Complaint Review: TWX MAGAZINE - NSS Magazine Subscriptions - Synapse Group - Stamford Connecticut

I was receiving two magazines, Southern Living and Rachel Ray, from their respective publishers (I thought). It seems that these two magazines have contracted with TWX (Synapse Group) to handle their subscription business. When my magazines were due to expire in October 2009, rather than notify me of this fact and ask if I wanted to renew, TWX automatically renewed them and debited my bank account WITH NO NOTICE TO ME. They claim they sent me a notice in the mail but I contested this fact -- I did NOT get a notice. What makes what they did so bad was that this bank account they debited was an old account we were planning to close out at the end of September. We moved in December 2008 and found it inconvenient to travel 17 miles one way to the only Wachovia Bank closest to us. We opened an account with a local bank just 1 mile from our house but as I mentioned above, had to wait until 9/23 to ensure my husband's social security check was being deposited into the new account and not into the old one at Wachovia. We left $18 in this account with the intention of closing it on 9/28. Well, TWX, on two separate occasions, debited this account for Southern Living on 9/15 for $32 (which they did reverse on 9/18) but because it was presented against my account with only $18 in it, it caused an overdraft. Again, we were forced to wait until 9/28 to attempt to close out this account and lo and behold if TWX didn't do it again - this time for the Rachel Ray magazine on 9/28 -- with no notice sent to my home address prior to this debit. Now, I have two overdraft charges amounting to $70. And I still can't close my account out until TWX AGAIN credits another $32 to the account. My bank says they can't credit the overdraft charges because it wasn't their fault. I plan to go after TWX for these overdraft charges.

TWX cannot be allowed to continue doing business this way. Their billing department should be required to receive confirmation from their customers, in writing, stating whether or not they want to renew. They cannot assume that because they receive NO WORD from their customers that it's OK to renew and debit the subscription cost from the bank information originally given them when the customer ordered the magazines. In other words, they can't assume "No news is good news", i.e., the customer didn't tell us NOT TO DEBIT THEIR ACCOUNT, so let's keep those magazines going out and the money coming in.

I intend to write my senator here in Georgia. There has to be some way to stop this ripoff. What they are doing may not be illegal but it's definitely "shady" and "tricky". They are not being transparent about the procedure they use to get renewals. As for Southern Living and Rachel Ray, they just lost another customer due to the deviousness of TWX. They may want to think twice about using this company in the future. I know I'm not the only one who's encountered this problem and it may become such a huge problem that legislation will be required to rein them in, make them more "user friendly". Trust me, if I had received a notice in the mail requesting permission to continue my subscription and debit my bank, I would have taken the time to respond. I never intended to renew these two magazines before this mess happened. I was tired of the same old stuff being featured and I was running out of room for storing all those magazines.