Complaint Review: Area Circulation

Look I don't know Burt. I do know of Tom the owner though of Area Circulation. I also know an old friend of his Daryl E. Decroix. Mr. Decroix is President of IMA and CRC. International Marketing Association and Community Reading Club.

The apparently had a falling out some time ago and decided to start separate companies.

I also know people who work for Area Circulation.

Here is where it gets good.

ALMOST everything IMA/CRC does is the exact same thing Area Circulation does. From the script to the product. The process is practically identical.

Im not going to get into the details because I have them posted on here. Search IMA or Daryl. I was an employee who held a very high position with IMA/CRC. If Burt or Tom read this I gotta say I am shocked they are doing business in VA. IMA/CRC does not.
There moto ...."we dont sh*t in our own backyard"

What bothers me is how Burt says the conversation is recorded.

Tell everyone what part of the conversation is recorded.

Why? Very simple.

People listen be careful what you sign up for or who you give your information to.
My experience is this. These companies purchase your information from lead brokers.

May just be your name and number. These leads are purchased at sometimes 50 cents or more per lead.

You then get a call from a telemarketer who gets paid between 6 and 8 bucks an hour plus commission. They work 6 to 7 hours a day. They sit in front of a computer often times on a dialer system which pulls your information at random for them to call.

Now these reps do not need to have any sales experience, no education, no criminal background check, no drug screening. Also it is important to the company to have a high turnover rate as reps in the sales dept burn out fast so sales drop.

So you get a call. You may be told you have been entered into a sweepstakes and have a chance at lots of money, a trip or even a car. Now some of you a lot of you are happy to hear this thats the idea.

So they ask you questions. Age, sex, income, children, married etc. Also they ask your credit card of choice. They may also ask you your hobbies (to help choose magazines for you ;) Now remember you can not be under 18 or too old.

So some may tell you they are running a special where are going to get 5 mags of your choice to help cover the cost of one. This could be 3 or 4 dollars a week for 52 weeks for 3 or 5 years or so.

So in the conversation they let you know they dont want to bother every week with monthly payments. They do a little math and the you have 12 or 16 or so payments of $74.00

See whats happening here?

From my experience with IMA/CRC the verification questions in the initial sales call are what are recorded. Usually these are yes and no questions.

So I will admit that yes everything is explained to you. They make sure you understand whats going on with the verification process.

This is what they have to fall back on.

My question is why is it when a customer says they will call the AG or Attorney General does the company immedietly listen and usually refund the customer all of there money? Not the BBB better Business Bureau though they usually react the same way. But the BBB works with companies and help them
resolve customer disputes.

Now the Attorney General is something magazine subscription companies want no part of. Not to mention the Federal Trade Commission ;)


They play on your emotions from the jump. They put emphasis on the $3.64 payment versus the $74.00 monthly payment. They fly past that as fast as possible.

You have no time to think in the conversation.

DO NOT GIVE MAGAZINE SUBSCRIPTION COMPANIES YOUR CREDIT CARD INFORMATION!!!!!!!

I have been in sales for many many many years. I make a VERY good living do what I do. I am to present you with a product you may not need, in the end you want it.

As soon as you say hello I know exactly how to work the call based off your tone, how fast you answer, your breathing, your mood, accent, maybe even the city i am calling,etc.

It's called hustling.

Why not just scratch the sweepstakes talk and get right to the $74.00 monthly payments? Because you have not been put in the right frame of mind. You need something to pull you out of what you are doing at that moment to get you to listen to me and what I have to tell you. Once I have your attention its a sale.


But I gotta tell you all please listen to the conversation dont rush into anything.

Want to see the reps mood change from happy to pissed off? Tell them to hold on a sec or let you think about it. Tell them you will contact the attorney general and see how fast they lose your number.

Now there can also be benefits to magazine subscription services. Say you read a LOT of magazines and plan on it for a while. Then it may be a savings for you.

Or if your like me just pick it up while your out.

But if you decide to go with one ask them what they do when a magazine comes out of print. How long until you are notified and are your rates affected. My experience has been that the rates do not change the customer is not notified.

