Also charitable orgs. will do the same thing - "renewal" notices for your yearly contribution. I kept getting these for YEARS after i had decided to stop contributing to this one org. Guess they thought they would sneak it by me by saying Renewal instead of saying please contribute again.

OMG!!!! This just happend to Us TOO!!! with Reminisce and Country Livivg!!!! Both my husb. and I do not sent off for mag with out checking w/ea other and certainly not to be billed later!!! so we both thought we better pay it because we felt like we were being deadbeats...He also put a note in there with the ck. that he thought this may have been an error.... I am really going to watch this... I have told him we will stop all our supscriptions till we see these come again and hold on to themmmm to try to trac this now.... thanks for the inf... what a scam!!!!! :hunf:

I have one magazine that I am dealing with that now. I returned the invoice marked CANCEL...there was no place to decline their offer. Then I canceled it online. And they are still sending me the magazine. I really hate their "automatic" renewals and I will stop ordering any magazines if this is what they are going to do. NOT the way to keep their customers.

I had a situation like yours and they actually reported "Failure to Pay" to the 3 credit companys

Many, many, many years ago I had this happen with a Children's Book Club. Could NOT get them to cancel and had to finally threaten them. Not good!

I've had the same problem with Taste of Living. I didn't get all of the magazines I ordered, but got lots of dunning letters to renew immediately, pay immediately, etc., etc. Do ALL magazines participate in these unreputable practices?

I have never gotten a notice like this but I have gotten Phone Calls asking me to resubscribe. The calls are from other magazines other than quilting magazines.

I previously subscribed to Quilters Newsletter for 12 years and decided not to renew last year. They kept sending repeated renewal requests ad nauseum, which I ignored. It should be obvious I am not interested if I do not respond. Right? Well, not to them, apparently. They they started sending renewal requests in envelopes marked "urgent" without a return address to trick me into opening their mail. Juvenile, irritating and unprofessional of them. They are off my list forever.

For every magazine subscription of any type, I always retain the renewal form and mark down the expiration date. So whenever I receive premature renewal pleas, I know whether it is time to respond or time to ignore.

I had the same experience with Country Gardens magazine

I received this kind of letter from Taste of Home. I had responded to their offer of a free issue but did not subscribe. I know that is what they hoped I would do, but I did not. I have done this before with other magazines and had no problem. This time they kept dunning me for payment for a subscription and finally threatened to turn me over to a collection agency. I let them know that I will NEVER subscribe to their magazine after that.

I had a similar thing happen to me with McCalls Quilting. They sent a "bill" in a yellow envelope with big black writing on the outside stating that my service was going to be cancelled if I didn't pay! Then inside it was just a solicition for me to renew. I was furious & wrote to them about it! Of course, I never heard back. Then last yr I received a cd from Fons & Porter that contained patterns of quilts that were on their show. The cd clearly stated that the 1st one was free and they hoped I would order more in the future. I received no less than 5 dun notices to pay for the free cd. Due to that I'm no longer going to subscribe to their magazine. Unfortunately I think the majority of these mags are now owned by the same publishing company & that is why the same scare tactics are being used. Also, I have never heard of any magazine that has automatic renewal system in place and I sure wouldn't do business w/one that does. The law clearly states that if you receive something in the mail that you did not order you also do not have to pay for it. The postal regulations considers this a free gift. I finally returned the "free" cd because I didn't even want it in my house. I still received 2 dun notices for payment after I did that.

Thank you for sharing your experience. I still have one subscribtion, McCall's Quilting. I will be on the look out. I am sorry you have to bother with this.

I had a situation like that you can email the better bus. bureau and they will take care of it.

Me too. I subscribed and paid to Better Homes and Gardens for 1 year. At the end of that year I kept getting monthly magazines and invoices - I didn't reorder and didn't send their invoices back - I didn't even call them. Took them 2 years to stop sending me their magazine. Just before Christmas I loaded up the 3 years of magazines and took them to our local animal shelter store. Someone will pay 25cents to read them.

I have had the same problem with Good Housekeeping and Guidepost.......and my dh with woodworking and they start about 5 months before subcription is to expire.......

Dish and Direct TV give you a bundle of movie channels for the first three months and if you do not call and cancel they start charging. The same is, you have not ask for them but there they are. They hope that you will forget.

That's one reason I don't subscribe to any magazines. Plus, most of them are just filled with ads. I'm not going to pay for ads. :)

The latest thing is the automatic renewal. I bought several children's magazines for our grade to use at school this year. I read each offer on the internet carefully to make sure that I wasn't agreeing to an automatic renewal when I used my credit card. (School reimbursed me). Only one, Sports Illustrated for Kids, had that clause so I ordered it throught the mail with a check. The others have been arriving for about a month now and I haven't seen a Sports Illustrated yet. I will be watching carefully when the year is up for all of these mags.
lots2do

Good grief!

When dementia caught up with my mother and I took over her finances, I discovered she had paid nearly $2,000 in one year caving in to these tactics and "renewing" magazine subscriptions. She didn't know why she kept getting all these magazines, but if a bill came in, she paid it. Took a long time to get them cancelled.

That's interesting to me. I've subscribed to many magazines over the years and none of them automatically renewed. I always had to send in a renewal form that they sent me (months in advance of the subscription expiring). Maybe this is a new practice? At any rate, I think their apology to you Eddie was a day late and a dollar short. I'm sorry you had to go through that but it sounds like it's resolved now, so that's good.

