As part of my ongoing effort to bring you interesting and informative personal-finance information, I subscribe to several magazines, including Smart Money. Smart Money isn’t my favorite money magazine, but it has some useful articles.
In 2005, I paid $20 to subscribe to Smart Money for two years. In 2007, I paid $20 to subscribe for another two years. Today I received my latest issue, which included this wrap-around “cover” announcing that “as part of our Continuous Service program, your subscription will be automatically renewed unless you tell us to stop”:
This is annoying, but it’s an annoyance I can live with. Some periodicals (especially newspapers) automatically renew subscriptions. For a variety of reasons, people are more likely to accept the state in which they are required to do nothing. If the default is “the subscription will expire if you do nothing”, people will generally let the subscription expire. But if the default is “your subscription will automatically continue if you do nothing”, people will generally let the subscription renew.
Dumb money
As I say, this is annoying, but I can deal with it. What made me cranky, however, was this bit at the bottom of the renewal notice:
Smart Money wants to automatically renew my subscription for one year at $20. But I was previously paying $20 for a two-year subscription. They want to use this automatic renewal to double my rate. This is bullshit.
I did some research to see if subscription rates have increased since 2007. They have not. At the official Smart Money subscription page, I found the following deals:
- One year for $12
- Two years for $18
Apparently my reward for being a “preferred subscriber” is that I will pay more for one year of the magazine than new subscribers pay for two years. That sounds like dumb money to me. It gets worse. Using Google, I found an even better deal, also from the official page:
- One year for $11
- Two years for $18
- Three years for $24
And Amazon has an even better price: 24 issues for just $14!
Out of the frying pan
Armed with this info, I prepared to unleash my righteous indignation on a customer service rep. I dialed the phone number on the wraparound cover. But I couldn’t reach customer service — only an automated answering system, which offered two choices:
- Stay in the “continuous service” program and renew the subscription.
- Be removed from the “continuous service” program and cancel the subscription.
I didn’t want either one. I wanted option three: give me back my lower rate. I gave up and tried the web.
Smart Money actually has a website that purports to let you manage your account. Fine. I clicked on the link to renew my subscription and saw this:
This clearly says: “Fill in the form below to access your subscription account.” I understood this to mean: “When you enter your information, you will be able to perform various actions on your account.” But no. That’s not what it really means. I entered my account number and was greeted with this screen:
That’s it. A blank page with the command: “renew your subscription”. Can any of you tell me what this means? Checking a different page on the site revealed that by entering my account number, I had actually agreed to renew the subscription.
I hate crap like this. I hate it when businesses treat me like a commodity. Usually when these things happen, a business loses me as a customer forever. (No joke.) But I can’t just pretend Smart Money doesn’t exist; it’s an important part of the financial media. Argh!
Free magazines!
How much does this bother me? So much that I’ve spent an hour processing images and writing this post. So much that I cancelled my subscription — and then re-subscribed for two years for $14 through Amazon. And so much that I’m going to give away free subscriptions to GRS readers — for Smart Money‘s competitors.
Six commenters on this article (chosen at random) will receive a one-year subscription to the personal-finance magazine of their choice from those reviewed in these two articles:
The only caveat is that if you win, you cannot choose Smart Money. To qualify, all you have to do is share your own tale of financial frustration in the discussion on this post. (Contest ends at 12:01 am Tuesday morning.)
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No one else seems to have mentioned this, but the Wall Street Journal was bought by Rupert Murdoch, and he has (as always) systematically wrecked it and everything connected with it. I had an (automatically renewing) online subscription to the Wall Street Journal itself; last year the cost increased by 20% and they did *not* notify me before charging me. I tolerated it, but over the past year I have seen every columnist that I valued leave, the newsletters I valued lose substance, and the reporting decline in interest, style, and even proofreading, and start to lag behind other news media. So I recently called and cancelled my subscription — I had to call, as there was no way to cancel or even change the auto-renewal online. I will miss what the WSJ used to be, but not at all what it has become. In any case, the auto-renew price-increase scam that Smart Money tried to pull on you, J.D., looks like classic Rupert-Murdoch hijinks to me; sorry, Starving Artist, I really don’t think it has *anything* to do with “trying to find ways to keep staff”.
