call the postmaster?

Imagine a conveyor belt a 100 miles long. You pay for the potatoes at the far end of the belt and they come sliding along to you and eventually they arrive on your end of the conveyor. Now suppose the factory that sold you those potatoes decides it's too expensive to pay the conveyor belt company to use the conveyor system, so the potato company tells you if you want the rest of the potatoes you paid for, you'll have to pick them up yourself, they won't be coming on the conveyor anymore. Whose at fault? The potato company or the conveyor company?

The post office is just a great big conveyor belt. It's not their fault the magazine co. doesn't want to pay postage to mail the mags to people like your mom.

Calling the mag and requesting a pro-rated refund is your best bet.

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~Carla~

the potato company is using the conveyor company to perpetrate a fraud and the conveyor company has policies in place to discourage that. no one is holding the conveyor company at fault, but using their in-house resources to prevent thousands of people from falling victim to fraud. if the potato company didn't have a conveyor company to use, there would be no possible way to defraud thousands of people by violating the policy of the conveyor company. that is why the conveyor company has policies in place to discourage potato companies from engaging in practices that use the conveyor company's resources to defraud thousands of people that the potato company could not normally defraud.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

I believe that if you look in the front of one of your old magazines, it may have the "fine print" of the subscription. The company may be getting in bad financial shape, and be using this as an alternative to keep from going bankrupt. That does not mean that they have not breached a contract. Some of the US postal regulations are pretty strict. It would be worth checking with your postmaster to see if any of them apply in this case. If there is nothing in the fine print of the contract, the publishing company may be making a bet that no one would sue them for such a small amount.

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Moving to that big black hole in the night satellite photo. (also the hole in cell phone coverage )

It's law 101.

The whole fraud/bait and switch idea is missing the main element... intent.

Making a business decision to reduce cost is not the same as intentionally having someone pay for something without the intent to deliver it.

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

"Intent" is a legal term... Unless someone would seriously decide to sue for $20... It has no practical bearing. If we are speaking of reasonably rational responses, the party has two choices: Check with the postmaster to see if the publisher is in violation of some postal code, and/or, write the company and ask for a refund or some other form of settlement.

There are things that are not fair... we better all get used to it...it will get a lot worse in the next few years.

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Moving to that big black hole in the night satellite photo. (also the hole in cell phone coverage )

Yes it is... so is fraud/mail fraud

True, but you don't sue for fraud... it's a criminal charge. The OP said "this is mail fraud" and several others jumped on the band wagon. I was merely pointing out that it does not come anywhere close to the legal definition of fraud, so pursuing that course of action would be a waste of time.

That's what I suggested in an earlier post.

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

there certainly could be intent. perhaps the company intended to make this change months ago and deceived it's customers to ensure revenue. also, the magazine subscription is offered at a fraction of the newsstand price, and this could be a way to increase the price of several magazines without the customer having the choice to decline. i suspect that the national enquirer is normally cheaper than country weekly, so in that case, the company is offering a cheaper substitution while it increases the cost of country weekly by making it available only at the newsstand...for full price. no remedies were offered beyond a limited choice of substitutions. this is indeed a bait and switch, but the remedy to this will be dependent on the agreement...the subscription application/order form.

i would feel better about this if the entire company went bankrupt. i would understand and accept that they got in over their head due to the bad economy and i would be willing to accept the loss. this is totally different. i feel the company should have openly offered a refund or coupons for use at the newsstand. i feel no obligation to help any company overcome their economic woes as none have stepped up to remedy mine.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

Not impossible but I doubt it. American Media Inc. is a big publishing company. I'm sure most of their other magazines bring in far more than a country music rag. It don't think they would risk losing other more valuable assets just to bilk a few country music fans out of a couple of bucks. It's much more likely that Country Weekly is losing money and they're trying to figure a way to hold onto it until the economy gets better.

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

your calling CW a rag. perhaps, but have you ever read the national enquirer? lol

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

I meant the term in the kindest sense of the word (weren't all magazines/papers called rags at one time?).

I wouldn't even use Natioanl Enquirer for TP, but somebody must like it given it's sales figures... but then again, a lot of people like to watch Jerry Springer too

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

I dont think hes talking of going AFTER the post office, but using the post office to help go after THEM?

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Recognize the beauty in things, in creation, even when thats difficult to do.
Be loving, show compassion. Create while we're here.
Enjoy this life, be in this life but not be of it.

http://www.countryweekly.com/contact/

Here's the link to Country Weekly- there's a section for Subscriptions.

subscribers' service number is 1-877-566-5832. Supposedly, if you call, they will issue a refund.

How can a magazine possibly be saving money by not mailing the issues out, if they are going to send out a different magazine for the same number of issues? Something is really odd here.

Printing fewer issues saves money. Also, perhaps their advertising for that magazine dried up, and there are reduced funds to print it.

The point is....

1. Not mail fraud.
2. Call the publisher and get real info instead of frothing about it. :baby04:

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Alice
* * *
"No great thing is created suddenly." ~Epictitus

How much is the magazine subscription? How much is your time worth? What is the cost of the "principle of the thing".