Oh yeah. If you for some reason feal you have been wronged.
....Maybe your underaged son or underaged daughter used your CC or confirmed the order without your permission.....

IF thats the case then the verification tape they play for you could very well be your kids placing the order. They can argue all they want. But you just simply say you want a refund of all money paid and you never placed the order. They almost always refund it in this situation.


Why would a company do that???

Every other company I have worked for stuck by there product, did honest business and had nothing to pay back. They were nt doing anything wrong.

There is SOOOOO much more I could talk about but its late.

First one to respond gets to hear ALL about the COLLECTIONS process! That is a good one.

Take care, be safe, happy new year!

P.S.

What do you mean you didn't order Cosmopolitan Magazine???!?!?!?

This exact thing happened to me today! This company called me at work today - where they got my direct line work phone number I don't know. He (Ethan, a brand new employee that would appreciate me putting in a good word for him) started out telling me I was entered into a sweepstakes to win $25,000 in cash or a BMW or a trip to Australia. Then I was told that they would be sending me a diamond watch & 4 magazines. Better Homes & Gardens, Midwest Living, Harpers Bazarre and US News & World Reports. They said the first 3 were free, but they had to charge for the US News magazine in the amount of $3.84 per week.

I went along at that point, so I was transferred to a "Supervisor" who then verified this info. and stated I had been chosen because I have a Master Card / Visa / or Discover card. I verified that I do have one of these cards. The conversation continued and I was agreeing to the magazine subscription assuming that subscriptions are for one year. Then they told me it is a five year subscription and my credit card would be charged 62.40 per month for 16 months! At that point I said NO. Our phone conversation was mysteriously disconnected at that point.

I immediately called my credit card & was told that this company had inquired on my card while they were on the phone with me. This company showed up as "unknown caller" on my caller ID and also showed up on my credit card inquiry as simply "Universal Promotions" with absolutely no contact information. Since my credit card company could not contact them, they advised me to cancel my card immediately - which I did.

I then called these 4 magazines and they confirmed they do use outside subscription services. Midwest Living said they had heard of this company and had them on their "Naughty List".......Great! I was also advised by the F.T.C. to contact the credit bureau and have an alert placed on my report stating my identity had been compromised. This company had a lot of my personal information, but I was stupid & gave them some more. They are typical telemarketers, very pushy & fast talking. They gave me no names, no contact information.

We don't offer a diamond watch. We know of a company that does, but we have a policy of not discussing other companies. It is actually illegal and actionable to sue people for saying things that aren't true. Many of the allegations on this site are completely false, and therefore illegal slander.

I understand people venting, but we have a legitimate company that does a fine job of selling magazines and making people happy.

Something you may not know might explain why these complaints sound so incredible to us.

We literally don't make money on the initial sale. We try desperately to just break even.

The place we make money is where in renewing a HAPPY Customer, that wants to get in on things like the free tickets to London, Paris, etc., and wants to get an even better deal on magazines.

So for us to create complaining unhappy customers, makes no sense at all. We couldn't possibly make money. We would never have lasted 20 years.

The credit card companies would not have kept us as customers if we didn't meet STRINGENT policies. True rip off companies lose their credit business within a year, usually less.

I have set up an e-mail account, accountant@areacirculation.net, to take care of web related complaints. I fixed up two people today, despite the fact that I'm the IT Director, and we are making major changes to our environment that require my attention constantly.

Feel free to write, I'm here and listening.

I want the owner to be vindicated completely, and that's my self appointed task.

My name is the most important thing I own, and I'm telling everyone here very simply that the owner of Area Circulation just wants to sell magazines, make people happy, so he can make some money the next time his happy customer decides to take us up on one of our renewall offers.

My wife, who has an even better sense of people than I do, immediately liked the owner so much, she told me, "Oh, you need to work with that man, he's awesome".

And for 5 months now I've watched him over and over again, prefer other people over his own needs, sacrifice, give, and be more patient than Job. He is generous to a fault.

I am honored to work at Area Circulation, and I come from a background that does not stand for dishonesty or corruption. I left a job on the spot when I was in desperate need of one, when my boss asked me to sign a document that had misleading information on it.

