The Living Scriptures Inc. Locks you in with free gifts and don't honor refunds Ripoff Ogden Utah
I was approached in the South Towne Mall by a sales representative that offered my wife and me a free DVD if we listened to his Easter sales shpeal. We did so and thought we might be able to afford a contract over the next three years. The sales rep was very convincing, if not slightly pushy with us and I am ashamed to say that I caved and committed. Fortunately our sales rep explained the cancellation process to us if we needed to use it.
The brake down of the scam is that the company offers a myriad of 'free' merchandise if you sign up for their program. Free isn't really free since they charge you $30 for each of the 30 minute cartoons (some of which have misinterpretations of the religious stories that they presume to represent).
The rip off came when my wife and I decided to cancel. We had bought one DVD as an initial payment to the living scriptures plan. It didn't take long to discover that our budget was not going to allow for this purchase and we decided to cancel our service before it was too late (we had some friends who now have horrible credit no thanks to this company). We sent in the paperwork for cancellation within the time alloted and received a letter within two days stating that the cancellation would be honored if we returned the free merchandise. Since we hadn't received any free merchandise to this point, we felt pretty good about it. The following day we received a package in the mail of our promised free merchandise. Apparently it had been sent the day of cancellation. We sent the package back and called the company. They said that we would also be able to received the original purchase price of the first DVD bought from the rep if we were to also send it in. We paid $4.50 to ship it back with shipping confirmation and still have not seen the original $35 spent promised us by the company, nor any correspondence stating processing of the received package.
Brett
Salt Lake City, Utah
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Joe
Ogden,Utah,
U.S.A.
cancellations, product value, refunds
#2UPDATE Employee
Fri, August 01, 2008
In this complaint the customer ackowledged that a contract was entered into agreeing to purchase merchandise over a period of three years. An acknowledgement was also made that the sales representative disclosed and explained the cancellation period. It is clear that the customer did not take advantage of the cancellation period allowing him to nulify the contract.
Living Scriptuires offers bonus product as a "value-incentive" which is allocated in direct correllation to the amount of product a customer orders.
The DVD's are designed to educate and teach children gospel stories and scripture passages. They were specifically produced to run thirty minutes to hold a child's attention for that time period.
The DVD's are are "specialty" products which are sold in the Christian market and thus Living Scriptures does not enjoy the expanded secular market as other DVD production companies.
The scripture references and stories are researched to insure accuracy in the doctrine being taught, however there is some creative licence taken by the producers to make the stories entertaining.
All cancellation requests are honored if received in a timely manner. The timeliness is important because after the cancellation period has expired Living Scriptures is obligated to pay fees to salesmen, investors, and producers.
A refund will absolutly be honored within one to two weeks depending on the date the request was received at Living Scripture offices and the date of the next regularly scheduled check run.
This customer did not indicate if a refund was ultimately received, however if a call is made to our office we will look into the matter and issue a refund as necessary.