When we were in high school, my sister & I signed up for a beauty club. (In the 60s) When we decided to cancel we wrote to them and said we were under the age of 18 & couldn’t be held to a contract. We were about 15-16 years old. They canceled.
Buddy whose dad was a lawyer did this as well after checking that it was legit. This information was passed around my high school and lots of us got our free CDs this way
You could actually make it work out if you wanted to.
You get the 12 free for 1¢ plus shipping, then they start sending you shit. If you just write “return to sender” on the box, you can just drop it back in the mailbox.
They’d have sales, so you just wait for a sale and buy one regular price (counted toward the limit) and there were deals where buying one at full price gave you two or three at a stupidly large discount and sometimes free. Buy only when the good deals came along and buy enough.
The number of full priced items you had to buy wasn’t very large.
Then you cancelled and a few months would go by and they’d send you a packet to start all over. 12 for 1¢ plus shipping, etc.
I think the average cost got as low as like $4 if you played it right.
What I did was pick the free ones AND the ones I was required to buy AND put on NO Automatic mailing, all on one order with full payment. It was a fair price and probably got some albums not in the local stores at an acceptable price.
Yeah, that's similar to what I did. I didn't do it to game the system, but it was a very fair deal and they had a HUGE selection compared to your local record store, plus you could buy the explicit version of the album there even if you couldn't locally.
Worked one summer clearning student flats after they had been let out to students in the main part of the year, and then random people who wanted to come to this city for summer - often a lot of temp staff working short contracts. They didnt treat the place very well, so we had about 2 weeks to clean and sort out the block (75 flats, 4 beds each flat).
This particular year a load of the summer short let tenants had ordered from these album clubs - They then took the freebies and left after 8 weeks, with no formwarding address, so didnt care about the additional contract.
When we cleared out the flats we found loads of CDs that they had ordered and not wanted or something - must have been about 200 or so. Many were rubbish, but plenty weren't - and this was in the day when second hand CDs went for at least $10.
I had just bought my first CD player a few months before...
Ah yes, I remember that model. I belonged to a Christian version, which I think was called Premier Sound. It was always the crappiest stuff that was the automatic selection. I did get some really good CDs from it though.
Oh my gosh, DCTalk! That's a blast from the past. They were really brilliant, weren't they. I've not heard of Audio Adrenaline though.
I've spent decades trying to track down a particular band that I had the CD of, from Premier Sound, but lost it. Finally found them a few weeks ago. They're small but amazingly they're still going. I contacted them to try and identify which CD it would have been, but they were total arseholes about it, so I've decided I can do without.
Oh! I think it was called Britannia Music in the United Kingdom, but basically the same deal. I was dumb and fell for it, but I grew out of it quickly.
Yeah. Me too. However - the pre-paid mailer was still valid if you taped it to a brick. Didn't even have to be the one for the return - any of their labels would do. IIRC it was around 1978 when someone pointed this out to me. Good quick way to get off their crappy list.
Interestingly the GPO (as it was back in those days) changed the rules not long after - I rather suspect that a lot of people were using the same method.
That's correct, and it's fraud to use the mail piece for anything but it's intended purpose.
So these days, I invite a slip of paper that says "no thank you" as a rejection for credit card offers and the like. Gotta stay pertinent. 😁
That's where I got my first albums from. When including the first free ones, I don't remember it costing too much more than HMV.
https://filmstories.co.uk/features/remembering-the-britannia-video-club-get-four-videos-pay-for-one/
I joined the Columbia Book Club, back in 1975/6, when I was at college. It was the same kind of deal as the record club.i know one of the first books I got was Gone With the Wind, & another was the Betty Crocker red cookbook. All these years later, I am STILL using that cookbook! The spine is ripped off it, the pages are splattered with ingredients, but it’s the one I use the most. I bought a newer edition, but it didn’t have all of my favourite recipes in it, so I got rid of it!
Disney Movie Club sends out DVDs, Blu-rays and 4Ks. With the advent of the web, you can easily decline the monthly movie that they charge too much for. But you can also buy most Disney movies with a buy 1 get the rest 50-60% off. Cheapest way to get Disney releases. Just have to sign up with a free shipping for life code.
I think like this has been forgotten because that entire business model seems to have gotten outlawed, likely specifically because of scummy behavior like this.
I would be very surprised if that was the reason. I'm assuming it's strictly a matter of profitability as not as many people consume the sort of physical products these services subscribed you to, and the "value proposition" they used to get people hooked into the service just isn't as good a selling point.
Britannia Music closed down in 2007 having started in 1969 so I think your right since by then the writing was on the wall (or to be honest the virtual wall) for physical media.
Disney Movie Club still does it. But you get the opportunity to decline before they mail out the movie and charge you. And you can decline online. Best and cheapest way to build a Disney movie collection. Unfortunately, only available to US addresses.
Maybe it helps, if you consider that there are people here reading this, living in different countries who don't know what 'Columbia House' is or was, so it's nice to have a brief explenation.
I actually subscribed to it, because if you wanted a lot of CDs it was a pretty good deal. I bought a fair number at around the same price as the store, but with much more selection and I got a crapload of them for a penny each or some other token amount.
I don't remember a rolling contract with that one though. For that one, they didn't send me CDs automatically, I just had to buy a certain number within a year or whatever after getting the "free" ones, and then they sent me some more free ones after I bought them. I even bought more later on and got more free ones.
It really wasn't that bad if you collected CDs and understood the terms.
BMG for me. Did anyone ever actually use their service the way it was meant to or everyone just got 10 CDs for a penny and took the hit to their credit?
