Secondly, the toll free number will net you no less than a half hour on hold IF you can manage to get through. And then when you do get through, you're shuffled from person to person until one of them sends you to an "invalid" mailbox.

Thirdly, my daughter worked for them for a brief amount of time and her training included a briefing on how to shuffle customers around, where to transfer the calls to, and a list of "invalid" company numbers to use so that the consumer can't make their cancellation or other instructions known. If they speak to someone about cancellation and get billed, then Columbia House has to go through the aggravation of refunding, etc. if it can be proven that the cancellation request was submitted. By shuffling people from person to person until they hit a dead line, they PREVENT the cancellation or other orders from being communicated.

The best thing to do is to cancel your card. This prevents them for billing you for the "selection of the month" or "director's choice" before your "respond by" date - as they tried to do with me.

Interestingly enough, I got an email from them telling me that they were having difficulty charging my credit card for a "director's choice" selection that I'd not ordered, and still had more than 2 weeks before the "respond by" date expired. I replied explaining that I wasn't stupid enough to give them Carte Blanche on my credit card - I'd ordered my freebies with a card I was getting ready to cancel because I was changing banks. I paid for my initial selections, but their hands were tied after I'd canceled the card. They also couldn't/wouldn't send me anything I'd not ordered, since they didn't have access to immediately pay themselves for it.

I fulfilled my "commitment" all at once, in one order, at the end of the membership period, and then told them to cancel the account/membership. I had to give them a credit card number to pay for the order and I was amazed when I got an email telling me that I had to purchase THREE MORE selections at regular club price because I'd screwed them out of freely billing my credit card.

I'm not proud of this, but it seemed highly effective: I then sent them an email that was so full of foul language telling them that it seemed to be the only thing they understood and, not to my surprise, got a reply telling me my membership had been canceled because of my "abusive behavior" toward them. *snicker*

As a precaution, I also called my bank and informed them that I had canceled my membership with this company and that NO FURTHER CHARGES were to be honored on my card.

I too am a member of Columbia House music and DVD club. I have been a member of their music club now for about 15 years. Although I have had a few problems in the past, with selections of the month being sent that I didn't want, I have always been able to work them out to my satisfaction(so far). I just recently joined the DVD club, and in their club packet they sent me was included a introduction letter with my account number, their address and their toll free number.

You can reach them at 1-800-262-2001. I have also found that they respond by e-mail also, which can be found on their web site. Over the years, I have called them several times, and have had some decent customer service as well as some terrible service.

I hope this information helps you, and I hope that you can resolve this matter to your satisfaction.