Kay Wall doesn’t normally buy anything from people who come to her door in Eden Prairie. But the young man who appeared in June peddling magazine subscriptions had a convincing pitch. “It was basically giving him kind of a business opportunity to better himself,” Wall recalled.

So Wall paid $50 for a subscription to Military History, a magazine she thought her husband would like. That is, if he ever got to see it. The magazine didn’t come, and didn’t come, and didn’t come, even within the 120 days promised by the company, Urban Success, Inc. of Missouri City, Texas.

Wall called the company repeatedly. She got one “unintelligible” message in return and then finally spoke to somebody. The magazine was no longer being published, Wall was told, and she would receive a refund of her $50 by Nov. 14. It didn’t happen. Now the company’s phone number (866 617-0755) rolls over to an unintelligible person’s voicemail.

“I don’t know if this Urban Success went out of business, or was just a scam to begin with,” Wall said. “Against my better judgment, I got suckered in. I’m kicking myself for it.”

My investigation hasn’t yet solved the missing magazine caper. It did reveal some intriguing facts:

1) The door-to-door magazine salesman didn’t have a peddler/solicitor license from the city of Eden Prairie and therefore was breaking the law.

2) Military History magazine is still being published.

3) Urban Success, Inc. has an “unsatisfactory” rating from the Greater Houston Better Business Bureau because it hasn’t responded to 43 of the 45 complaints lodged with the BBB.

Two messages I left at the toll free number were not returned. I couldn’t reach company executive Timothy Moore on his cell phone either. Urban Success’s registered agent, a Houston attorney named Jeanne Fugate, told me she merely helped register the company several years ago. She’s trying to get her name off the company records because she has heard of other complaints about it.

Door-to-door magazine sales crews have stirred up quite a bit of controversy in recent years, not just for cheating customers, but also for the violence, drug use and other unsafe conditions among the young workers dispatched into neighborhoods across the country from their homes.

The Federal Trade Commission has a number of tips for those trying to avoid magazine subscription scams, including the “cooling off” law that gives consumers the right to cancel a deal within three days with a full refund. By law, the sales rep has to tell the customer about that right, as well as a form to do it with.

Christy Weigel, licensing technician for the Eden Prairie police, said that as in most cities in the metro, Eden Prairie requires door-to-door solicitors to have a city license, which typically involves a background check, and residents should ask to see the license. This is the first she’s heard of Urban Success, Inc., although the city this year denied a solicitor’s license to another magazine subscription peddler with a similar name, Urban Development Solutions.

Weigel encourages people to dial 911 if they’re suspicious about a peddler’s motives or behavior. If the sales rep doesn’t have a license, “our officers have the discretion of taking them to jail,” Weigel said.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 31st, 2008 at 9:47 am and is filed under Businesses in hot water, Buyer beware, Complaint sagas, Scams. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.