Children's Book of the Month Club and Literary Guild. These are two book clubs that I've been an un-proud member of for 6-8 years, before I was an active eBay and amazon-ite. I got in with the "Get 8 Free Books" deal where after receiving those free books you're obligated to buy 3 books over a year's time and pay hideous amounts of shipping...you know the spiel. (Who hasn't been a member of BMG or Columbia House in their younger days?) I'm pretty good at not buying more than those requisite books, but of course the "gotcha" is when you occasionally forget to return your featured selection with the "no" checked in the box. Thus the book comes in the mail and you either have to annoy your mail carrier and try to convince them to return to sender, or you're stuck with a big bill and most likely a book you would not want to own (the ones you wouldn't mind accidentally receiving are always on the months you remember to check no!).
With the convenience of online web sites to decline the featured selections instead of using a stamp, after receiving the monthly catalog, I just head straight over to the computer and log on, taking care of business quickly as to avoid a package in the mail. How many years I have been doing this?? Has it really been over 6 years?! Yes. My obligations to the clubs are long gone. Why don't I just quit? A couple reasons:
1) They keep telling me that they are going to kick me out of the clubs if I don't buy something, and I don't! But they haven't kicked me out! Liars.
2) The cancellation process takes too much of my precious time. I spent a good amount of time a few years ago trying to quit. I thought I could just quit online. But those stinkers make you mail in a form requesting cancellation. That's a pain, but I can do that. However, then they make you include your account number, which is only located on those monthly mailers, which I toss as soon as I receive. So embarassingly, somehow I have not been able to remember to keep the mailers at the same time I remember I really want to carry through on this quitting thing.
But after writing this, I am vowing to quit this insanity. That is, if the address they have listed is actually valid!
What do you do automatically that is just unnecessary?
Sunday, November 30, 2008
Quitting
Posted by cold cocoa at 9:17 PM
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7 comments:
your little photo looks so inviting that I now want to JOIN a book club... almost... I did get suckered in once... and then got out with a phone call... oops, make that twice... books both times though, never BMG or Columbia House here :)
What, no more surprise packages met with Cocoa's angry (and now 6 years empty) threats?
been there. but I'm glad to say I've been a successful quitter a few times: BMG, mag subscripts,even a spanish book club, aargh--they make it so difficult.
We keep paying for netflix even though we don't take maximum advantage of it, same with the daily paper. But I'm not ready to give up either of those yet. How about that Costco membership fee that keeps getting deducted automatically from the credit card every Jan....?
I'm not ready to part with that either....
I'm trying hard to relate but you know me....why sign up for anything when you have a library, mom and sister who live close by and like to share their goods? So in pure self-interest mode, are you sure you want to cancel anything? You love to get things in the mail so why ruin that excitement??
You can do it! I know you can. Just make sure you join the BCA (Book Clubs Anonymous) group and get all the help you need to get through the cancellation process. I am here to support you! You will be so proud of yourself when you are "book free"!
anika
This really has nothing to do with your post - but somehow I found your blog. We went to school together - a LONG time ago. Not sure if you even remember me. If so, email me - I'd love to catch up!
-Tami (Memmott) Snyder
dtsnyder@juno.com
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