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My tale of financial frustration is with “Consumer Reports”. I was a subscriber in 2001, and my subscription was expiring. I sent in my check, but this was right around the time of the Anthrax mailings. My letter most likely ended up in one of the dumpsters of quarantined mail down in NJ that were never released.
I wanted to contact Subscriber Services to see if there was a way to block the first check from being deposited, but at the time, the ONLY way to contact CR was via mail. Considering that they are supposed to be about consumer empowerment, this lack of available support for their existing customers irritated me so much that I allowed my subscription to lapse, and I have never bought the magazine since then.
Oh, and btw, the check has never resurfaced. I’d love to know if the government ever destroys the mail that they quarantined, so that I can stop carrying the amount on my checkbook.
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Unfortunately, this is becoming more common with subscriptions. They default to renew automatically, not to mention, “new” customers almost always get a better deal.
When we moved from once place to another, to get the better deal for Comcast cable, we had to cancel my husband’s old account then open a new one in my name. That’s the only way we could get the best deal because now I am a “new” customer.
As for magazines in general, I get them for “free” from various rewards programs that I don’t have enough points or miles for anything else. However, I am finding that I am subscribing to one too many magazines. I’d rather simplify my life and seek the content I want when I need it.
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My husband use to get a subscription to a magazine that he no longer receives because of their stupidity. As a bonus of this subscription with each paid year you would get a current calendar (which he enjoyed more than the magazine) He got the renewal notice for the magazine but it made no mention of the calendar offer. We called the 800 number to inquire and were told there would be no calendar OR no magazine they had stopped printing it. He got no notice of that. As his current subscription had no yet stopped. So if they were stopping printing why did he receive the renewal notice in the first place??? DUMB.
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It seems like all magazine subscriptions jack up the renewal price, which is why I always choose the, “Bill me later” option and pay with check. I know myself well enough to know that I will forget to cancel.
I love magazines but it’s getting harder and harder to justify their purchase.
I once had a magazine tell me that it’s going to cost like $8 more to renew, so I didn’t. Then, they sent me a letter saying I can get two years for like $6. Sweet!
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My “automatic renewal” problem came from Angie’s List. I signed up and paid with my credit card for a 1-year membership. I don’t remember signing up for automatic renewal but apparently that is what was done. I read over carefully what the rules were (this took some time to find on the website) and it said that Angie’s List would email or send a letter notifying you prior to automatic renewal. I never got any notification and my credit card was charged. I called about 3 weeks after it happened and the customer service guy didn’t understand what was the problem. I was mostly ticked off by this because Angie’s List is supposed to be a sort of watchdog for consumers and for them to just automatically renew without any notification whatsoever really just defies the concept of good customer service. I wanted to go on Angie’s List and write a bad review for them!
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It is funny that you have had issues with Smart Money. My wife signed me up for the magazine for a Christmas present. I received the January issue and then all was silent from them until a few days ago when I got the April issue. I had wondered if I would ever get another issue again. Now I am left wondering which issues I’ll actually get. Regardless I probably wont be renewing.
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Somehow, I’ve got one magazine (that I don’t really like) that I’m doesn’t end its subscription for about 5 more years. I haven’t been renewing it, and they haven’t been charging any of my cards, so I’m not sure what’s going on.
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Yes, I agree that this “business style” is becoming more common. You’ve inspired me to deal with one “auto-renew” that I’ve been slacking on, because I *know* it’s gonna be a PITA to get canceled or resolved. But for $60 a year, I need to do it.
Other recent examples:
* Fidelity. My DH and I tried to set up an auto-transfer for his IRA from our checking account. Although I’m *supposed* have have full proxy rights to his account (and it’s linked to my logon ID as my own account) – they tell me I’m NOT authorized to set up auto-pay. So I drag DH into their office 3 weeks ago (15 miles away) to get him to sign in person, while we wrote out checks and established new Roth IRAs.
I called to see why the auto-xfer hasn’t happened yet, and they tell me the branch rep gave us the NON IRA auto transfer form. So they’ll email me the correct form, DH will have to fill it out again, sign it, and mail it in. Grrr.
