Area Circulation, Inc.
reviews and complaints

About 1 year ago I ordered two trial offers of skin lotion. In the online questionnaire, cleverly tucked into the payment authorization for the shipping and handling costs for the skin care products, was a question, multiple choice. It asked, if you were to read a magazine, which one would you read? Nothing in that question suggested a magazine subscription or that a different company would pirate my payment information and begin an unauthorized magazine subscription. The magazines kept coming, with no information as to who was sending them. I tried returning to sender only to get the magazine back Everytime. So then I started calling every company I had ordered Christmas gifts from and the subscription department of the magazine. Suddenly in November, 2 more magazines arrived. From 2 different publishers. So now I'm receiving Self, ESPN and teen Vogue magazine. After contacting teen Vogue and ESPN to no avail, I remembered the skin care products and took a chance. They are the ones who finally gave me the name and number for Area Magazine. I googled that company and it was a veritable Pandoras box of complaints about said company. I tried to email the company to give them my cancellation in writing. The website shuts me down, I called the company and explained the problem and tell her to cancel my subscription. She refused. She told me that I cannot cancel my subscription, I don't have the authority to cancel my subscription. I told her to cancel it, absolutely. I told her she did not have the authorization to bill me. I never gave her company the authorization nor did I give her company any of my info that she had stoleny info fraudulently. Guess what? I got another self magazine yesterday. Who has the authority to cancel this fraudulent subscription as well as stop this company from taking money out of my account? If not me, then who? God?

About 4 days ago i got a call asking if i wanted to recieve a diamond watch as a gift for applying to recieve a few magazines. With Christmas around the corner I agreed. After listening to there speach about how great an offer it sounded, and it did seem like a good offer at the time. I only had to pay $3.84 per week for one magazine and i got a few other magazines of my choosing free.

After being transfered to 3 different people they finalized my order and explained to them that all i would have to pay was $74 a month for 12 months and then i would never have to worry about another payment for the rest of the 60 months i was to receive the magazines. The only thing they 'asked' was that I keep my substriction till the end of the payments. Not that i had to and that there was a cancellation fee or anything of the sort.

So when the guy is asking for my account number to verify where to amke payments to, I told him that I couldn't make the payment until the 3rd of October. He said that was no problem, that he would just run a pre authrization to see how much money was in the account. Well he went ahead and charged the account anyway. Causing me to have a negative balance in my account.

So I called up wanting to cancel my account before they sent me anything that i would have to send back, and they appologized for the mishap and offered to reduce my payments to $44 dollars a month for 20 months instead. After getting off the phone and trying to figure out what to do, i did some reseach and found other customers that had had also been ripped off. So hear i am writing this lengthly report hopeing others won't fall victim of Area Circulation Inc.

I was called by Area Circulation offered a few magazines for a jeep price. Then they called at a later date called again to get more magazines. I paid every bill over the 24 months and never received half of the magazines. Finally the last payment that was set up with them for auto pay didn't go through.

Instead of be a responsible company and contacting about the last payment, they sent it to a collection agency. The collection agency contacts me to pay the bill. I find out there is a fee added to the last payment for it going to collections.

I am a semi-responsible person with a good credit rating. I am not wealthy with loads of money. What I am is angry that a company does not keep their promises, and then tries to attack my credit rating without even a contact call. Except the call I got a few months ago to by more magazines.

This company makes the first account of magazines very interesting, and they claim it'll help better your credit report and score. My credit report hasn't been effected at all by this company. The accounts they persuade you to set up are great, and the account is only half way paid off before they persuade you into another one. The only thing they say they can do when you complain that you need to cancel is that they can only defer the payments. I've never heard of a magazine plan for 5 years.

Being in the military makes it hard to even cancel within the 3 days they give you because you could easily be training or just called out to do something that keeps you from receiving mail. This offer was good for awhile, but now I want out and I can't get out. HELP!