I refused in the staff meeting, left the company, and two months later he was in prison for defrauding the federal govt. Liars get caught eventually. Honesty pays off in the end...

Mistakes are made when you deal in hundreds of thousands of people. To those people that slipped through the cracks, we are sorry, and we are seeking to make things right.

We want you to be happy so you recommend us to your friends.

I am working on this, and will eventually answer, fix, and resolve every case. Reply back to me and you will get helped.

For those who lie, slander, and refuse to communicate, I can't help you. No one can.

Burt Bellows
Area Circulation
Director of IT

We don't offer a diamond watch. We know of a company that does, but we have a policy of not discussing other companies. It is actually illegal and actionable to sue people for saying things that aren't true. Many of the allegations on this site are completely false, and therefore illegal slander.

I understand people venting, but we have a legitimate company that does a fine job of selling magazines and making people happy.

Something you may not know might explain why these complaints sound so incredible to us.

We literally don't make money on the initial sale. We try desperately to just break even.

The place we make money is where in renewing a HAPPY Customer, that wants to get in on things like the free tickets to London, Paris, etc., and wants to get an even better deal on magazines.

So for us to create complaining unhappy customers, makes no sense at all. We couldn't possibly make money. We would never have lasted 20 years.

The credit card companies would not have kept us as customers if we didn't meet STRINGENT policies. True rip off companies lose their credit business within a year, usually less.

I have set up an e-mail account, accountant@areacirculation.net, to take care of web related complaints. I fixed up two people today, despite the fact that I'm the IT Director, and we are making major changes to our environment that require my attention constantly.

Feel free to write, I'm here and listening.

I want the owner to be vindicated completely, and that's my self appointed task.

My name is the most important thing I own, and I'm telling everyone here very simply that the owner of Area Circulation just wants to sell magazines, make people happy, so he can make some money the next time his happy customer decides to take us up on one of our renewall offers.

My wife, who has an even better sense of people than I do, immediately liked the owner so much, she told me, "Oh, you need to work with that man, he's awesome".

And for 5 months now I've watched him over and over again, prefer other people over his own needs, sacrifice, give, and be more patient than Job. He is generous to a fault.

I am honored to work at Area Circulation, and I come from a background that does not stand for dishonesty or corruption. I left a job on the spot when I was in desperate need of one, when my boss asked me to sign a document that had misleading information on it.

I refused in the staff meeting, left the company, and two months later he was in prison for defrauding the federal govt. Liars get caught eventually. Honesty pays off in the end...

Mistakes are made when you deal in hundreds of thousands of people. To those people that slipped through the cracks, we are sorry, and we are seeking to make things right.

We want you to be happy so you recommend us to your friends.

I am working on this, and will eventually answer, fix, and resolve every case. Reply back to me and you will get helped.

For those who lie, slander, and refuse to communicate, I can't help you. No one can.

Burt Bellows
Area Circulation
Director of IT

We don't offer a diamond watch. We know of a company that does, but we have a policy of not discussing other companies. It is actually illegal and actionable to sue people for saying things that aren't true. Many of the allegations on this site are completely false, and therefore illegal slander.

I understand people venting, but we have a legitimate company that does a fine job of selling magazines and making people happy.

Something you may not know might explain why these complaints sound so incredible to us.

We literally don't make money on the initial sale. We try desperately to just break even.

The place we make money is where in renewing a HAPPY Customer, that wants to get in on things like the free tickets to London, Paris, etc., and wants to get an even better deal on magazines.

So for us to create complaining unhappy customers, makes no sense at all. We couldn't possibly make money. We would never have lasted 20 years.

The credit card companies would not have kept us as customers if we didn't meet STRINGENT policies. True rip off companies lose their credit business within a year, usually less.

I have set up an e-mail account, accountant@areacirculation.net, to take care of web related complaints. I fixed up two people today, despite the fact that I'm the IT Director, and we are making major changes to our environment that require my attention constantly.

Feel free to write, I'm here and listening.

I want the owner to be vindicated completely, and that's my self appointed task.

