The Scam:
Unknown to me, my 19 year old was scammed by National Readers Service (address Pittsburgh, PA) in June 2009. She was offered a free "diamond watch" and subsequently bought a pre-paid, essentially cover price, 5 magazine/ 5 year subscription for $68.28 per month for 19 months to be withdrawn automatically from her bank account through her check card number.
She also agreed to preview two other offers, United Benefit Advantage and ID Sentinel Alert programs (address Naperville, IL), and was offered a $100 gas card. This ended up being a registration card from International Rebates, LLC (address Tallevast, FL) through United Benefits Services (address Virginia Beach VA) for $10 per month mail-in gas rebate program.
When she tried to cancel the magazine subscription, National Readers Service refused to honor an understood 7-day cancellation period. She was offered a “settlement” of 30% of the total $1229 remaining on the account to cancel or a reduced payment plan of $39.93 for 31 months as her only options. She took the reduced payment plan.
When the member packets for the 2 worthless preview offers arrived, she realized there was a one-time, non-refundable $19.99 charge for the United Benefit Advantage program plus $19.99 per month charge for each with a 30 day cancellation period. She called, and they both agreed to cancel by phone with no difficulty.Whether or not those agreements are honored, we will see over time.
The "award/ confirmation form" with $5.95 S&H charge for the "diamond watch" was not mailed in. We have no intention of registering for the gas rebates, but if “not registering” isn’t enough of a message we could end up having to deal with them too I suppose.
Specific details of the magazine subscription solicitation process and "insider" scripts can be found here. Contact information for National Readers Service- Pittsburgh ( as well as other National Readers Service BBB listings) and the above affiliated offers can be found here.
Post links with my entire NRS experience are here.
Thanks for visiting the NRS scam blog. Hope something here is helpful.
Good luck to all of us!! D/
About me & theNRSscam blog
- D/
- I'm no one special, my kid is just one of "the scammed", and I'm keeping the promise I made to National Readers Service. By the way, while I can attest to the truth of my own personal experience with National Readers Service as presented here, I cannot make the same guarantee for the other complaints and comments posted here or linked on this site. Also the suggestions offered here worked for me, the opinions I post are my own, but neither constitute legal advice. You'd have to consult a lawyer for that, of course. I hope you find something helpful here if you need it.