General Cycling Discussion - Bicycling magazine ripoff tactic

Boy Oh Boy am I steamed. Guess I am just having a bad day anyway but when I opened my mail today
I found a letter from a collection agency, North Shore Agency inc. They where trying to collect for a subscription for bicycling magazine in the amount of 19.98.

I have never subscribed to this magazine. I did receive one issue in the mail maybe four months back and then received 2 bills for subscriptions. I never signed up for anything from them and have no idea how they got my name or address.

I logged on the the net found a contact and called bicycling magazine subscription department. Waited 10 minutes on hold to speak to a live person. I was told that North shore was a non reporting collection agency and that BM would contact them and cancel the subscription.

I believe this is some lame subscription tactic that they are using after collecting marketing information from unsuspecting consumers. I really wish I could find out how they got my name and address as I am generally pretty careful.


Anyway feel a little better now. I hope no one else falls for this little trick.

.....exactly.....why would a legit collection agency waste time and energy on $20, even if they had a thousand similar accounts to collect?...except for the price of postage...:)

I really doubt that Bicycling Magazine is reporting people to a collection bureau in order to get more subscriptions. If you really think that, you're an absolute loon. I mean, Bicycling Magazine sucks and all, but they don't suck that much.

Your name probably ended up on the wrong list by mistake. Happens all the time.

no way! that just happened to a guy at work. Same magazine, a collection agency involved and everything. He just wrote the agency a letter and explained the situation

If you think a scam is at work, you might report it to the Attorney General in your state and the state where the agency is.

It's not a real collection agency folks.

It's not a real collection agency folks.

Seems like one...Their Site (http://www.northshoreagency.com/directory.htm)

Long ago in the folly of my youth I worked for a man who did a lot of bulk mail advertising. He bought lists of names at $0.05 apiece and spent ~$0.35 on the advertising. If he got one answer out of 100 he came out ahead. Maybe BICYCLING sold a listing of their entire database and a listing of paid subscribers. This "Collection Agrency" may have done a merge-sort and sent letters to all of the non-subscribers. That would be an actionable scam. Or a clerk goofed in their mailing department. No telling how many people sent in the $$$ when they got an invalid bill. And it would take winning an expensive lawsuit to get the embarrrassing details out of BICYCLING. I just read it for free at the library.

Oh, and their website is too much trouble to deal with.

Isn't or wasn't there recent legislation in many places regarding subscription services and such? I heard something about laws cracking down on the ability of magazines/such to subscribe an individual by sending a free copy to them via a legitimate list (someone you bought something cycling from sold your info) with a subscription card that specifically states the need to send the card in with whatever "No, I don't want this" box checked to avoid subscribing. Lots of mags did it, lame tactic

Seems like one...Their Site (http://www.northshoreagency.com/directory.htm)

Of course it does. That's the whole point of their being. See any license numbers on the site? No way in hell a magazine invoice is going to 'real' collection.

I don't get it, it is a real 3rd party collection agency. Which are realer?

Its the NSA...

Same thing happened here. That lame rag's 99% ad space, you'd think they could give it away for free.

They did the same to me. I sent the issue back to Rodale with a letter stating NEVER to sned me ANYTHING ever again. Gathering from experences of other riders in my area, Performance Bike/Nashbar sold all of thier customer information to Rodale a few years back. We all started getting unordered subscribtions after we ordered something from Performance Bike, Nashbar, or Supergo.

Don't feel bad. Starband has been sending me bills every month since they went out of business and ceased service last Fall. There isn't even anybody to call or write to about it. They just go in the trash.

The same thing happened to me with Bicycling about 10 years ago. I called the subscription phone # and read the woman the riot act. (I had worked all night and was tired and cranky.) The whole thing went away. But I haven't subscribed to anything put out by Rodale Press since.