Complaint Review: Marquee Magazine Service

I have a 92 year old mother who suffers from dementia and lives at home with 24/7 nursing care. Marquee Magazine Service (aka MMS, www.marqueemagazineservice.com and www.shop.mmsmags.com) calls her or sends her letters regularly to renew her subscriptions to National Geographic and TV Guide. The called her on Jan 5, 2012 and convinced her to subscribe to a 3 year subscription to Nat. Geographic and a 2 year subscription to TV Guide.

Thereafter, they continued to call her and tell her that her subscriptions to these two magazines are about to end and she needs to renew them. On several occasions, her nurse answered the phone and told the representative that she already has renewed the subscriptions and requested that they no longer call. On Oct. 17, 2012, they called her again with the same sales pitch (that her subscriptions were about to end) and talked her into another 2 year subscription to TV Guide and a 4 year subscription to Nat. Geographic.

Considering they have computer records, the company must have known that just 10 months earlier they had charged her for several years of these same subscriptions and they were not about to lapse. Her live-in nurse called MMS on Oct 22, 2012 and informed their representative of the following: 1) my mother's mental condition; 2) that she has been charged and paid for two concurrent subscriptions to these two magazines within less than a year and requested that the second charges be reversed or refunded; and 3) to take my mother off their marketing list and stop calling and sending her letters with claims that her subscriptions to these two magazines are about to end. The Marquee representative said that he would resolve this problem, but he would have to talk with his supervisors and call her back, which never happened. Her nurse called several more times and left messages, but still no reply.

As a doctor, this appears to me as an example of elderly abuse because the company and their representatives have been informed of my mother's mental condition. Furthermore, when the same company calls someone repeatedly and tells them that their magazine subscriptions are about to end and that they need to be renewed, when in fact, the company has already been paid for several years of subscriptions by that person appears to be a scam. I have also tried to contact Marquee Magazine Service to get answers to why they are using these business practices to convince my 92 year old mother to purchase more of the same subscriptions, but they will not respond back.

Furthermore, they continue to call her and ask her to renew these same subscriptions. It seems to me that a reputable company would have responded back and at least attempted to resolve this problem. Instead, it appears as though the company is actively pursuing "easy marks" that they can take advantage of. My personal recommendation to anyone contacted by Marquee Magazinee Service (MMS) is to avoid them completely, and instead, purchase their magazine subscriptions directly from the actual publisher.