My name is the most important thing I own, and I'm telling everyone here very simply that the owner of Area Circulation just wants to sell magazines, make people happy, so he can make some money the next time his happy customer decides to take us up on one of our renewall offers.

My wife, who has an even better sense of people than I do, immediately liked the owner so much, she told me, "Oh, you need to work with that man, he's awesome".

And for 5 months now I've watched him over and over again, prefer other people over his own needs, sacrifice, give, and be more patient than Job. He is generous to a fault.

I am honored to work at Area Circulation, and I come from a background that does not stand for dishonesty or corruption. I left a job on the spot when I was in desperate need of one, when my boss asked me to sign a document that had misleading information on it.

I refused in the staff meeting, left the company, and two months later he was in prison for defrauding the federal govt. Liars get caught eventually. Honesty pays off in the end...

Mistakes are made when you deal in hundreds of thousands of people. To those people that slipped through the cracks, we are sorry, and we are seeking to make things right.

We want you to be happy so you recommend us to your friends.

I am working on this, and will eventually answer, fix, and resolve every case. Reply back to me and you will get helped.

For those who lie, slander, and refuse to communicate, I can't help you. No one can.

Burt Bellows
Area Circulation
Director of IT

We don't offer a diamond watch. We know of a company that does, but we have a policy of not discussing other companies. It is actually illegal and actionable to sue people for saying things that aren't true. Many of the allegations on this site are completely false, and therefore illegal slander.

I understand people venting, but we have a legitimate company that does a fine job of selling magazines and making people happy.

Something you may not know might explain why these complaints sound so incredible to us.

We literally don't make money on the initial sale. We try desperately to just break even.

The place we make money is where in renewing a HAPPY Customer, that wants to get in on things like the free tickets to London, Paris, etc., and wants to get an even better deal on magazines.

So for us to create complaining unhappy customers, makes no sense at all. We couldn't possibly make money. We would never have lasted 20 years.

The credit card companies would not have kept us as customers if we didn't meet STRINGENT policies. True rip off companies lose their credit business within a year, usually less.

I have set up an e-mail account, accountant@areacirculation.net, to take care of web related complaints. I fixed up two people today, despite the fact that I'm the IT Director, and we are making major changes to our environment that require my attention constantly.

Feel free to write, I'm here and listening.

I want the owner to be vindicated completely, and that's my self appointed task.

My name is the most important thing I own, and I'm telling everyone here very simply that the owner of Area Circulation just wants to sell magazines, make people happy, so he can make some money the next time his happy customer decides to take us up on one of our renewall offers.

My wife, who has an even better sense of people than I do, immediately liked the owner so much, she told me, "Oh, you need to work with that man, he's awesome".

And for 5 months now I've watched him over and over again, prefer other people over his own needs, sacrifice, give, and be more patient than Job. He is generous to a fault.

I am honored to work at Area Circulation, and I come from a background that does not stand for dishonesty or corruption. I left a job on the spot when I was in desperate need of one, when my boss asked me to sign a document that had misleading information on it.

I refused in the staff meeting, left the company, and two months later he was in prison for defrauding the federal govt. Liars get caught eventually. Honesty pays off in the end...

Mistakes are made when you deal in hundreds of thousands of people. To those people that slipped through the cracks, we are sorry, and we are seeking to make things right.

We want you to be happy so you recommend us to your friends.

I am working on this, and will eventually answer, fix, and resolve every case. Reply back to me and you will get helped.

For those who lie, slander, and refuse to communicate, I can't help you. No one can.

Burt Bellows
Area Circulation
Director of IT

Hi, I'm Burt Bellows, and I work for Area Circulation.

I am the Head of the newly created IT Dept., and after seeing these reports as I was checking into a greater web presence, I talked to the owner and decided it may be time to start responding to public complaints like this.

As a newcomer to the company, I've had to spend a lot of time getting to know the IT systems, the people, and especially the work flow/Data aspect.

After four months of absorbing the incredible amount of information here, and getting to know the people, I was surprised to find this report after trying a google search on our company.

It was mortifying at first, seeing that people were freely calling us scam artists and saying things that I have to conclude are outright lies, to make themselves look better. However I have no doubt most of the complaints are based on some truth, and that's what I was interested in getting to.

