Readers Digest Scam

Normally I don’t write non technical stuff in my blog, but becoming a victim of the scam by one of the reputable house hold magazine puts me in this position. I’m a great fan of Readers Digest, I love their magazine. But they killed everything and lost a fan by one simple scam. I’m taking my valuable time to write this post in the interest I can save few innocent people from unethical companies like this. It’s a real shame a company like Reader Digest using their customer base, with some psychological tricks to get money out of.

From my experience this is how the scam looks like:

You will receive series of letter from Readers Digest well drafted and look very personal with your name addressed (example picture attached) in various places and you’ll feel as if you are one of the few chosen candidates. The credibility of the magazine and the price money will be lucrative enough for you to take part. The bottom line of the process is to force to sell you something, that’s absolutely of no use or some dead stock they wanted to get rid off. The process won’t be a simple reply card, they will ask you to do some funny things like sticking a golden sticker from somewhere in the letter to the envelope, they will force you to complete the process ASAP by putting pressure on the reply date (normally 7 days). They will provide 2 different envelopes one with “Yes” and one with “NO”. If you don’t want to purchase anything, you need to post your reply in ‘No’ envelope. It’s basically the process to trap people somewhere down the line. They may be running this competition legally, but it’s all about psychological tricks to trap innocent customers. I’m fairly confident I haven’t sent a ‘Yes’ reply back (but it’s hard to prove), but received a book this morning with a bill attached asking to pay ?18.98 (image attached). I called the provided number and got the impression the person is well trained to handle it. The shocking thing for me, there is no option for you to return the book, the guy said “You need to pay for it, since it’s already been ordered, only thing they can do is stop any further letters and orders“. I’m not sure how it will work with customer statutory rights, but I don’t have time to raise a fight against them. So I paid the money and asked them to cancel everything including the subscription. Hope this will help one or two.