Shady telemarketers

Never do business with a company called Publishers Service International (PSI). Don't bother trying to Google the name, according to Google they don't exist. They "signed" me up for magazine subscriptions when I specifically asked about the ability to review it and cancel if I didn't like what I saw, they said I could, then later hid the but in the conversation. I could cancel, "but" owed 'em six hundred and some odd dollars. Umm... right.

That part came as news to me some two weeks later after checking over the list of magazines they had to subscribe to I realized there was absolutely nothing I wanted, much less six different subscriptions. When I told them there was no way I was going to pay $600 having not received anything from them, the guy on the other end nicely enough said he would try to work something out and call me back. About 4 hours later, he did call, and said he'd work out a special deal for me since I hadn't received anything, I would only have to pay $75. So in four hours it gets cut by more than 1/6th? Again... right.

Now the story gets interesting, I just received a call (Unknown caller, obviously), it's a collection agency in Florida saying that he's just "received an account from a company called PSI, does that ring a bell?" I answered him say yes, that I cancelled the service, and had already taken care of it with them so there was no need for him to waste his time. He went straight on to defensive mode and started in on the "Yes, sure... it is cancelled. I show it cancelled as of July 6th." When I tried to interject that it was cancelled earlier in either late April or early May by phone, he got even more hostile. The end of the conversation went something like "Look... it is cancelled and I'm just calling to let you know you're going to be getting a letter. <click>"

The moral of this story. Your response to every advance from a telemarketer should be "I can save us a lot of time, I don't handle business over the phone."