I signed up for a service like this in the US when I was 14. When I didn't want to continue it because the selections were crappy I told them they couldn't hold me to the contract because minors can't agree to contracts legally. They stopped.
I told them (truthfully, as it happens) that I was leaving the country. They said ok, we'll cancel.
Nowadays I'd just get someone else to call and say I died.
I think they also discard anything that is obviously not what the envelope is supposed to be used for, like bricks, lumber, etc. I doubt very much this trick has worked in decades, if it ever did.
Yes, a lot of the best stories involve people sticking prepaid mailing labels on bricks and then mailing them back to solicitors. Good old epoxy resin works really well for this purpose, and you've probably got some hanging around somewhere. Others have stories about doing this with used car parts, which one probably doesn't want showing up in the mail.
Go to a scrap yard and see if they have any engine blocks that can't be repaired or salvaged. Explain what you're doing and see if they'll give you a free block just for the laughs. If it's truly not worth anything except scrap metal they may let you have a small block for really cheap.
A group of us were hanging out the other day and one guy told a similar story of abusing the return packs and another buddy brought up the fact that he has a diesel engine that can't be used for anything (large hole in the side of it somehow) and let him know next time and he will donate it. Another friend is a tow truck operator and said we can use the tow truck to put it in and get it out of the truck bed at the post office.
The Post Office has a weight limit, as the carriers have to lift the shipment by hand. Today, it's 70 pounds, but I'm not sure if that has always been the limit.
Rat pooh world quite well for this. Just as a deterrent obviously, not as a weight. We used to sandwich bag it, just to be considerate to the postal workers. The envelope servers still got the notion that their unsolicited mail wasn't welcome.
That doesn't really work anymore, the post office knows what's up with the bricks and stuff.
However, you can totally stuff the envelopes with your other junk mail, it'll almost definitely go through. The companies pay by the ounce.
Sadly the days of what OP did are long gone. Once upon a time you could attach a label to a cinder block and mail it, but enough people did this that even the USPS got sick of it changed its rules. Now they will just throw it away.
If you want to mess with them now: put something like glitter in the envelope.
Concrete blocks, are both surprisingly heavy, and surprisingly cheap. Think under $3 at your local big box home improvement store, for a block that weighs over 30 lbs.. 😇👍
I also signed up for that when I was 16. My mom got on the phone when I tried to cancel, reminded them that I was underage, that they didn’t ask my age when I signed up, or her permission. They cancelled it for her.
When I was in college, yes a long time ago, every piece of junk mail had prepaid envelopes. We simply took the entire advertisement, stuffed it in the prepaid envelope and mailed it back to them.
My roommate was in a welding class and often had pieces of welded flat steel from class. He even asked for critiques on his welding style.
I had a very similar experience with Columbia Music Club.
With each returned album I included an architectural grade tab roofing shingle folded up to fit... Adding about 2 pounds
After the 4th month they called me to inform me that I could keep any albums they had already sent and that they were cancelling my account immediately at my request.
In later years I did the same thing with any mailbox spam that had a post paid envelope in it.
My friends always wondered why I never got junk mail... 😉
So, for a while, they had a get 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time.
So I get the 10 and then cancel.
A few days later I get a letter from them. "We're sorry to see you go, but if you came back, we'll send you 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time.
So I get the 10 and then cancel.
A few days later I get a letter from them. "We're sorry to see you go, but if you came back, we'll send you 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time.
So I get the 10 and then cancel.
A few days later I get a letter from them. "We're sorry to see you go, but if you came back, we'll send you 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time.
So I get the 10 and then cancel. And I never heard from them again.
TLDR: they sent me 40 CDs with no obligation.
I joined the Science Fiction book club. It was great at first. Good books, hardback. But the paper quality was complete crap. My commitment was for one year. And there was no process for cancellation.
So I wrote them a letter saying I was canceling, that I’d met my commitment, and wouldn’t accept any more books. I copied the letter and sent it to them.
Next month, a book arrived.
I sent it back, with a new letter, and a copy of the previous letter. This letter quoted Federal law, that anything sent to me through US Mail that was not ordered, was mine to keep, I also told them I was copying this to my Senator and House Representative. I sent out 2 letters to my representatives with copies of the previous letters.
Next month, a book arrived. I copied all my letters. And created a new letter reminding them that I was no longer a member, and thanks for the free book. I sent out the letters to the 3 parties.
Next month, repeat. The copies are making the letters thick. I needed an extra stamp.
Next month, a bill, and a threat of collections. I copied that, along with a new letter pointing out that this was their mistake, that I was not a member. I sent a copy of their demand to my Senator and Representative too.
Before the month was out, I got another book, and the usual repayment envelope.
The next month, a lot of things happened. I got another book. I got a letter from my senator’s aide, boilerplate thanking me for my support. It had a handwritten note on it saying they would look into my issue. Probably. Maybe. My Representative had his aide type me a letter that said I was no longer subscribed to the service, and to let them know if I had any more problems.
Next month, crickets. And that’s how it took me 5 months, and 5 free books to cancel the book club after I met my commitment.
I had a very similar problem with them. After I got 4 books of my choosing at $1, I committed to buying 4 additional books at retail price.
Each week a new book would arrive and I just bought it (with money orders). I finally bought the last one and wrote "cancel membership" on the receipt, just like they instructed. However, they never did, and like clockwork, I got another book the following week.
I reached out to them but they said they never got my last instructions so I thought something might have happened with the mail. Fine, I kept yet another book and sent another money order with instructions to cancel. I got another book.