* Universal Studios. I tried to buy a gift certificate for my sister for Xmas. On their website, if you enter a credit card, they PRINT YOUR NAME on the tickets, AND YOU HAVE TO PRESENT THE SAME CARD at the gate when you get there. Sort of defeats the purpose, since I WON’T BE THERE. I called their “customer service” line, and confirmed there was no way for me to buy tickets with my sister’s name on them, but with a different name on the Credit Card. They couldn’t even do that over the phone.
Ultimately? I looked up the price of the tickets I wanted to buy, printed off the Universal Studio website page to show the tickets, and wrote my sister a personal check. Lame, lame, lame.
Sandi, off to dispute that $60 auto-renew….
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If you could see the antiquated backend system used by most of the magazine publishers in this country, you would be horrified.
When my sisters and I started our preschooler’s magazine, The Tessy & Tab Reading Club, we initially used this same company for our fulfillment and subscriber management. But we quickly realized this system was not up to the task of the high customer service we wanted to provide. We had to roll our own CRM system, which is not perfect, but at least we have modern internet access to our data.
Remember, this is the system that tells you that you need to wait 4-6 weeks for your first issue! We think children should get their first magazine as soon as possible–4 to 6 weeks is an eternity for them!
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Great article! It’s amazing how much of this goes on. I love getting magazines, so I’ve encountered a lot of these annoying overcharges for being a long-time customer. Usually I would let it lapse and subscribe later, or just eventually pay the bill. I’m going to be a little more careful now…I’d like Kiplinger’s or Backwoods Home if I win the giveaway. Thanks.
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In December I changed the bank account that my ACH withdrawls were coming out of for my timeshare. Easy enough. Except they didn’t change it. They changed one field of information, so it LOOKED changed, and all the customer service reps said it was changed, but nothing actually was. It took me until February, over TWO MONTHS, before I could prove to them the fault.
They said they would refund my bank fees incurred due to the mistake. So I faxed in my proof of fees, and waited for my check. And waited. And waited.
I called, and was told it was being process. I called later and was told the same thing. Finally, three weeks later, I called four times in a day, and was told in the last call that they had no record of my repayment, and that the woman who had authorized it had quit ON THE DAY SHE AUTHORIZED IT.
After all this, I get my check in the mail, and everything is back to normal. Two days later I get a collections call. They would like me to pay the three NSF charges incurred on their side, which were incurred due to THEIR mistake.
Still arguing with them.
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I was subscribing to my local paper and was quoted a rate of so much per week. Because savings were getting low, I switched to Sundays only thinking I would save money with using the Sunday coupons. The rate was quoted at $2.75/week for Sunday only. One day I was out, I happened to pick up a copy of this newspaper during a weekday. Included in this copy was an offer of $2.00/week for all 7 days. I called the newspaper circulation dept. and they said it was for new subscribers only. I cancelled my Sunday paper and now read it at a restaurant for free. I may or may not subscribe at the $2.00/week. I guess I wasn’t worth it as a customer.
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Hey J.D.
I am new reader of the blog(I came over here from Art of Manliness) and I just want to say, before I share my story, I really enjoy your posts about fiscal responsibility and how to be smart with your money. It’s the single most realistic approach to wealth I have ever read.
I can sympathize with your frustrations. I am a college student right now and made the mistake of selling back my Xbox(Video games allow me to waste time copiously) to a local retail store. Unfortunately, I had forgotten an old Xbox Live account on my Xbox. When it was sold again, the new user decided to use my old account to purchase some xbox live items, such as demos and videos, and I was of course, charged with this. I was surprised when I received the email.
Unfortunately, I was unable to call Xbox Live to cancel my account because I was studying abroad at that time and could not begin to call Xbox Live without a fee being charged. My mom and dad attempted to do it for me, and the Xbox people would not allow them to cancel my account, as they needed me to answer some account specific questions to information that I had locked away in my room back in the USA. So, they could only place holds on the account. When I returned home, I called Xbox and verified their information and attempted to had my account canceled. They could not replace the money spent however, as they have a strict policy on such things.
I called the bank to see if they could cancel the payments made, as they were not made by me. As it turned out, those transactions had occurred too long ago to be dealt with now and were already processed. I was simply out of luck.
