Sunday, June 07, 2009

North Shore is a Bit Chilly

My son receives most of his mail here at our house. Yesterday, he received a letter from an ominous company called "NSA" or North Shore Agency, inc. "A National Collection Agency."

The company wrote this to him:

COLLECTION ALERT
WE NEED YOUR RESPONSE


Dear Mr. _____,

Our system has reviewed the status of your account with our client, RUNNER'S WORLD.

As a collection agency, and as consumers ourselves, we not only understand credit-we value it. But you are not living up to the credit extended to you by our client, RUNNER's WORLD.

In good faith our client accepted your order and shipped valuable magazines to you. The time has come to settle this debt by writing your check.

Please send payment. Then we will arrange to clear this delinquency from our client's records. Write out your check for $20.00, payable to North Shore Agency, and mail it in the envelope provided.


THIS IS AN ATTEMPT TO COLLECT A DEBT AND ANY INFORMATION OBTAINED WILL BE USED FOR THAT PURPOSE.



Of course, I've visited the Internet world and discovered that this company is not a collection agency, but they are hired out by the magazines. Apparently, several magazines, especially the ones owned by Rodale Press (but I've seen many more mentioned in one place or another) contract with this company to extort cash from customers who have not renewed their subscription.

For example, my son's subscription expired in December of last year. Rodale/Runner's World had sent him many renewal notices to which he chose to not respond (He was away at school anyway). I have the last notice, and I scoured it for any fine print, but nothing there indicates that there is any auto-renewal program. However, that is what Rodale is doing. The notice I read clearly implies that if you renew, they will send magazines. It does not say they will send magazines, even if you don't renew.

Such bastard tactics are deplorable...and by Rodale Press! Bob Rodale must be rolling in his grave. Rodale, in case you don't know, was a leader in the "Back-to-the-land" movement in the 60's and 70's. His foundation magazine, Organic Gardening, used to be such a socially responsible and enjoyable magazine. These raw tactics by his company are like sampling bitter herb.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Same thing happened to me! They were nice and apologetic on the phone - said they would cancel my "subscription"! Yeah, if I HAD a subscription. Luckily, the back of the North Shore letter has nice info on how you can report bad business practices to the FTC! www.ftc.gov
I reported them and Rodale will never get my business again!

Anonymous said...

I also opened a complaint. Scum bags. I don't want to waste an hour for ten dollars.