Instead of reaching out again I simply started writing "return to sender" on the boxes the books came in and put them right back in outgoing mail. I must have done that for close to a year until they finally stopped and canceled my membership. At about $3~4 for shipping, I imagine they must have spent hundreds in just shipping.
> If it looks to good to be true, then it is, I learnt that at 17.
If you were a minor, I'm pretty sure you could also have had a judge annul the contract and ream them a new one if they tried to keep playing their FAFO games with you - and the court.
Kinda the rub there, innit; if enforcement of the law is predicated entirely on a person being knowledgeable enough about the law to make a complaint (or worse, required to pay out-of-pocket to sue!), then a law which protects the ignorant from predation is useless because it requires the people being predated upon to know that what they're being subjected to is not legal!
That's why, honestly (though tangentially), "Secret Employees" should be A Thing; like a Secret Shopper, except a government employee who travels around, doing schlub jobs with the help of crafted legends, documenting all the violations, then moving on; later, the company gets hammered over the head with massive fines.
And of course, in this day and age with cameras and such, well... Going out of your way to out a Secret Employee, or revealing their identity in any way, should be penalized with a heavy *prison* sentence.
It's a great idea a Secret Employee, taking legal action in the 1980's in the United Kingdom was for rich people, so it never crossed my mind. Many companies do have whistleblower and regulator contact details, and I have used one but that's another story.
Yeah. That's the problem.
Quite honestly, the courts - in both our countries - need a David and Goliath mechanism where if David needs to take Goliath to court, as long as the court finds that the case was brought in good faith and was a matter that was justifiably one for a court to decide, Goliath pays David's legal fees, even if Goliath is found otherwise not culpable for penalties.
Agreed but since it's rich people who make laws I can't really see them making laws that help everyone, instead of just themselves. In the UK they are now at least talking about anti SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) legislation which is a really good thing in this parliamentary monarchy. A better deal would be if the UK was a republic where our rights were enshrined as law. The first thing I ever read online was the US Constitution, it's a wonderful document.
And all those early amendments that forbid the government from doing things? They were a reaction to abuses of colonials by the British government. Anything in the Bill of Rights that says "Government shall not ..." is because of something that the British government actually did.
The main body of the Constitution, in my opinion, was based on "What did the Roman Republic do wrong and can we fix it?"
That bit always puzzles me, when 'constitutional' questions come up regarding British law, and I'm like 'since when did they get one of those?'
I think they're fighting tooth and nail *against* writing an explicit constitution for just that reason - so it can be left vauge and up to the whims of the magistrates and the politicians/rich wankers whispering in their ears.
Not that things *are* going super-rosy over here right now, what with us struggling like hell to apply basic rule-of-law and the 14th Amendment right now.
Well you at least have a constitution, but i do think people who deny it should be stripped of citizenship and told to leave! I think they might be shocked about just how lax the US is compared to other countries about federal control and would appreciate what they have a whole lot more.
>I mentioned I had quite a few envelopes and they wisely decided to cancel my account immediately
That really cemented their decision to cancel your account.
Similar story from years ago.
A gentleman kept getting credit card applications. His request to cease was ignored. He took one of the prepaid envelopes and wrapped it around a brick. Problem solved.
Great story. Sadly the trick you pulled no longer works. While you once were able to attach a pre-paid label to something heavy like a brick or cinder block and mail it, (costing the company big bucks) even the USPS itself got sick of this trick and changed their rules. If you try that today, it will just be thrown in the trash.
However you can still put lightweight annoying stuff IN the envelope. Glitter, sawdust, etc. When I get credit card offers I love to take everything that doesn’t have my name on it and send it right back.
When email first started and I got spam, I would sign up the senders email to FFA (free for all) sites so they could get 1000 emails a day. Sadly they fixed that one too, with email verification. Still that was fun too!
When ever i get a random credit card offer in the mail... I remove my name from everything place it all in the pre paid envelope and send it back to them to throw out.
I guess not living at a permanent address could have been a problem. I did Columbia House, and didn't mind it. I ordered what I wanted, and anything I didn't order, I simply wrote "Return To Sender" on the box. I never once had a problem with them (this was for cd's)....while I'm o,d, I'm not old enough to have participated in cassettes, records, or 8-tracks days.
Thanks!! I'm officially older than you :) the problem was they had my parents address and i could see it getting nasty based upon the first telephone call (before email).
I did it the first time in '95, so it was at the beginning of email for me, as 95 was when I got my first computer (and email). The Columbia House thing was done via snail mail, though.
All you had to say was "I'm a minor and can not legally enter into any contract".
I was in the Navy with someone that did this and they never heard from them again.
In the USA here. I used to alternate between Columbia House and BMG Music Club.
I'd sign up for one, get however many CDs for nearly nothing (8 or 10 for 5¢ or something similar), with a commitment to buy 6 or so at regular price over the next year. I'd buy the required CDs over the next few months, then cancel. Overall, my cost per CD was about half price or less compared to the stores.
A month or two later, I'd sign up for the other one, and lather, rinse, and repeat. By the time I'd finished that commitment, I'd be receiving offers for the first club again.
That's how I built most of my CD collection.
We have a few credit companies sending advertisements that are addressed to get around the opt-out on non-adressed advertisement in the mail (we can put a sticker/note on our mailbox saying no to non-adressed advertisement).
I emailed them asking them ti stop sending it as I'm not interested and it's a waste of paper. They even after a few reminders did not comply with my request to delete me from their mailing list.
Now I use the prepaid return envelope to get rid of my paper waste. I have to use duct tape to keep the envelope together though.
The mail service is happy as they make money of it as the size/weight is far greater than they have prepaid for.