It was quite the ordeal for me, as this was an old account I was sure was no longer even alive. I was wrong; it had been renewed without me knowing. A few minor slip ups lead to some money being lost.
I hope in the future never to make this mistake again; hopefully, with age, oomes experience and wisdom.
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“And so much that I’m going to give away free subscriptions to GRS readers — for Smart Money’s competitors.”
Nice! Made me grin.
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Tha hell? I’m like you, I’ll just cancel before dealing with crappy customer service (or none at all, in this case!).
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My auto-subscription tale comes from Start Logic, a web-hosting service. It was my fault, sort of, I read the legalese to mean that if you signed up to pay monthly, it would be automatically charged to your credit card, but if you signed up to pay for a year’s worth at a time, you would be notified in advance of billing.
I bought a year’s worth for a friend, thinking that she would set up the site in a year’s time and we’d switch the account to her name. She never got started on it, and a year later, the company billed me $8 for domain name re-registration. Luckily I caught them before they charged me $53 for the hosting. They were actually nice about it, despite the confusing legal print.
Way to go, J.D. That was the most expensive $20 Smart Money ever tried to make. We consumers need to let businesses know that we won’t be fooled with!
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My tale of financial frustration:
Our home equity line is through a local credit union that doesn’t handle our primary mortgage. This turns out to be a good thing, because they have no frakking clue what they are doing.
I noticed that our adjustable rate seemed to have adjusted to the wrong amount, so I called them. After much wrangling with customer service, I managed to speak to one of their two “mortgage representatives.”
She first tried to tell me that the reason the rate wasn’t what I thought it should be was that the bank used their OWN prime rate, NOT the WSJ one.
Our home equity line is supposed to be -.75 WSJ prime. The bank’s “mortgage expert” then told me that it was illegal for the bank to offer a negative margin, so I must be mistaken about what my rate was supposed to be.
It was maddening, made me completely lose confidence in this bank, AND took over a week to resolve. Total, absolute incompetence. And I was talking to one of the two people at this bank who actually *write mortgages for the bank*. I keep expecting them to go out of business, but I guess being small and local is saving their bacon.
Grrrrr.
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You’re absolutely right that the easiest thing for consumers to do is to do nothing at all!
The only reason my Self magazine subscription was renewed is because I was admittedly too lazy to call and cancel, even though I realized I hardly read it enough to justify subscribing. Sure, $10 isn’t much, but it’s annoying to know that I could’ve saved that $10 just by at least attempting to cancel!
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I had the same thing happen with McAfee virus protection for my computer. It’s such a scam. And unlike Smart Money, I do have other options than McAfee protection!
Thanks for letting us know about this. You should send an email to Smart Money Magazine and link to this post!
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Right now Sprint is an annoyance in our lives. We have spent hours on the phone with their customer service trying to understand the charges they have put on our bill!!! We are talking double the regular bill with items we never asked for. After our contract is up we will never sign up with them again!!!
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A local credit union that I have banked w/ for 13 years just charged me a “fee” because my monthly statement that they mailed to me was returned to them since, I recently moved. The fee was 5 bucks, but I was ready to close our two accounts. The “manager” was out of the branch to a meeting, and no one could wave the fee.
The manager called me a couple of hours later and said good news I am waving the fee. She then starts to tell me how big a deal it was to wave the fee.
The bottom line is, I bet the board of directors set in a little office and came up with the “junk” fees and said lets charge them and if a fee cheapo’s catch it and complain, we will just give them a credit. Knowing most consumers will never say anything and never complain.
Man, it sures feels better to get that off my chest!
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J.D., this is the best idea I’ve seen in a while to get back at a subscription service. Kudos!