I described some of the things I'd read to the owner of the company, who literally put his head in his hands and sighed, "How can this happen?"

I liked this man from the moment I met him. I'm 48 years old and have a keen sense of people. He struck me immediately as being as honest as the day is long.

Since many of the descriptions include slander and outright lies (I read the records of everyone I can find in our database), I suggested the idea of suing people for hurting our companies reputation, and likewise financially.

His response was just awesome, "I just want to sell magazines and make people happy. Can't we just make this go away somehow?"

You have to understand this man has been in the business for 20 years, successfuly creating a company that feeds a lot of mouths and sells a lot of magazines. For him to see people slandering him and calling him a scam artist, was just a horrible thing to experience.

Even though I'm an IT Network guy, I took it on to help the people who have made legitimate complaints, and make sure they were happy.

And that's what I decided to do, by going through all of the web complaints I could find. But what I discovered was that I had to experience Area Circulation as a customer, first.

It was then I discussed the possibility of having a non prejudicial look at the logistics and policies, as well as how effectively they are carried out in practical day to day situations.

I'd like to report to you my findings, and give you my personal opinions regarding the company, and my understanding after doing the research.

What did I do?

I went as far as performing QA on our people by calling in under false names and going through the processes. I bugged every manager from sales to collections, from QA to Renewals, to find out what we do when a customer has a problem. I found out much more than I wanted to know, honestly.

After digging deeply , I was surprised at the statistics (as I said, this is not my area of expertise, so I didn't know what to expect). Of hundreds of thousands of yearly contacts with people, over a three year period we only had 120 BBB complaints. That percentage is amazing in light of facts like Sears at one time led in BBB complaints, simply because of it's huge customer base.

That amounts to 40 complaints out of perhaps 150K contacts. I expected a much higher percentage.

I was also surprised to discover the lengths at which the company goes to insure that the customer is fully apprised of the terms of the agreement, and every detail regarding the prizes and various gift offerings.

A new customer is given the information, and if they agree, are transferred to another department that makes sure they are told again, recording the conversation for future reference, and actually asking the customer to repeat back the information so they know the exactly what they are agreeing to.

After reading a few of the complaint e-mails we get daily (very few, another surprising fact given our volume), I saw patterns.

First, it was apparent that many people, upon hearing the incredible price of $3.6 or so per week for 5 magazines, seem to do what I would do, i.e., really just want to get the deal and get off the phone, not really paying attention to the full details.

I listened for several hours to our reps (not all at once, but over maybe a month), and discovered that they pick up on this, and talk very quickly to try to get through the things they need to say legally, so the poor customer doesn't lose patience.

I could go on about how the laws have actually caused more problems than they have solved, but I also understand the necessity of them to avoid consumer scamming.

Because people tend to hear the deal and want to get off the phone, the company transfers the person to another Dept., where they are asked the pertinent questions regarding the agreement. Specifically they are asked to repeat back the monthly payments.

Since these are all recorded and saved for years, we can go back and listen to the recordings, and play them for the customers. And for the few that do complain, it is almost universally true that they cannot believe the recording exists with their own voice agreeing to and repeating back the details of the agreement.

One of the basic 'deals' is very simple on paper, but confusing to some people, so here it is. For around $3.64 or so a week (we have other deals), you get 5 magazines per week, for 5 years. Wow... That's less than a dollar per mag, and we are talking high quality nation wide subscriptions.

We have a deal with the magazines we work with, and to get these great deals for our customers, we have to meet certain criteria.

The magazines are looking for long term customers to increase their subscription, and therefore advertising value.

The long story short, is to make this incredible deal happen and for everyone be happy in the end, we ask for customers to pay the $900 total (5 mags times 52 weeks, times 5 years), within the first year in monthly payments of around $74.

So you pay for a year, and then it's done, over, finito. You get 4 more years of 5 magazines a month, already paid for. AND, you can change which magazines you get at any time, from a huge list of nationally known magazines covering every walk of life (visit our site for a current list, but get ready for eye glaze as you read from it).