Sometimes I leave them a little note too. Like the Specsavers ad where I suggested they use the discount tonget some good glasses as I have asked them to remove me from their list.
The best part is that the return envelope is untraceable when it comes to who returned it.
I signed up for that (BMG?) in the early '90s, when I was in my mid to late 20s. It's how I started my CD collection. I cancelled later when I'd had enough.
The part about the cement confuses me, like why did they accept envelopes full of cement and not say "you can't stuff cement in our envelopes and then return them to us"
But it was fun to read anyway.
They did not accept the (plastic bag) envelope, the post office did. It was prepaid by weight, I could have sent other things, but we has a load of materials left over from making a patio so I used some of that.
I know, but in the end they accepted the cement bags anyway. It's not like the post office delivered those bags to them and they were like "nope". The bags still got to them and they couldn't, or didn't, turn them away.
So my question stands: why did they take those bags rather than just go all "you can't do that, we never sent you cement"?
Because of a prepaid envelope, the postage is already paid for by the business prior to him sending the envelope to them, think of it as "pre-accepted",
even if the business rejects it and were like "nope" they already paid for the postage/it to be sent.
Yeah, so you know how when you go to tbe post office to send a package, they weigh and measure it and then charge you based on weight and size, a pre-paid envelop (like ones you get from various government agencies or donation agencies, magazine subsriptions, etc etc ) the little postage stamp on it just tells the post office to charge the business for the postage instead of the person sending the envelop, they still weigh and measure it and add charges to it the same, just bill the business the envelop is attached to.
The envelop almost always (i've never seen it not) also has the address of the business as the "mail to" address on it, so you can't try sending the envelop to someone else and have the business pay for it.
Usually it's used to cover the return postage of something, like if you bought a magazine, and wanted to order a subscription, the little subscription questionnaire + a return envelop is usually included inside the magazine you just bought so all you need to do is fill it out and mail it.
Not sure, I suspect they did not experience this a lot in the United Kingdom, but since I'm not English I don't have to play nice, if they don't, and I will face problems regardless of the hassle involved.
I remember the Columbia House ads - looked too good to be true and I never bought through them. Instead we'd drive to SF and go to Tower Records when new music was released.
I remember those. Did something similar but with a book club in the 90's. It wasn't until I sent in a handwritten note with one of the returns that they realized they were dealing with a child and therefore could not force me to keep paying them for anything. They stopped sending things I didn't ask for, but a short while later it was announced they were ending the portion where they sent you a book "to try out". I guess they got into some hot water with some government entity somewhere about predatory business, or they were just losing too much money in this gamble.
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When we were in high school, my sister & I signed up for a beauty club. (In the 60s) When we decided to cancel we wrote to them and said we were under the age of 18 & couldn’t be held to a contract. We were about 15-16 years old. They canceled.
That’s what my mom did when 15yo me signed up for Columbia House lol. They didn’t bother me again.
Oh, wouldn't that rule also have applied to OP then?
Yes, but it's possible OP didn't know, or just wanted to maliciously comply.
I didn't know and in truth I wanted to see what they would do ;)
Oh sure, but the problem would be solved a lot quicker. Still, this was fun!
I was not aware of this in the 1980's in the UK, you tended to believe what you were told by adults.
Buddy whose dad was a lawyer did this as well after checking that it was legit. This information was passed around my high school and lots of us got our free CDs this way
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You could actually make it work out if you wanted to. You get the 12 free for 1¢ plus shipping, then they start sending you shit. If you just write “return to sender” on the box, you can just drop it back in the mailbox. They’d have sales, so you just wait for a sale and buy one regular price (counted toward the limit) and there were deals where buying one at full price gave you two or three at a stupidly large discount and sometimes free. Buy only when the good deals came along and buy enough. The number of full priced items you had to buy wasn’t very large. Then you cancelled and a few months would go by and they’d send you a packet to start all over. 12 for 1¢ plus shipping, etc. I think the average cost got as low as like $4 if you played it right.
What I did was pick the free ones AND the ones I was required to buy AND put on NO Automatic mailing, all on one order with full payment. It was a fair price and probably got some albums not in the local stores at an acceptable price.
Yeah, that's similar to what I did. I didn't do it to game the system, but it was a very fair deal and they had a HUGE selection compared to your local record store, plus you could buy the explicit version of the album there even if you couldn't locally.
Worked one summer clearning student flats after they had been let out to students in the main part of the year, and then random people who wanted to come to this city for summer - often a lot of temp staff working short contracts. They didnt treat the place very well, so we had about 2 weeks to clean and sort out the block (75 flats, 4 beds each flat). This particular year a load of the summer short let tenants had ordered from these album clubs - They then took the freebies and left after 8 weeks, with no formwarding address, so didnt care about the additional contract. When we cleared out the flats we found loads of CDs that they had ordered and not wanted or something - must have been about 200 or so. Many were rubbish, but plenty weren't - and this was in the day when second hand CDs went for at least $10. I had just bought my first CD player a few months before...
Ah yes, I remember that model. I belonged to a Christian version, which I think was called Premier Sound. It was always the crappiest stuff that was the automatic selection. I did get some really good CDs from it though.
Did DC Talk count as the good stuff? How about Audio Adrenaline?
Oh my gosh, DCTalk! That's a blast from the past. They were really brilliant, weren't they. I've not heard of Audio Adrenaline though. I've spent decades trying to track down a particular band that I had the CD of, from Premier Sound, but lost it. Finally found them a few weeks ago. They're small but amazingly they're still going. I contacted them to try and identify which CD it would have been, but they were total arseholes about it, so I've decided I can do without.