Here’s my (not) customer service story: My dad owned a landscaping company for many years, and found that the Nextel push-to-talk phones worked really well for communicating with a few crews scattered across the town. He had been a faithful, pay-his-bill-on-time-all-the-time kind of guy for many years when he was diagnosed with brain cancer. The diagnosis was severe enough that he decided to sell his business. That summer, as a doe-eyed 20 year old, I helped him tie up all the loose ends. Most of his creditors and vendors were really understanding of our situation and worked with us to close his accounts on such short notice- hooray for dealing locally! However, when I called Nextel, explained that my dad needed to close his account due to medically extenuating circumstances, and asked them to allow us to terminate his contract, I got a resounding heck no. I offered to send a doctor’s notice and all the legal documents showing that he was selling his business and wouldn’t need 4 phones, but they didn’t care. I talked to about 4 different supervisors and was told that my dad would have to be dead before they would cancel his contract. They suggested that we find a friend who somehow needed a business cell account to whom we could sell our plan with Nextel. I was on the phone for a few hours, got nowhere, and finally had to give up.
Needless to say, we haven’t even glanced at Nextel (now Sprint) for cell phone needs.
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I must take issue with one of your last statements.
“But I can’t just pretend Smart Money doesn’t exist; it’s an important part of the financial media. Argh!”
If they act as though they have your best money interests at heart in their publication. At the same time, they pull something like manipulating prices and subscriptions. In my opinion at least, that is completely hypocritical. To top that off, Smart Money’s tag line is “It’s your money. Be smart.”
The smart thing to do, seems to be leaving Smart Money behind. You can easily replace their news and “insights” with others. It may take more than one source to equal the subject matter. However, there are free news sources on the internet a plenty. Nothing is irreplaceable.
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Why did you even bother resubscribing after that hassle?
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How about a story about the opposite:
Tivo. Man. I love me some Tivo, but as a college student working full time, I never really bother to watch television. Still, since I’m lazy, I never bothered cancelling my Tivo subscription… The day eventually came where I lost the credit card that Tivo was billing automatically. When I discovered this months and months later, I was THRILLED to realize that Tivo never billed me past that first declined charge. They did exactly what I wanted – Assumed I no longer wanted the service!
That being said, if anyone wants to buy an HD Tivo for cheap, lemme know
Otherwise, I’ll take a magazine – any will do, I’m an avid reader.
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I have had a similar problem with Car & Driver magazine. It would cost me twice as much to renew as to be a new subscriber. Same with my sunday only newspaper subscription. Now that I think about it…the only subscriptions I have never had a problem with are National Geographhic and Consumer Reports. I guess that is why those are the only ones I reliably renew every year.
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My situation was renewing a gardening magazine last fall for two years and then getting a a notice just a couple months later that that month was the last issue, they were discontinuing the magazine because of low revenues from subscriptions. After a few weeks and not receiving anything else from them I called to see what they were going to do with the rest of my subscription. I had the option of getting a different magazine from the publisher or getting a refund. My gripe is that I had to call them to find out what my options were instead of them sending me something along with the notice of discontinuing the magazine. And why did they send me out a renewal notice & then just a couple of months later stop publishing the magazine??
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Well, the website error could be a lot of things. Did you try a different web browser?
Anyways, I don’t care for the subscription, but my own personal story has to do with the utility company (combined gas & electric). This winter I noticed my bill was rather small, and the gas part was especially small. I called up the utility company and they ended up having to replace the meter since it wasn’t reporting properly.
Of course, they had to send me an adjusted bill based on an ‘estimate’ of my usage. The bill was HUGE! So I decided to use last year’s bills and weather data to make my own estimate and state my case that I had already been partially billed for the time the meter wasn’t functioning (it was reporting a small fraction of what I was using).
I called up customer service and was very polite and asked about how they got their estimate. Then the lady on the phone pointed out that my bill had credited back the previous bills that were only partial usage and I was only paying the estimate. When I re-ran my estimate (spreadsheets FTW), I noticed that now my estimate was very much in line with theirs.
The CSR put me on hold for a bit tho, and came back and told me she knocked 10% off – even tho I no longer had a complaint! Of course I thanked her very much for this
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About six months ago, I bought a pair of trousers online from Next (or “the Next directory”, as they like to call themselves). I skipped through the Terms and Conditions, just ticking the box and hardly reading any of it.
When the trousers arrive, not only is the colour substantially different to how it looked on my computer screen (grey, rather than black), but I find I have been entered into some kind of credit agreement. I am cross.
I send the trousers back with an angry note, asking for my “credit account” to be cancelled and asking why they operated a different policy to every other mail order company around. I got the money back into my account, so I thought nothing of it. Next month, I get a “credit account” statement.
