Complaint Review: Synapse Retail Ventures Inc. - UT

I received a postcard in the mail from this company notifying me that my subscriptions for People, Rolling Stones, and Us Weekly are about to expire and that they were going to charge me about 27$ to renew all three of them stating that I had given them permission to charge my card. First I dont even know how they got my card info and second I definitely did not give them permission to auto renew these magazines.

I got these magazines as an FYE member and when I canceled my FYE membership I continued to get these magazines and thought nothing of it. I definitely didnt give FYE to charge me for the magazines either as it was a free promotion for being a member. However, I hated the magazines from day one and thought to myself, they will expire soon, and just continued to throw them in the trash every time one showed up. I don't read them and don't even like them when I do have time to read them. Needless to say I was upset to see that I was about to get charged for these magazines that I didn't want.

I looked over the postcard card multiple times for a web address to cancel, but all that it provided for cancelation was a telephone number. 1-866-560-9273. I called the number promptly reaching a robot. It gave several options, the first one being cancel a subscription. I chose that option and moved on.

The automated call prompted me to choose a subscription to cancel, so I said all. "Are you talking about all of your magazine subscriptions?" I was asked. I replied yes and was then told that the automated system could only process one cancelation at a time. This was when I hit zero in hopes that I would reach an operator. Nothing happeded so I thought to myself, oh well I will just have to cancel them one by one.

The automated voice asks me one more time which magazine I would like to cancel and I said People. The system confirmed which magazine I was talking about and continued to tell me that I was selected for a special offer where I would be charged so many dollars monthly and get 2 issues with 12 free issues of the magazine. The wording was much different than this, actually I believe that their wording was meant to confuse. Upon listening to the offer the first time I thought it was a parting gift that they were sending me 12 free issues.

The way that the message was worded it made it sound like a cancelation with a parting gift, but upon replaying the deal info I realized it was a technique frequently used by magazine companys to get you to continue paying. It asks me yes or no if I wanted to accept the offer and says nothing about cancelation. I obviously said no and then the robotic system goes on to tell me that it's sorry that I didnt want the offer and that they would continue my subscription as normal until I made up my mind about the better deal. Basically trying to forcce me into buying the magazines.

'What the hell' I thought. Maybe I missed something, maybe I was supposed to say yes? I hung up and called back this time trying to cancel Rolling Stones. The same thing happens, and the stupidest part is that the offer they give you first tells you that it is a cancelation but later in the offer details it swiftly tells you how much they are going to charge you and it would be easy to just press yes without listening to the full offer and think you had canceled when you actually had not. At this point I got irate and started yelling at the phone because I did not want to pay for these magazines and it was looking like I had no other option.

After Interrupting the robot a couple of times to yell at it, all of a sudden it agrees to cancel my subscription. I realized that I am going to have to call 3 times and yell at a robot each time to get this fixed. 'No way am I doing this', I tell myself. I start yelling and cussing more, remembering this life hack I saw one time where if you cuss at the automated system it will transfer you to a human. After several interruptions of the robot and me continual cussing I was swiftly transferred over to a human.

Let me just stop and say I am a very passive person. I never yell and especially at people who are just doing their jobs, except today. This will be the first time in my life that I have yelled at someone on the phone for doing their job. Anyway the customer service representative listened to me yell at him about what I had just went through and he said I understand that the system is quite frustrating. So they know how bad it is. At this point he tried to push deals on me as well, prying for answers to why I so badly didnt want the magazines.

I continued to yell at him telling him that I just didnt want them that I didnt read them and that I trashed them. Finally he tells me that he is canceling my subscriptions and I didn't trust him so I asked him plainly, "I'm not going to get charged any for these magazines right?" He tells me plainly no you wont be charged and everything is canceled. I'm taking his word as I dont know what else to do, but I still am afraid that I am going to get charged and I will come back and update this if i do get charged, but for now this is just a story on how these scammers almost scammed me.

I am mostly mad at how manipulative the system was. It was very unclear and was trying to trick you into not canceling. I luckily caught the scam and was able to work around it, but I am also mad at FYE for giving these jokers my information! FYE deserves to be punished as well here! This is their fault to begin with.