Complaint Review: Institute Of Business Publications IOBP - Exton Pennsylvania

Wow, what can I say? The President of such an esteemed business publication taking time out of his busy day to respond to my complaint. The dates and facts he presents seem so conclusive of my ignorance and shady character.

The truth of the matter is that I did at some point agree to receive their newsletter. I don't remember where or when. It was probably in the course of signing up voluntarily for something legitimate where I missed a checkbox or failed to read the fine print.

And yes I ignored your invoice and publications... you can have them back unopened. I'll even pay to ship them back.

I save every email and the only one from your esteemed publication is below.

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Dear Sales Professional:

Thank you for agreeing to try our publication Sales Insider. You will receive your first issue shortly. We hope and trust that you will find the publication useful. Thanks again for giving us a try.

Sincerely, Quiana Daubert Customer Service Manager

(Note: This e-mail is being sent from a third-party Webmaster. Please do not reply to this e-mail.)

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Notice the lack of contact information and any mention of how to cancel the "subscription"

I could dispute the President's claims all day long but as they say when you wrestle with pigs you only get dirty and the pig actually enjoys the fight.

Check the Better Business Bureau Rating for Institute of Business Publications and the facts will speak for themeselves.

Good day! 

Your company's "F" rating with the BBB speaks for itself.

Dear Mr. Sansbury:

Please be advised that your slanderous and false accusations against the Institute of Business Publications are not appreciated by the hard-working men and women of our organization.

Our records indicate that while you were on the Internet subscribing to a trade publication, you were also offered a subscription to our newsletter Sales Insider. You accepted the offer at 8:15 a.m. Central Time on Tuesday, March 10, 2009. At the time of your acceptance, you were told that you would receive a continuation notice and that you needed to cancel the account within 60 days of receiving that notice.

That same day, we sent you an e-mail confirming your agreement to receive our
publication. The e-mail told you the price of our product and reminded you that you had to cancel the subscription within 60 days of receiving the continuation notice. You did not respond to our e-mail.  

About two weeks later, on March 23, 2009, we mailed the publication to you to the address you provided. Subsequent issues were sent on the following dates:
April 6, 2009
April 20, 2009
May 4, 2009

On April 15, 2009, we sent a continuation notice to you. Since you didnt respond to that notice, we sent additional notices on:
April 29, 2009
May 6, 2009
May 13, 2009
May 20, 2009
May 27, 2009 (a letter and a fifth copy of the publication)

Even though our toll-free 800 number is prominently displayed on all of our notices and in our publication, neither you nor anyone else in your organization took one minute or less to make a phone call (at our expense) to either pay for or cancel the product. In
addition, you ignored the written statement on your continuation notice of the need to cancel the account within 60 days. Despite our verbal and written notifications, you did not cancel, as you agreed to do.

Therefore, we turned the account over to United Credit & Collections on June 30, 2009. Its in response to the efforts of the collectors that you have filed your complaint with RipOff Report.

In your complaint, you state that you must have unknowingly signed up for a free Sales Insider newsletter. We find this to be a curious statement on two counts. First, Mr. Sansbury, are you in the habit of unknowingly doing things? Perhaps youre a classic case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing, or in this situation, its probably more like the brain doesnt know what the right and left hands are doing. How, exactly, does someone unknowingly do something? Please elaborate, if for no other reason than to satisfy our curiosity. We wonder if your prospects and customers are aware of your unfortunate habit of unknowingly doing things. Perhaps someday youll unknowingly give away a customers proprietary information to one of its competitors.

Second, at no point in this process was the word free presented to you. Our marketing materials clearly and conspicuously tell potential customers that they must cancel. We challenge you to provide one shred of evidence that the word free was ever presented to you at any point in your dealings with our company.

Beyond that, you state that you found our product to be terrible and completely useless to me. Of course everyone is entitled to their opinion. However, we doubt that the thousands of companies that find Sales Insider to be an indispensible tool in their efforts to close sales and retain customers would agree with your assessment of our product. However, it's sounds like you already know everything there is to know about sales, so you surely have no need for new ideas to help your sales efforts. In fact, youve probably never lost a sale in your life. The rest of us can only marvel at a person who wouldn't benefit from additional insights into the selling process.

Your complaint makes it obvious that youre the kind of person who thinks everything should be free. Its our opinion that its very difficult for a company to make money by providing its products for free. Perhaps, though, were wrong. Perhaps the services
provided by IC Group should be free too. No doubt many of your paying customers would think thats a great idea. Why dont you take it up with IC Group management? Were sure theyd think its a great idea to unknowingly give away your products to anyone who wants them. Good luck!

As a person who knows everything to know about sales, though, were a bit surprised that you were unwilling to spend $177 on a sales tool. One would think that such a sum would be nothing more than a cheap bottle of wine at a dinner meeting for a sales guru like yourself.

You should be aware that we intend to do everything within our power to collect the funds that are due to us from IC Group. We are not in the business of giving away our valuable intellectual property, which has taken us years and countless dollars to develop. And we are certainly not in the business of allowing unscrupulous individuals such as you to steal our product.

We have turned this matter over to our legal department to determine what, if any, action is warranted against you and your employer for your slanderous and false accusations, as well as your attempt to steal our product.

One final note: At the conclusion of your complaint, you suggest that others stay away from our company. Wed like to point out that we didnt contact you, you contacted us when you signed up for our product. If we had our druthers, wed prefer to stay away from individuals such as you who think its OK to try to steal our product and then complain to everyone and anyone when we attempt to collect the funds that are owed to us. Please stay away from us and do not sign up for any other products offered by our company.

Sincerely,

Jim McCanney
President

I have filed formal complaints with the Better Business Bureau of Eastern Pennsylvania and with the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office.

My complete contact information is available within the complaints.