Net magazines customer service couldn't get any worst.

Back in the month of April - 2006, I came across fatwallet's hot deal forum about Kiplinger's personal finance magazine - 3 year subscription deal. Even dude's like me who had no clue what that magazine is about ordered it as 3 year subscription is only $5 after coupon, it's a steal and one cannot expect any better.

I was bit cautious with the credit card payments (by using shop safe account) as I never heard of Netmagazines before. Netmagazines accepted my order and confirmed that i shall receive the magzines within 6-12 weeks time span. Being patient along with the other fatwallet buyers, I waited for the order to come in Mid June.

After the 12 weeks span time I contacted customer service and I got a quick response after 3 business days. Wow! Netmagazine's customer service representative, Shelly S., said that my order got misplaced and got to wait for another 4-5 weeks. I heard the same story with other fatwallet users who placed the other. In mid july, after contacting them again I got stupid explanation - their computer never registered the order. I wonder how that slut charged me without any errors or delay.

I contacted my credit card company, Wachovia, to file fraud charge against the netmagazines. Wachovia customer representative confirmed that they can do nothing about the complaint as they accept the complaints for transaction within 60 days only. Looks like netmagazine got nice way of getting around the time limitation for reporting fraud complaints. So, I thought of being more patient and working with their management in a professional way.

I discussed with their customer representatives for next couple of weeks and finally lodged a complaint against them in Best Business Bureau. After 3 weeks of time Netmagazine comes to me with a resolution of sending the subscription afresh (while supplies last) and need to wait for another 6-12 weeks. I am not an asshole to accept such stupid resolutions; morons. The discussions went on for next couple of weeks and BBB closed the case as Supplier didn't get back to us within given span of time.

So, even BBB couldn't help us out. Finally, I approached Attorney General of Washington Consumer Protection Division. Though this is best approach to complaint, it might have relatively less impact as my purchase order if just $5 and Attorney at general deals the cases in the order importance.

For all the customers who are having / had trouble with Netmagazine, I strongly recommend to file a complaint in the above Gov. link rather than dealing with the customer service or BBB online. Doing so may help increase the importance to fradulent charges by similar companies.

Hoping to see things go smooth. Feel free to post your experiences here.

Shyam K. Arjarapu