Now it doesn't end there, because there is always more to offer. The magazines are willing to really go off the charts cheap, for customers willing to extend that 5 years even farther. You can count on the fact that sometime before your 5 years are up, we will call, find out if you are happy, and ask if we can give you an even better deal. We give prizes and offer anything we can find or think of to make you glad you are our customer.

That's the way it goes for most of our customers, and it's the bread and butter of our business. We get people magazines, for CHEAP!

However, there are things that make life difficult for us, and we try to work with them. For instance, telling someone the magazine companies will get those out between 8-12 weeks, is a tough one. It's a fact easily forgotten when the bill comes, and no magazines are in your hands yet. This is in my mind the greatest difficulty for people who see in very practical terms. I've paid you, where is my magazine?

And why some people don't hear the $74 for the first year, I blame genetics. Once I hear a deal, I'm done, lets shake, and move on with life. Don't waste my time, you sold me, it's over.

Before my current career as a network Admin, I was in sales for ten years. I am very aware of how memory is very emotional in nature. An extreme instance is a personal photograph that a friend of mine saw, who absolutely declared it was a fake. It turns out we don't remember facts, but our perception of facts. Our minds also tend to fill in non-existent details. A web search on the subject was enlightening. A month after the fact when you get a bill and no magazines have shown up, you forget you are paying off 5 years in 1 year, and you think maybe you were ripped off because here you are paying for something not yet in your hand!

I've seen the company bend over backwards, losing money in many cases, just to satisfy the customer, who was completely in error.

For instance, in one of the cases I'm responding to here listed on this site, the person involved freely gives an example, in that the company halved her payments to try to satisfy her. We don't want to lose customers, it's really a policy we think is best in the end, to do everything we can to maintain good relations.

I spoke with several of our affiliates, and across the board they all agree. We lose a lot of money we shouldn't, to keep good relations.

We are very sorry to hear complaints, but some of them are clearly so outrageous, it's just matter of time before in calling hundreds of thousands of people that you find someone who takes out their frustrations in a way impossible to deal with.

The few BBB complaints we get for instance, more often than not, come from customers who are so upset they won't talk to us. We would love to make them happy, but some people are simply not in a place in their lives that they can deal with one more possibly negative contact.

Area Circulation is a fine company that strives and succeeds in customer service beyond my expectations. I'm more than willing to put my personal reputation in with the quality of the company, and especially the owner.

In my 48 years of life, I've never been happier at a job. I find myself daily amazed at the way the owner treats his employee's, and his demeanor in the face of challenges other men would easily lose their tempers.

When customers complain, he's right there on top of it, always trying to massage the system into a perfectly running, living system that can respond to every kind of person.

Unfortunately He's overworked and busier than anyone I've ever met. That is one of the reasons I volunteered to see what we could do to help our customers get a proper view of us on the web.

Our initial website was out sourced and quite frankly needs a lot of work. I've taken that task on and within a few months intend to make a lot of additions and changes. I'd like our customers to be able to change their magazine subscriptions online rather than calling in.

I'd like to get some fun stuff out there, and let people know we are an open minded company that just want to perform a service that you really can't beat.

I'd like to create a chat forum where managers can respond to suggestions and comments, and I'd like to make our web site something people would even want to use as a home page (I'll have to be creative for that one).

Since I'm now a full fledged supporter of ACI (Area Circulation Inc), I can say we are really sorry for anyone that slips through the cracks and becomes unhappy for any reasons.

We want more customers, not less. We want people to want to recommend us to their friends. That's how we make money... upset people don't help us at all, and we don't want anyone to be upset.

We recently contacted an IT admin accidentally, in that his new phone was an old customer who had missed some payments. By the time we were done talking to him, he went from being downright angry for our call, to asking to get in on the deal. In his case the magazines he liked were very expensive, and it cost him less to pay for 5 years in one year, than his current monthly subscriptions were!

Now I can relate to that.

I'd like you to relate to that too, and add you to our happy customer list.

In the mean time, I'm going to get back to web development, now that I've built a great disaster recovery plan and made our network secure and more efficient. Your data is safe, secure, and backed up on and off site.

Good things are coming!


Sincerely,

Burt Bellows
Area Circulation
Director of IT