So I call them. After hours on the phone to several customer service reps, the woman on the phone finally agrees to cancel my “credit account” and send me written confirmation that it has been closed. I breathe a sigh of relief.
A few weeks ago, I received a letter informing me that the interest rate on my “credit account” has been changed. I ring them up again and it turns out that they never cancelled my “credit account” in the first place and, thinking back, I now realise they never sent me confirmation that it had been closed!
I have once again requested that it be closed, they take me off all their mailing lists and never contact me again. I’ll see if I ever get a letter confirming that…
I’ve learnt my lesson, though, and always read the Terms and Conditions thoroughly!
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National Geographic, of all magazines, recently burned me. They sent me a “special discount rate” of $12. Good deal, good magazine, so I subscribed. Then, before I had even gotten the magazine, they sent me a bill for “shipping and handeling” which was $3 more.
I think the thing that upset me the most was that this is a group that I liked and trusted, and then they pull this nonsense.
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I joined Nutrisystem several years ago and lost quite a bit of weight on it. They have a program that if you visit their website and click in daily, after 50 days you get $10 off your next order – that says nothing about it expiring.
Because they sold some of their excess inventory to a local close out store, I haven’t had need to place an order in a while and had four coupons buiilt up. Getting them to honor the coupons has been next to impossible. In complaining I got a $50 escalation coupon in addition to my four $10 coupons.. but I can not get them to honor them. So many emails, so many phone calls, it has ticked me off so badly that I am now leaving NS all together – which is pretty sad since I have been buying their product for so long and promoting them with ever smaller jean size I get into. I was on the bandwagon shouting from the stars how great the program is, and the program is still pretty awesome, but their customer service STINKS!
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So many stories of frustration. I commiserate, because we’ve all been there. I would love to see Verizon or one of those guys give a straight “Every year you’re with us, 10% off the bill.” Stop at five years or whatever, but it would really good. Ah well.
On a side note, for posts like this, do you ever feel like you’re drowning in negativity? Million-man rant sessions may provide some pearls of advice, but it does nobody’s blood pressure any good…
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I am equally appalled by how companies are lacking in customer service. I am really tired of not being able to speak to a person when you call during “regular business hours” and end up spending most of your time pushing button after button. I’d rather be immediately put on hold and know I’m waiting to speak to someone!
Anyway, I hope I win…
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@Noah (#133)
Yeah, I can see your point. I think that to complain like this all the time would get old. But a once-in-a-while gripe session is kind of fun.
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Magazines do this all the time. The offer on the blow-in card is usually better than the “renewal” price they offer. 99% of the time if you call and ask for the lower rate they will give it to you, but sometimes you need to just let the current subscription end and resubscribe.
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Well J.D. good you did your research, reading the article I could empathize with your frustration. Most of the time the big US corporations treat customers like they have no intelligence.
I live in MI and the cable monopoly here is Charter. I have their internet service which I had subscribed @ 33$/month, when the promotional term got over I requested to continue on the same rate for another 6 months instead of the unreasonable 58$/month. The customer service rep I talked to tried very hard to sell me cable and phone service even after telling him I do not use those services. This is extremely frustrating trying to argue with a customer service rep about services that I don’t want and which makes no sense increasing my fees/month! To cut the story short I called to cancel the next day & voila they agree to continue service at my present rate. To me it seems very important in times like this to staff the customer service with people who have some intelligence – they should be trained to understand that acquisition cost for a new customer is higher than keeping a paying subscriber. FYI Charter had filed for bankruptcy couple of days before my phone call!!
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Kiplingers > Smart Money.
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I once got a subscription to Family Fun for $2 while purchasing some diapers online. A year later I received a charge on my credit card and had no idea where it had come from. Upon calling the number listed on my statement I found out that apparently there had been an automatic renewal notice when I signed up. The guy was actually nice and cancelled my subscription and took the charge off my account.
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I’ve got a combo ESPN Insider/Magazine subscription. It was $20 a year – until it was time to renew. They actually did send an email a month before telling me I would automatically be renewed for the rate of $39.95. So I called up and canceled – the guy I talked to (a real guy!) gave me the $20 rate and I reupped for another year.