When I have oodles of time, I'll stand in line at a customer service counter to get my .25 cents back, on an overcharge. When I'm working, and time is too tight, I'm not going to spend 20 minutes (15$ of my time) waiting to get a quarter back.

It's a rotten deal, the magazine situation... usually when that happened to me, the mag simply went out of business and I could choose another mag or not.

Have an extra computer? Show your mom how to access online articles, and she'll never open another magazine or buy another paper.

Good luck!

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Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity. Seneca
Learning is not compulsory... neither is survival. W. Edwards Deming

Magazine companies lose money by mailing out magazines. Subscriptions cost much less than single copy, and on top of that you have postage costs for mailing.

Did anyone who disputes mail fraud even read the link I posted??? Anything ordered through the mail and not received by the customer does constitute mail fraud. And since the subscriber paid for one magazine but the subscription is being switched to another that does fulfil the legal description of bait and switch.

If it were me I would contact the company and demand the return of money paid for the balance of the subscription. Of course the magazine company knows you won't file in small claims for $20 worth of a magazine so they believe they can get away with this. But compound it by hundreds of subscriptions and you are suddenly talking in terms of thousands of dollars, which will be investigated by the post office. After all, mail fraud is a federal offense. Even if the postmaster doesn't do anything it is still worth reporting.

BTW, I have filed complaints against magazine companies. If the USPS is involved at all, the USPS will investigate for suspected mail fraud. The one publisher I dealt with was charged with fraud.

I have read it many times and have worked with postal inspectors to charge people with it.

TITLE 18 > PART I > CHAPTER 63 > § 1341Prev | Next § 1341. Frauds and swindles

"Whoever, having devised or intending to devise any scheme or artifice to defraud, or for obtaining money or property by means of false or fraudulent pretenses..."

The parts of your argument that are missing are intent, scheme or artifice, and false or fraudulent pretenses... which is pretty much the whole thing.

Bait and switch is an legally ambiguos term commonly used to describe a type of fraud scheme... it is not a seperate legal definition.

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

first of all, i fight for the principle of the thing. secondly, $10-$20 is $10-$20 and i have the time.

as to intent, i gather their intent is to increase their profits by substituting a cheaper magazine and forcing fans of CW to purchase the magazine at a newstand. they increase their sales that way. they are taking mom's money and denying her the property she purchased...intentionally. it is not like they quit publishing the magazine entirely and it is not like the magazine was mailed and lost in the process. this company intentionally made a decision to refuse delivery of a product that was paid for in advance. revisit "scheme" and "artifice" and see if it applies here. i think the company intentionally engaged in a scheme to defraud subscribers to increase their profits.

as i said before, if there are 100,000 subscribers and those 100,000 get stiffed for $10 each, that amounts to $1,000,000 worth of fraud. perhaps 1 person would never file a lawsuit for $10-$20, but 100,000 people could file a class action lawsuit.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."

They'll say (and it's likely true) that it was purely a business decision based on profit and loss... that to keep offering the magazine at all they had to cut mail deliveries. Not to mention that nagging subscription agrrement hanging over everyhting. 10 to 1 it's in the fine print that under certain conditions, substitutions may be offered.

An intentional business decision is not the same as the intent to defraud.

It still doesn't apply. American Media, Inc. publishes some of the biggest health and fitness magazines and has a huge subscriber base... do you really think they would commit fraud to earn a few bucks on their lowest sales magazine?

Besides the nagging subsription agreement they offered a remedy... it may not be one you like but remedy offers are often less than the original agreement.

I know it stinks and I would be PO'd too... but PO'd does not equal a legal cause of action. Truthfully, it sounds like "you're on a mission" so any further response on my part is probably pointless.

I'm not intentionally taking their side... just offering an objective opinion. Take it for what it's worth because you know what they say about opinions

Let us know how it goes.

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"We are all born ignorant, but one must work hard to remain stupid".

i am on a mission, but that doesn't mean i don't welcome your opinion. i respect your opinion. you obviously have experience, but nothing legal is ever cut and dry. the end result is always the sum of interpretation and precident. as new situations arise, how the law applies may differ.

without knowing for sure, i suspect the NE is cheaper than CW. i am not sure about star or shape. in the case of NE, mom would not be getting her money's worth even if she accepted the deal. without declaring bankruptcy, i don't see how a company can write down debt. they can't just say "yeah, we owe you $15 dollars worth of product, but we only feel like giving you $10 worth of product". more than that, it is not product that mom can use. that would be like a man with no feet ordering leg warmers and getting a pair of slippers.

i think there is lots of room to interpret this action as mail fraud, especially when you consider the numbers of people who could be affected. equal to that is the actual contract. i still have no info on the agreement, so i can't say where we stand as far as that goes. was substitution mentioned or not...i don't know. if there was no mention of substitution, i strongly feel the company owe's mom a refund.

i have e-mailed the company and have been waiting for a response for more than a day now.

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this message has probably been edited to correct typos, spelling errors and to improve grammar...

"All that is gold does not glitter..."