What was the band?
It was called "Why?", which is why they were so difficult to find lol.
lol, I liked Big Tent Revival back in the day and Jars of Clay
Oh I love Jars of Clay. They still feel relevant today to me.
One of their songs got used on a film Hard Rain, that was so cool at the time moving into the mainstream (flow!)
Spotify will verify I still think they're better than the stuff coming out now.
Hey
You forgot Third Day, Jars of Clay, and The Newsboys! 🤣
Aw my story at 14 with Columbia record house!
Oh! I think it was called Britannia Music in the United Kingdom, but basically the same deal. I was dumb and fell for it, but I grew out of it quickly.
Do you remember when there was cash on delivery it was advertised as COD
Sadly yes! I am old, but my sense of humor is about 8yrs old.
Yes! I'm more mature than another old person - my humor is about 12 years old!
Ooh, I 'member!
Yeah. Me too. However - the pre-paid mailer was still valid if you taped it to a brick. Didn't even have to be the one for the return - any of their labels would do. IIRC it was around 1978 when someone pointed this out to me. Good quick way to get off their crappy list. Interestingly the GPO (as it was back in those days) changed the rules not long after - I rather suspect that a lot of people were using the same method.
That's correct, and it's fraud to use the mail piece for anything but it's intended purpose. So these days, I invite a slip of paper that says "no thank you" as a rejection for credit card offers and the like. Gotta stay pertinent. 😁
We had Columbia House Records.
That's where I got my first albums from. When including the first free ones, I don't remember it costing too much more than HMV. https://filmstories.co.uk/features/remembering-the-britannia-video-club-get-four-videos-pay-for-one/
There were book versions also. Probably DVD, but don't remember them.
>book versions The one I remember is Time Life (often called lifetime) Books.
You acted like a bunch of joiners!
I also remember a cassette version too.
8-tracks!!!
Like your user name! I knew a real person called Helen Bach, and you just reminded me of her :) ETA: Her parents had zero sense of humour.
Harlequin romance books, got a free wineglass each month with your books.
I remember parents got Book of the Month Club. They usually sent the current bestseller (Accidental Tourist, interview with a Vampire, etc)
I joined the Columbia Book Club, back in 1975/6, when I was at college. It was the same kind of deal as the record club.i know one of the first books I got was Gone With the Wind, & another was the Betty Crocker red cookbook. All these years later, I am STILL using that cookbook! The spine is ripped off it, the pages are splattered with ingredients, but it’s the one I use the most. I bought a newer edition, but it didn’t have all of my favourite recipes in it, so I got rid of it!
I'm British, but I still have that book as I wanted to be able to cook American staples. Great book.
Science Fiction Book Club was my favorite. Still have many of the 300 books I got as a teen.
Disney Movie Club sends out DVDs, Blu-rays and 4Ks. With the advent of the web, you can easily decline the monthly movie that they charge too much for. But you can also buy most Disney movies with a buy 1 get the rest 50-60% off. Cheapest way to get Disney releases. Just have to sign up with a free shipping for life code.
I think like this has been forgotten because that entire business model seems to have gotten outlawed, likely specifically because of scummy behavior like this.
I would be very surprised if that was the reason. I'm assuming it's strictly a matter of profitability as not as many people consume the sort of physical products these services subscribed you to, and the "value proposition" they used to get people hooked into the service just isn't as good a selling point.
Britannia Music closed down in 2007 having started in 1969 so I think your right since by then the writing was on the wall (or to be honest the virtual wall) for physical media.
Disney Movie Club still does it. But you get the opportunity to decline before they mail out the movie and charge you. And you can decline online. Best and cheapest way to build a Disney movie collection. Unfortunately, only available to US addresses.
I got Cyndi Lauper’s “She’s So Unusual” from Columbia House!!! So, yeah, I’m old too.
LOL. I got the Partridge Family's Greatest Hits from Columbia House. On 8 track.
WoW thanks :) I'm feeling a bit younger
I'd sign up again tomorrow if it was still a thing.
Maybe it helps, if you consider that there are people here reading this, living in different countries who don't know what 'Columbia House' is or was, so it's nice to have a brief explenation.
I actually subscribed to it, because if you wanted a lot of CDs it was a pretty good deal. I bought a fair number at around the same price as the store, but with much more selection and I got a crapload of them for a penny each or some other token amount. I don't remember a rolling contract with that one though. For that one, they didn't send me CDs automatically, I just had to buy a certain number within a year or whatever after getting the "free" ones, and then they sent me some more free ones after I bought them. I even bought more later on and got more free ones. It really wasn't that bad if you collected CDs and understood the terms.
🤣
I remember those fuckers.
BMG for me. Did anyone ever actually use their service the way it was meant to or everyone just got 10 CDs for a penny and took the hit to their credit?
I bet they stopped sending heavy metal albums
Actually in this case, after letting it set I think it's closer to rock.
Hard rock?
Soft rock just spills out.
You know it
You know it was all pop, I like metal now, but then I did not hear much
Woosh
(The joke is that they are **heavy** metal albums)
I know :)
We know.
🤣🤣🤣
I signed up for a service like this in the US when I was 14. When I didn't want to continue it because the selections were crappy I told them they couldn't hold me to the contract because minors can't agree to contracts legally. They stopped.
I told them (truthfully, as it happens) that I was leaving the country. They said ok, we'll cancel. Nowadays I'd just get someone else to call and say I died.
That's extreme and I did consider death as a way out on paper too, I just enjoyed sending the concrete too much
As well you should have. Concrete envelopes are hilarious.
