Columbia House Problems

Has anyone ever joined BMG or Columbia House? I fell victim to their sale's pitch a long time ago. It looks too good to be true for us entertainment buffs out there. A dozen CD's for hardly any price at all and we only need to buy a few in the next 2-3 years to fulfill our commitment or 5-6 DVDs for .49 cents each and we only need to buy 2-3 over the next couple years or so in order to fulfill our obligation. Sounds great, right? But, there are some catches and some rough areas one must deal with when becoming a member. I don't listen to much contemporary music, so I canceled my CD membership a long time ago and switched to VHS and then DVD.

I had only one account to my name, as can be expected. A few months ago, I received a letter in the mail offering to let me start over again, since I hadn't bought a DVD for quite some time. They offered to let me buy six DVDs for only .49 cents each with the option of buying a seventh for $10, which would count as one of the three purchases I'd need to buy over the next 2-3 years. This account would take the place of my old one. So, I accepted, picked the seven DVDs I wanted, and mailed it back to them. Not long later, I received another letter in the mail, claiming I had yet to take advantage of their offer and offered it to me again. This was a tad confusing, since I had already received the seven DVDs I'd ordered, so I thought, hey, why not? I'll order six more. They again said in the letter that this account would take place of my old one. Since I had already done that, I THOUGHT this would take the place of the account I had just set up, which would take the place of my first account. I was mistaken. This set up a second account. Oddly enough, Columbia House sent me a third such letter and not knowing I had two accounts at that time, I thought, hey, keep the cheap DVDs coming, so I ordered six more, thinking it'd take the place of the second account which took the place of the first, so I'd have only one account. But, I was wrong. I received a letter in the mail not long after, telling me that they had a policy where a maximum of only two accounts could be held by a person in any one household. This is when I discovered the problem. So, I e-mailed a representative at Columbia House about it and it was like talking to a robot. Regardless of how I worded the question, told the story, etc., I received about the same exact response every single time. It was as if they had a multiple-choice exam that I had taken when I in fact took an essay exam. I was trying to explain my answer to them and they would reply with, "We have that you marked A on question 2 and B on question 6. Because of that, there's nothing we can do." But, I finally go through to one, or so I thought. They said that the situation would get taken care of and I THOUGHT that this third account was going to take the place of either the first or the second or I'd just have one account. But, again, I was wrong. I received the third set of cheap DVDs and soon discovered that I had three accounts. I tried to e-mail Columbia House again, state my case, tell them the story, but nobody would listen (read). It was basically all automated, or so it felt. So, finally, I decided to just buy the 7-8 total DVDs I needed to buy on the three accounts, cancel the two I received via mail and keep the online account.

I use the online account much more so than the other two, as I consistently receive updates on deals via e-mail, but only receive the mail catalogs once a month. So, it was not problem fulfilling my obligation with the online account. I then asked a representative if they could merge my two mail accounts into one, because it was a hassle keeping track of two basically idential accounts, needing two stamps instead of one, etc. They said they could do that, but a couple weeks later, guess what? I received two separate catalogs, one for each account. I said heck with it, bought three for the account where I needed to buy three and two for the account where I needed to buy two. So, I'm all set now, right? Not so fast. Not long ago, I received a catalog in the mail and not two this time, but one. In the catalog, it said that I had paid for one of the five items I needed to fulfill my part of the deal. This is when I started to become a bit uneasy. So, I sent Columbia House an e-mail regarding it. I notified them of my account numbers, the movies I had ordered, how much the checks were, etc. I received an e-mail saying that there was no indication I had ordered any of those movies and that they had me down for one buy, with two on the way, so three out of five. I also had -$5.00 on my online funcash account. I researched the FAQ on funcash and it was only negative if/when a customer returned a movie. I have never done that, so I notified them of this, as well. I estimated on my online account that it should have been at a +$12.00. When they wrote back, they said that there was $12.00, not signifying any research was done to show that $12.00 was the exact number I should receive in funcash. I then went to check my online account and see if I did have $12 in funcash and guess what? The account was/is closed.

So, I then finally decided to call Columbia House. The first lady I spoke to seemed nice, but didn't know what I was talking about, so she transferred me to an online specialist. This specialist was just that, "shpeshal". I tried explaining the situation, the funcash, the obligation to both accounts, the closed account, etc. She tried explaining, "Well, once another account is opened, the previous one is closed." Yeah, that's what they said, but if that were TRUE, I would've had ONE account all along! AND, the online account that was just closed today was my third and final account, so THAT should've been the one left standing if what she said was accurate. Also, there's a two account maximum per customer, so it made no sense for them to have canceled that membership. I kept asking, "But, that doesn't make sense. Why was it canceled today? It was there yesterday. I was told that I received $12 funcash on that account." She repeated what she said before, "Once you start a new account, your old one is canceled." Again, this online account was the third, so the second should've taken the place of the first and the third (the online account) should've taken the place of the second and been the final one standing. But, she didn't understand what I was saying and she had no excuse on not knowing English well. She knew her English. She then tried to say, "It doesn't make any sense to have three accounts anyone." I'm rolling my eyes and thinking to myself, "Yeah, no kidding. This is what I've been trying to tell you guys for some time, but you keep running me around in circles." Yeah, I know this, lady. I wanted to make sure that the five DVDs I did order got taken care of, so I could cancel my two mail memberships and maintain my online one. Unfortunately, one mail membership was canceled along with the online one and I had to make an online account for the lone mail membership. So, I guess I'm down to one membership finally, but not the one I was hoping to keep. Unreal.

Columbia House can provide some good deals at first and after one fulfills their commitment, but customer service has been dreadful. They're also quite limited in their selection. Amazon has a much wider variety of films than CH. Columbia House doesn't even have Office Space, My Cousin Vinny, or the Star Wars films, amongst others. So, for any of you out there who are thinking about becoming members, make sure to think it over carefully and remember, if it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.