Complaint Review: stephanie fugate

i bought a $10 papa johns gc for $1 from saveology a couple of weeks ago - @ 10/5/12 i think, i can get the details if necessary. i have purchased quite a few deals from them in the past couple of years but NEVER had this happen! it was always above board and i received what i was supposed to. then on this latest deal for the papa johns gc a man saying he was from saveology ( and went so far as to ask how the weather was in SC where i lived and told me he was in FL and it was hot and sticky!)and that he needed to verify my home address to make sure they had the correct address to mail my papa johns card to. now as i said i have bought many deals from saveology in the past w/o issue. they have my name and address and ph# on my acct with them so i was a bit baffled as to why they needed to verify my address, but i just saw it as a precaution which can be a good thing! people do move and forget to tell people about it - especially places like these, that you would not think to change in the course of moving. nonetheless i confirmed my address with them and did not give it much thought.  that all went well and then i get this spiel:

we at saveology are running a special right now that is a great deal! u can cancel anytime within 10 days (he called the evening of 10/22/12 so i had until 10/31/12 to cancel the deal if i was not satisfied) so i had nothing to lose. ( in hindsight, i should have hung up after that )but i figured i would see what it was they were offering. they said for $4.95 i would get a $100 dining dollar gift that i could buy gc's to restaurants like red lobster and olive garden and red robin among many others. so i thought that that sounded like a pretty good deal. i asked if i had to pay any money at the restaurant or if it was only good at certain times or any other "catches" and he replied no - u can buy up to $100 worth of gc's for any eatery or store even (like walmart, target among others) so that if i would rather buy something else with the $100 i could! he told me that for instance i could get a $50 gc for red lobster and use it like cash even for the tip and tax and a $50 walmart card to buy whatever i wanted from there!! it sounded too good to be true but i did in fact get my papa john's $10 gc yesterday in the mail and called it and sure enough there was a $10 balance on it so hey, why not?

now that i have looked into this it is a total sham!! there r no restaurants or stores that i can purchase gc's to without having to pay money along with the gc!!! and no option for a store anywhere!! the best u can get is a red robin 2pk of $50 gc's but only $10 of the $100 dining dollars goes towards buying them! i had to pay $90 of my own money to get this deal!!! amazing! WOW!!

so i am attempting to cancel this as i also found out that i am being charged not only the $4.95 but am to receive a bunch of magazines i do not want!! and they only tell u in the small print that u will be charged a whopping $39.99 per month to get them!!! that was NEVER mentioned at all - no additional charges or anything and nothing about any magazines!!!

their phone # is disconnected now ( convenient huh?) so i will try and cancel thru email and will call saveology tomorrow to see if they can help but they are representing themselves (magazine co) as saveology so i am not holding out any hope of getting my $4.95 back!! but i am now replacing my credit card so they cant try and take out $39.99 next month!!! this is a real hassle to say the least!!! 

i would appreciate any help you can give in regards to this and i am more than happy to talk to a lawyer or the state atty general if need be just to help others not get sucked into this. saveology has really ruined their good rep over this and i hope they get enough complaints about this that they will do something about it!!!

thanks and kindest regards!