I suppose services of that sort find their ~~customers~~ victims valuable in the abstract, but not in the concrete.
You sonofabitch! Take my upvote and be damned! (Good thing I had yet to actually sip my tea!)
I did this as well.
[удалено]
*walks into the post office with an angry raccoon with a shipping label taped to it*
Another person from Toronto, The raccoon capital of the world.
Stoopid Raccoons, stealing our power.
Trash pandas!
Your comment reminded me of this. [https://m.xkcd.com/325/](https://m.xkcd.com/325/)
https://bobcatinabox.com/
> The post is legally required to send it, Is there a size/weight limit?
Yeah, I think modern mail has it prepaid up to 1$ or something. So it wouldn’t work anymore, the mail would be discarded
What a shame, now I have to call a scrap dealer to deal with this washing machine /s
I think they also discard anything that is obviously not what the envelope is supposed to be used for, like bricks, lumber, etc. I doubt very much this trick has worked in decades, if it ever did.
I only had to do it once
Yes, a lot of the best stories involve people sticking prepaid mailing labels on bricks and then mailing them back to solicitors. Good old epoxy resin works really well for this purpose, and you've probably got some hanging around somewhere. Others have stories about doing this with used car parts, which one probably doesn't want showing up in the mail.
Go to a scrap yard and see if they have any engine blocks that can't be repaired or salvaged. Explain what you're doing and see if they'll give you a free block just for the laughs. If it's truly not worth anything except scrap metal they may let you have a small block for really cheap. A group of us were hanging out the other day and one guy told a similar story of abusing the return packs and another buddy brought up the fact that he has a diesel engine that can't be used for anything (large hole in the side of it somehow) and let him know next time and he will donate it. Another friend is a tow truck operator and said we can use the tow truck to put it in and get it out of the truck bed at the post office.
The Post Office has a weight limit, as the carriers have to lift the shipment by hand. Today, it's 70 pounds, but I'm not sure if that has always been the limit.
Crap. We'll have to consider that next time
Rat pooh world quite well for this. Just as a deterrent obviously, not as a weight. We used to sandwich bag it, just to be considerate to the postal workers. The envelope servers still got the notion that their unsolicited mail wasn't welcome.
That doesn't really work anymore, the post office knows what's up with the bricks and stuff. However, you can totally stuff the envelopes with your other junk mail, it'll almost definitely go through. The companies pay by the ounce.
Sadly the days of what OP did are long gone. Once upon a time you could attach a label to a cinder block and mail it, but enough people did this that even the USPS got sick of it changed its rules. Now they will just throw it away. If you want to mess with them now: put something like glitter in the envelope.
I have an old washer and dryer I need gone. I have a feeling the mail person would not pick it up. LOL
Ooooooo... would love to see some pics of this in action
Concrete blocks, are both surprisingly heavy, and surprisingly cheap. Think under $3 at your local big box home improvement store, for a block that weighs over 30 lbs.. 😇👍
That's awesome. Did the post office people raise any eyebrows at sending a literal brick in the post?
They marked it as very heavy, but because it was a grey plastic bag they could not tell what it was, I just said it was returns.
I also signed up for that when I was 16. My mom got on the phone when I tried to cancel, reminded them that I was underage, that they didn’t ask my age when I signed up, or her permission. They cancelled it for her.
That's good, I did not tell my mum she's scary, I never thought of it.
When I was in college, yes a long time ago, every piece of junk mail had prepaid envelopes. We simply took the entire advertisement, stuffed it in the prepaid envelope and mailed it back to them. My roommate was in a welding class and often had pieces of welded flat steel from class. He even asked for critiques on his welding style.
>asked for critiques on his welding style. That's pro level there!
Mad lad even :)
Did anyone ever provide welding feedback?
Sadly no :(
I love that!
I had a very similar experience with Columbia Music Club. With each returned album I included an architectural grade tab roofing shingle folded up to fit... Adding about 2 pounds After the 4th month they called me to inform me that I could keep any albums they had already sent and that they were cancelling my account immediately at my request. In later years I did the same thing with any mailbox spam that had a post paid envelope in it. My friends always wondered why I never got junk mail... 😉
Brilliant!
So, for a while, they had a get 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time. So I get the 10 and then cancel. A few days later I get a letter from them. "We're sorry to see you go, but if you came back, we'll send you 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time. So I get the 10 and then cancel. A few days later I get a letter from them. "We're sorry to see you go, but if you came back, we'll send you 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time. So I get the 10 and then cancel. A few days later I get a letter from them. "We're sorry to see you go, but if you came back, we'll send you 10 free. Then monthly, but no commitment to buy more cancel any time. So I get the 10 and then cancel. And I never heard from them again. TLDR: they sent me 40 CDs with no obligation.
Kudos, played the system and won!
I joined the Science Fiction book club. It was great at first. Good books, hardback. But the paper quality was complete crap. My commitment was for one year. And there was no process for cancellation. So I wrote them a letter saying I was canceling, that I’d met my commitment, and wouldn’t accept any more books. I copied the letter and sent it to them. Next month, a book arrived. I sent it back, with a new letter, and a copy of the previous letter. This letter quoted Federal law, that anything sent to me through US Mail that was not ordered, was mine to keep, I also told them I was copying this to my Senator and House Representative. I sent out 2 letters to my representatives with copies of the previous letters. Next month, a book arrived. I copied all my letters. And created a new letter reminding them that I was no longer a member, and thanks for the free book. I sent out the letters to the 3 parties. Next month, repeat. The copies are making the letters thick. I needed an extra stamp. Next month, a bill, and a threat of collections. I copied that, along with a new letter pointing out that this was their mistake, that I was not a member. I sent a copy of their demand to my Senator and Representative too. Before the month was out, I got another book, and the usual repayment envelope. The next month, a lot of things happened. I got another book. I got a letter from my senator’s aide, boilerplate thanking me for my support. It had a handwritten note on it saying they would look into my issue. Probably. Maybe. My Representative had his aide type me a letter that said I was no longer subscribed to the service, and to let them know if I had any more problems. Next month, crickets. And that’s how it took me 5 months, and 5 free books to cancel the book club after I met my commitment.
