Legal Question in Consumer Law in Texas

Dear LawGuru Team,

I would really appreciate it if you could give me advice on the following problem. About 3 months ago I bought a magazine subscription (via telephone) that was supposed to be payed in 20 installments of 49,90$. About two weeks ago a representative of that company suggested to me to pay the rest in one installment because it would save me some money. So I did. Meanwhile the magazines started to arrive, including quite a bunch that I actually did not order.

Now today another representative called me asking me which of the ones that I had gotten so far I actually liked so that he could limit my order to only the 5 I liked most ("to save trees" as he put it).

The original contract is indeed for 5 magazines of my choosing (from a list they sent me). As he put it, they would cancel all those that I didn't like "so that I could get my favourites longer". Strangely, then he transferred me to another lady which told me that this would now make 24 installments of 63,50$. That sounded strange since I had already paid the whole subscription so I called the guy again. He got a little angry, told me that these are two different things and that I was "tying up two shoelaces". I still did not understand what he was talking about so I called the customer service to talk to somebody that would make more sense. It turned out that he had actually sold me an extension of my contract for 5 MORE years. Which is definitely not what he told me.

So I asked that this be cancelled and the customer service representative agreed to that.

A few minutes later though, this same man that had sold me that extension called again, started to get rather impolite and told me there was nothing to be done, my agreement being already in the system. I told him that this was not what I wanted and that I had not understood what he was actually trying to sell me. He didn't want to talk about it anymore, told me I couldn't keep calling him (I actually hadn't called him) and hung up.

My question: in case that this company insists that I have agreed to this extension of my contract, do I have a right to cancel this? As far as I understand, the cooling off rule does not apply to business done entirely on the phone. But I was tricked into this because that salesman did at no point explicitly state what he was actually trying to make me agree to. It took me three phone calls to find that out. On the other hand, when I found out I tried to correct this immediately with the company.

Any help is appreciated!

Regards,

Christoph Sachse


Asked on 7/13/10, 4:34 pm

1 Answer from Attorneys
TC Langford Langford Law Office

Oddly enough, my daughter got sucked into this same scam. After the very first call, I was suspicious and called back and cancelled the entire transaction. Yes, you can cancel it, because it is a scam. If it is tied to your bank account or credit card, contact the issuer and cancel it, also notify the Texas Attorney General, as the scam is already an open investigation. Good Luck.

Read more
Answered on 7/14/10, 6:16 am


Related Questions & Answers

More Consumer Law questions and answers in Texas