Complaint Review: New Subscription Services

I got a "free offer" for Rolling Stone magazine because I was a good customer for Gamefly (still am). I was told that I would have the option to cancel, though they never sent me any bill that told me that I would be charged $37 for the offer. I do not know if they expected me to call their hotline or not.

The first thing I did was to contact Rolling Stone themselves to see what was going on (because at that point, since I never got a way to cancel my service and they were still sending me issues, when I did this back in January or way before this, I was just ready to let my subscription, if you could call it that, run out, and you'd think that there would be a charge at some point before the time I was charged). They responded with this:

"Thank you for contacting Rolling Stone Magazine.

We do not show any renewal order in your name at this time. If you have been charged you may wish to contact the agency the original order was processed with.

If you would like to contact New Subscription Services agency directly, please call 1-877-210-0582 ."

So I call the number today, twice. First off, the other person that mentioned this as a rip off is completely correct: they give you no option to speak to a live human being. This is all automated and a pain to go through, and you're not even sure if you had done what you intended to do.

The first time I contacted them, I went through the automated process (some of the process was voice activated regardless of what choice you choose, which is very confusing). The automation gave me an option, when I tried to cancel the first time, to be refunded the money but also extend my service for another six issues, have another option to cancel come in my mail (which I never got to begin with) or else be charged for another year or so of the mag, and be charged a one dollar processing fee (which doesn't help me), or to keep my current subscription going. This made no sense, and I felt like I was put into a sort of trap where no matter WHAT I did, I would need to do something else to get to where I needed to be, and it STILL didn't explain the first charge.

The second time, I chose the EXACT SAME CHOICES that I did last time. THIS time, I got a cancel confirmation code. Thing is, after seeing the other report for this service, I'm not so sure that I can trust that I'll have any more charges, and I'm STILL at a loss about the first charge because I never got the chance to explain my case to anyone.

Now, let me explain what the original charge made my bank account do: sent it into the red with no end in sight. And when I called Huntington (my bank, which I'm at a loss about in of itself), they told me that I'd have to call the merchant (which I did, with explaining all of this to them...TWICE, to two different people), and that I might not be able to dispute the charge because I got a confirmation code. Now keep in mind that I got a confrimation of a cancellation with another, unrelated company, with something similar happening, and Huntington was able to take care of this. I'm going to have to fight with my bank to TRY (I stress TRY) to get these charges and anything that happened as a result of the charges overturned so I'm not so deep in the hole because someone decided to think that I authorize something I never did.

So yeah, be careful about where you get these free offers from.