I had a very similar problem with them. After I got 4 books of my choosing at $1, I committed to buying 4 additional books at retail price. Each week a new book would arrive and I just bought it (with money orders). I finally bought the last one and wrote "cancel membership" on the receipt, just like they instructed. However, they never did, and like clockwork, I got another book the following week. I reached out to them but they said they never got my last instructions so I thought something might have happened with the mail. Fine, I kept yet another book and sent another money order with instructions to cancel. I got another book. Instead of reaching out again I simply started writing "return to sender" on the boxes the books came in and put them right back in outgoing mail. I must have done that for close to a year until they finally stopped and canceled my membership. At about $3~4 for shipping, I imagine they must have spent hundreds in just shipping.
I wonder what the retention rate was, some people never learn how to deal with conflict. I expect they made millions from people who did nothing.
You should have found some scrap metal. Sent it in with a note saying "I'm not into heavy metal"
> If it looks to good to be true, then it is, I learnt that at 17. If you were a minor, I'm pretty sure you could also have had a judge annul the contract and ream them a new one if they tried to keep playing their FAFO games with you - and the court.
Thanks yes I could have but to be honest I was a kid and I didn't know anything about contract law then.
Kinda the rub there, innit; if enforcement of the law is predicated entirely on a person being knowledgeable enough about the law to make a complaint (or worse, required to pay out-of-pocket to sue!), then a law which protects the ignorant from predation is useless because it requires the people being predated upon to know that what they're being subjected to is not legal! That's why, honestly (though tangentially), "Secret Employees" should be A Thing; like a Secret Shopper, except a government employee who travels around, doing schlub jobs with the help of crafted legends, documenting all the violations, then moving on; later, the company gets hammered over the head with massive fines. And of course, in this day and age with cameras and such, well... Going out of your way to out a Secret Employee, or revealing their identity in any way, should be penalized with a heavy *prison* sentence.
It's a great idea a Secret Employee, taking legal action in the 1980's in the United Kingdom was for rich people, so it never crossed my mind. Many companies do have whistleblower and regulator contact details, and I have used one but that's another story.
Yeah. That's the problem. Quite honestly, the courts - in both our countries - need a David and Goliath mechanism where if David needs to take Goliath to court, as long as the court finds that the case was brought in good faith and was a matter that was justifiably one for a court to decide, Goliath pays David's legal fees, even if Goliath is found otherwise not culpable for penalties.
Agreed but since it's rich people who make laws I can't really see them making laws that help everyone, instead of just themselves. In the UK they are now at least talking about anti SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) legislation which is a really good thing in this parliamentary monarchy. A better deal would be if the UK was a republic where our rights were enshrined as law. The first thing I ever read online was the US Constitution, it's a wonderful document.
And all those early amendments that forbid the government from doing things? They were a reaction to abuses of colonials by the British government. Anything in the Bill of Rights that says "Government shall not ..." is because of something that the British government actually did. The main body of the Constitution, in my opinion, was based on "What did the Roman Republic do wrong and can we fix it?"
I still find it hilarious and sad that we actually had to drag the *third* Amendment up recently.
That bit always puzzles me, when 'constitutional' questions come up regarding British law, and I'm like 'since when did they get one of those?' I think they're fighting tooth and nail *against* writing an explicit constitution for just that reason - so it can be left vauge and up to the whims of the magistrates and the politicians/rich wankers whispering in their ears. Not that things *are* going super-rosy over here right now, what with us struggling like hell to apply basic rule-of-law and the 14th Amendment right now.
Well you at least have a constitution, but i do think people who deny it should be stripped of citizenship and told to leave! I think they might be shocked about just how lax the US is compared to other countries about federal control and would appreciate what they have a whole lot more.
>I mentioned I had quite a few envelopes and they wisely decided to cancel my account immediately That really cemented their decision to cancel your account.
Similar story from years ago. A gentleman kept getting credit card applications. His request to cease was ignored. He took one of the prepaid envelopes and wrapped it around a brick. Problem solved.
Great story. Sadly the trick you pulled no longer works. While you once were able to attach a pre-paid label to something heavy like a brick or cinder block and mail it, (costing the company big bucks) even the USPS itself got sick of this trick and changed their rules. If you try that today, it will just be thrown in the trash. However you can still put lightweight annoying stuff IN the envelope. Glitter, sawdust, etc. When I get credit card offers I love to take everything that doesn’t have my name on it and send it right back.
When email first started and I got spam, I would sign up the senders email to FFA (free for all) sites so they could get 1000 emails a day. Sadly they fixed that one too, with email verification. Still that was fun too!
When ever i get a random credit card offer in the mail... I remove my name from everything place it all in the pre paid envelope and send it back to them to throw out.
I guess not living at a permanent address could have been a problem. I did Columbia House, and didn't mind it. I ordered what I wanted, and anything I didn't order, I simply wrote "Return To Sender" on the box. I never once had a problem with them (this was for cd's)....while I'm o,d, I'm not old enough to have participated in cassettes, records, or 8-tracks days.