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Amazing. Amazing!
I subscribed to Comcast Broadband Internet in December of 2006 through some broadband deal website where I initially purchased my own modem, but I can get the cost fully reimbursed with a rebate when I send in my first Comcast bill with the UPC from the modem and their form. I filled out all of the information to initiate service. The modem arrived, I hooked it up, but I didn’t have service. I called Comcast and they had no idea who I was and had no record of my requesting service. I checked back at the third-party website and there was no way to call them, no address except the rebate P.O. Box. I couldn’t do anything. Nosing around, I found that they don’t actually TELL Comcast to start service for you, you have to call Comcast and have them start it and tell them what deal you’re supposed to be getting. In the end, the modem didn’t even work, I still had to rent one from Comcast and this whole process took so long that by the time my first bill came, I didn’t even qualify for the rebate anymore.
I thought that might be the end of it, but not so. The service I subscribed to was an introductory rate of $36/mo for broadband-only for 6 mos. If I let the service default, it went up to $50/mo for the same service. However, I knew that my parents paid $47 for the higher-speed broadband and basic television including modem rental. So two weeks before my service was to default, I call to arrange my service be switched to the other plan. Everything was set to go by phone. Then the next bill came and I was being charged an extra $20. I called and suddenly they didn’t know why I thought it would only be $47, and that they don’t even offer that service for that much (strange, I wonder what alternate-universe Comcast my parents subscribe to!). I finally got them to take $10 off the television fee, to bring it down to $57, however this error continued to appear on my account for the next two months and I had to call each time to have it corrected.
That’s still not all. I don’t really watch tv, so I never used the basic television, but you have to pay for it to get the faster Internet speed. I had a roommate that wanted to hook it up, so we did, but it didn’t work. So I called them and they sent someone out. Apparently when I’d changed my service, they never sent anyone out to take the block off of my connection to allow for tv, so I’d been paying for a service I wasn’t receiving. I signed onto their online chat service and told them they’d been stealing from me and demanded the cost of tv refunded. I got it, but what a pain in my ass, dude.
I only stay with them because they are sooooo much less terrible than Qwest. Qwest makes people cry.
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So this financial story will reveal just how naive I was as a young college student, but oh well…I’m a few years older now, and much, much wiser.
The first apartment I lived in, I ended up getting an internet contract where I paid for the full year’s service at once, which was just fine. Silly me, after a year when I moved into a new apartment and was going to use a new company, I assumed that because I had signed up for and paid for only a year, that would be it. I was lazy, and waited for some sort of notification about what to do with the modem.
About three or four months later, I got a call from a collections agency. Yes, you have still been receiving internet services (at the apartment I was not living at) beyond the one year you paid for and in your contract. I called customer service to question why they would continue giving me a service I had clearly not paid for and saying I hadn’t received any notices. She claims they have been sending notices in the mail, and I say, nothing has been forwarded to me, why do you take my email and phone number information if you won’t use it when it would be most useful?? And the best part was that right before she was about to hang up, I had to say hey, don’t you think you might want my new address so I’ll actually receive this bill??
Ultimately, I figured it was a lesson learned, paid the company for those 3 or 4 months of internet, faxed over proof of when I had moved out of the apartment, and then a month later received a reimbursement for the same amount.
While I’m happy it all worked out in the end, I still think it should be illegal for companies to continue providing you a service and charging you beyond a contracted amount of time if they have not received confirmation that you want to continue the service.
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Last summer, I decided to get a few auto insurance quotes in an effort to save money (of course). Well, I discovered that State Farm was charging me an outrageous amount for a ticket I had received in another state almost three years earlier! So I called them up…they told me that this would remain on my policy until the next summer!! I thought this was ridiculous, so in an effort to keep my business, they agreed to rewrite my policy right after my next renewal in December, since that was close to the three year anniversary of my ticket. At the time, they told me absolutely nothing about the fact that I would be charged an extra (hefty) fee for having the policy rewritten. When I saw in February that my rates were not going down after the rewrite (apparently because of the fee that I was never told about), I called the agent’s office to find out what was going on. I was told that it would stay like this almost until the policy was up for renewal–in other words, almost until this summer!! She even said that I was saving a lot of my money this way compared to if the policy had not been rewritten. Right! So I immediately chose another company for my auto insurance (one that was cheaper by more than $200 over six months, and this is compared to the rewritten policy without the fee!) and cancelled my State Farm policy. I really did not appreciate being misled like that, and in the end, it cost State Farm my business.