It isn't only quilting magazines that do this...I get the same kind of "renewal notices" on our National Geographic and Smithsonian magazines. I think when they send out a renewal notice they should have to clearly state the exact date the current subscription expires. I would welcome that, but these constant "reminders" when you know you have six months or a year or more on a subscription is unnacceptable.

Wow, here I am a newbie and I just learned why it is a waste of my money to subscribe to Quilt magazine. Thank you everyone.

Eddie,thank you for the post. I get a ton of quilting magazines and decided not to renew any of them since discovering this site. Can get all the latest from here with no hassle.

What has happened to me is that when I originally subscribed, I paid for a 2-year subscription. About 2 months later I had to be out of town with a dd who was ill. While I was gone I received a bill from the mag saying I owed for my "1-year subscription"...which my husband paid without checking to see if it had been paid....so, now I have paid for a 3 year subscription.

quote=Eddie]I subscribed to "Quilt" magazine back in January 2010 for one year, and decided to let the subscription lapse when it came up for renewal. They sent several reminders to renew, etc., all of which I ignored.

Today, I get this in the mail from them:

This makes my blood boil when I see companies use threats and intimidation like this, simply because someone choose not to renew their subscription. GRRRRRRR!!!![/quote]

Send them a nice note stating you are not going to renew. As far as you are concerned, this letter is fringing on harassment and to immediately take your name/address of their list!

Ditto. And the worst one used to stick the mailing label on the front of the mag. The label showed when your subscription was up. Then they started putting the mag in a bag with the label on that. Well, that bag goes into the trash, so when the notice comes you aren't sure anymore. I have never had a quilt or any other kind of magazine auto renew me. Which one was it? Duh! I just went back to page one and I thought you were saying a quote-unquote quilting magazine, not "Quilt" magazine. Blond, mother of 4, stressed out brain.

I had subscribed to an online version of a cooking magazine. I recently got an email from them that they were unable to renew my subscription because my credit card had expired. I had lost my credit card last year and had to get another one, which is why I had different expiration date. That's very upsetting, that they would just automatically renew a subscription without asking. I was unaware that they were doing this. We subscribe to Consumer Reports, and so far, they don't do this, thank goodness. If you fail to re-up, they just don't send them to you anymore.

Someone I know found her mom had a THIRTY year subscription a to a magazine. She was getting Alzheimers, and evidently renewed each time she got a notice---she threatened legal action, but got no refund till the lawyer wrote a letter.

Good for you! Until we all pay attention and keep speaking up, businesses will continue to use scare tactics.

In the distant past I went round and round with Reader's Digest because they didn't credit the check I had sent for a year's subscription and continually harrassed me for payment. I wrote, I wrote and sent them a copy of the cancelled check, I wrote and asked them to give the information to "someone who cared." I called. It took me almost a year to straighten it out and was such an exercise in futility. It was so long ago that the subscription amount was under $10 if I remember right.

Holy Cow. I thought that a magazine would just stop sending renewal notices if they didn't get any responses from several of their mailings to you. That sounded rude to the nth degree. What are you going to do?

Yes I have had this experience in the past, what I do with them no matter how many they send, is return them in their postage paid envelope with a black permanent marker written across the entire bill, CANCEL PLEASE! Worked for me. I no longer get any magazines. Why pay that price when what you are looking for is usually free on the net somewhere. Good luck.

As I stated before the creating of a magazine is done by a company which gives a contract to another one for distribution. If the distribution company hassles you., please write or e-mail to the Editor of the magazine, One letter may be put aside, if they receive ten or fifteen a day, they will take action. Another is to write to the Consumer"s magazine and ask them to inquire about that problem and write an article about it,

Good for you! I've had problems with Cook's Illustrated to the point where I wanted to go to Vermont and throttle the dude with the bow tie. They charge a fortune for the magazine and act like they are the absolute word in the world of cooking magazines. It is cooking, not brain surgery and then when I didn't respond to all the mail they called me.

I have subscribed to several magazines but none lately. When time to renew I recieved a 'complimentary' magazine, but just let it ride. I never was billed. I have heard other stories about DVD's and such. I just recieved 4 Disney DVD's I never ordered. If I did not order them they must be complimentary. I will call. But if they want themback they will pay the shipping. I am hearing alot about this kind of thing lately.
Diane/Wyoming

Between those and the ones that send you a "sample" copy that you didn't ask for, then you have to unsubscribe or they bill you. I just send the invoice back marked cancel. They cannot charge you for something you did not order. Makes me mad too

Quilting magazines are not the only ones who are sending threatening letters. Several of my subscriptions are doing the same. Also what I paid 19.99 last year for is offered for 8.00 this year.
Magazines are to full of advertisements. I am going to pass on them for awhile. :thumbdown: :evil:

I stopped subscribing because some magazines appeal to me one month and maybe not the next. I buy off the rack. If it 'speaks' to me I thumb through it and ask myself again if I really want it. Sometimes I can't afford it. If I come back and still want it and have the money, yeah, I might buy it. The really telling question: 'Would I rather have the money to make quilts?' If the answer is yes - I don't buy.
Diane/Wyoming