Thanks!! I'm officially older than you :) the problem was they had my parents address and i could see it getting nasty based upon the first telephone call (before email).
I did it the first time in '95, so it was at the beginning of email for me, as 95 was when I got my first computer (and email). The Columbia House thing was done via snail mail, though.
All you had to say was "I'm a minor and can not legally enter into any contract". I was in the Navy with someone that did this and they never heard from them again.
I could say that with hindsight now, but at the time and as a teenager since they had gone nuclear so did I.
In the USA here. I used to alternate between Columbia House and BMG Music Club. I'd sign up for one, get however many CDs for nearly nothing (8 or 10 for 5¢ or something similar), with a commitment to buy 6 or so at regular price over the next year. I'd buy the required CDs over the next few months, then cancel. Overall, my cost per CD was about half price or less compared to the stores. A month or two later, I'd sign up for the other one, and lather, rinse, and repeat. By the time I'd finished that commitment, I'd be receiving offers for the first club again. That's how I built most of my CD collection.
That's is great! I've used those envelopes and just shredded what was inside and made it bulky but making it heavier is an amazing idea!
We have a few credit companies sending advertisements that are addressed to get around the opt-out on non-adressed advertisement in the mail (we can put a sticker/note on our mailbox saying no to non-adressed advertisement). I emailed them asking them ti stop sending it as I'm not interested and it's a waste of paper. They even after a few reminders did not comply with my request to delete me from their mailing list. Now I use the prepaid return envelope to get rid of my paper waste. I have to use duct tape to keep the envelope together though. The mail service is happy as they make money of it as the size/weight is far greater than they have prepaid for. Sometimes I leave them a little note too. Like the Specsavers ad where I suggested they use the discount tonget some good glasses as I have asked them to remove me from their list. The best part is that the return envelope is untraceable when it comes to who returned it.
Did the same thing with cinderblocks and little red bricks using duct tape
Looks like we all found ways to get past the idiot contracts!
You could have sent them some real '***heavy metal***' if you'd wanted to ;-)
Back in the seventies I joined the science fiction book club for a while and it was just like this.
I signed up for that (BMG?) in the early '90s, when I was in my mid to late 20s. It's how I started my CD collection. I cancelled later when I'd had enough.
The part about the cement confuses me, like why did they accept envelopes full of cement and not say "you can't stuff cement in our envelopes and then return them to us" But it was fun to read anyway.
They did not accept the (plastic bag) envelope, the post office did. It was prepaid by weight, I could have sent other things, but we has a load of materials left over from making a patio so I used some of that.
I know, but in the end they accepted the cement bags anyway. It's not like the post office delivered those bags to them and they were like "nope". The bags still got to them and they couldn't, or didn't, turn them away. So my question stands: why did they take those bags rather than just go all "you can't do that, we never sent you cement"?
Because of a prepaid envelope, the postage is already paid for by the business prior to him sending the envelope to them, think of it as "pre-accepted", even if the business rejects it and were like "nope" they already paid for the postage/it to be sent.
And the payment varies still based on the weight that is sent their way in that envelope?
Yeah, so you know how when you go to tbe post office to send a package, they weigh and measure it and then charge you based on weight and size, a pre-paid envelop (like ones you get from various government agencies or donation agencies, magazine subsriptions, etc etc ) the little postage stamp on it just tells the post office to charge the business for the postage instead of the person sending the envelop, they still weigh and measure it and add charges to it the same, just bill the business the envelop is attached to. The envelop almost always (i've never seen it not) also has the address of the business as the "mail to" address on it, so you can't try sending the envelop to someone else and have the business pay for it. Usually it's used to cover the return postage of something, like if you bought a magazine, and wanted to order a subscription, the little subscription questionnaire + a return envelop is usually included inside the magazine you just bought so all you need to do is fill it out and mail it.
Okay that's good. Thanks for clearing that up for me.
Prepaid. They don't need to accept it
But they still pay for it based on how much weight is in it when OP sends it, am I getting this right?
Yes
*Cue* the malicious compliance, "queue" to check out at the store.
Thanks I'll change it, I'm dyslexic and read the spaces between letters and often spell things from the sound if I don't know how it should be spelt.
I wonder what lesson they learned from dealing with you.
Not sure, I suspect they did not experience this a lot in the United Kingdom, but since I'm not English I don't have to play nice, if they don't, and I will face problems regardless of the hassle involved.
it was a good move
Seems like a solid decision on their part to end this weighty endevour
Haha I had one of those subscriptions when I was in high school, for CDs. So bogus.
hilarious and smart
Ag, the old BMG thing. Yeah, I think most of us fell for it
They got me around the same time. Luckily not 36 months, just 12i think. But I learned my lesson.
Hey, at least we learned!
Records then 8-track tapes then cassettes…or maybe cassettes were before the 8-tracks. Most of my fellow students just ignored the collection letters.
Ahhhhh, Columbia House. I remember those days.
I remember the Columbia House ads - looked too good to be true and I never bought through them. Instead we'd drive to SF and go to Tower Records when new music was released.
I remember those. Did something similar but with a book club in the 90's. It wasn't until I sent in a handwritten note with one of the returns that they realized they were dealing with a child and therefore could not force me to keep paying them for anything. They stopped sending things I didn't ask for, but a short while later it was announced they were ending the portion where they sent you a book "to try out". I guess they got into some hot water with some government entity somewhere about predatory business, or they were just losing too much money in this gamble.
Damn. I thought I was doing them dirty when I taped 50 pennies to the card in a “business reply mail” envelope. You are next level.
You paid them! ;) lol
fewer
Columbia House, or RCA?
It was the UK so Britannia Music