Thanks, J.D.!
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The heck with ‘em. I’d go to the library to read the rag for free before I paid them another dime.
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Wow, J.D., that’s an incredibly disrespectful thing for SmartMoney to do. Honestly, if they do that to me when it comes time to renew my subscription (I just got my first issue, subscribing under their $18 for 2 years plan), I’m simply going to cancel my subscription and not go back. I’m getting Money and Kiplinger’s, as well, so it’s not like I’ll be lacking in offline financial news.
Since this has turned into a gripe session, I might as well complain about an online subscription site I’ve joined, which recently changed it’s billing policy. I found that my old (slightly more expensive) subscription was no longer working, so I resubscribed under the new system, only to find later this month that I was being charged under both subscriptions, paying nearly double the amount for the same damn service. I’m still trying to get this damn situation rectified…
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For 5 years, my insurance was automatically deducted on the 7th of every month from my bank account.. until last month. Without notice, the insurance company changed so that all of there payments came out on the 5th. Normally this isn’t a big deal, expect that the bank first deducted by insurance payment, then deposited my paycheck, slapping me with a big overdraft fee..
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No need to send me a subscription. I read magazines in the comfy chairs at Borders Books. Sometimes I worry that is why they are on the brink of bankruptcy.
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I had a similar problem with Prevention magazine. I received a great offer in the mail several years ago. I purchased a one year subscription. Several months before my subscription was due to expire, I received a phone call from a national organization – they were doing their annual magazine sales to raise funds. So, I decided to renew my subscription through them. Needless to say, the next month, I received 2 copies of the magazine. I figured maybe it was just a timing issue and everything would be straightened out the next month. However, that was not the case. I received a bill to renew my original subscription from Prevention. I did not send in the renewal and figured that would be the end of it. I was wrong-the next month, I got a letter from the collection agency! I called their customer service number, never reaching an actual person. Their message said something to the effect of ‘we are sorry, due to the high volume of calls we are receiving, we are unable to take yours, please go online to deal with subscription issues’. So, I went online, typed in my customer ID # and since none of the options solved my problem – I found a place where you can email a customer rep. So I typed in the whole story, which took about 15 minutes, hit the send button, and got an error message. I was fuming by this point! I tried calling the # of the collection agency, but could not get a real person on the phone either. I finally decided to just pay the stupid bill, and give the extra copy to a family member. When I got my renewal notice the next year – I went online immediately and canceled the subscription (for both copies). Although I enjoyed the magazine, I decided it was best to stay away due to their lack of customer service.
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Having recently finished school, I’ve started paying back my student loans. I have four different loans with different interest rates through a single provider (which aren’t eligible for consolidation). I am using an accelerated payment schedule to pay off my loans as soon as possible, and I would like to pay off the loans with the highest rates first. Unfortunately, my loan provider doesn’t allow me to allocate my payments using their online interface – all the money I transfer is divided equally across all of my loans (after the monthly balances are paid). The only way that I can specify my own repayment allocations is by mailing in a check with precise instructions. Blah!
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Last fall I received a box of books from the “Mystery Guild Book Club” addressed to my maiden name. I had never heard of the company and had no idea why I had received the books. While I called around to figure it out (maybe a gift from a friend?), the books sat in their box in a closet.
A few weeks later, I got another box of books (same ones) from the company along with a bill for both sets of books. My husband called the customer service number on the bill and found out that they had apparently sent us a letter earlier (aka junk mail that I don’t read) that automatically enrolled us in their service unless we called and told them otherwise. He expressed our frustration and they promised to send us a box with postage to return the books.
They never did, so we donated the books to charity. I am still receiving bills on my “delinquent” account demanding the costs of the books plus late fees. We have called them twice and they have promised to cancel our account and desist with the rediculous bills.
Just received another notice this week threatening to turn us over to credit collectors….awesome.
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