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National Home Gardening Club
In article , "Jim Lewis"
wrote: In the mail today comes an epistle from the National Home Gardening Club. It contained a small packet of red poppy seeds and a second packet containing about one tsp. of "all purpose" timed-release plant food (14-14-14). If I join, they, promise I'll get more loot and get to "test" garden goodies -- starting with what looks to be a knock-off of a Feclo pruner -- on a monthly basis (and I can even KEEP the goodies!). All this for (apparently) $1.00 a month. Dunno what the kicker is, but I'm gonna pass. But I will enjoy the poppies ;-) and use the fertilizer in a pot somewhere. No micronutrients in the fertilizer, though, so it's probably not too good as a pot fertilizer on a regular basis. I'd be glad to pay a buck a month for bad tools & random seeds just out of idle curiosity, but it does seem like this is some sort of come-on-attraction for a hidden scam, so best left untouched. They are probably part of a "club" factory that is often in hot water with the better business bureau for vile service: Cooking Club of America, Handyman Club of America, Health Club of America, Guns/Hunting Club of America, & so on, with a staff that is never going to be very helpful in exchange for your $12 membership because talking to you even once would eat up whatever profitability you may represent. If you're satisfied with the generically topical newsletter for $12 a year probably you'll be happy; but if you expected to be a member of a club which lives up to sundry promised services & bonuses, probably you'll end up annoyed. They sell "charter memberships" which are "exclusive" since 1997. Dishonest ad campaigns don't bode well for honest services or products. One of the strangest things, too, is how many UseNet posts & bulletin board boasts begin "I have received a mailing from the National Home Gardening Club" or "Has anyone had experience with National Home Gardening Club," invariably careful to banner the whole name. It kind of makes one wonder if these hundreds of queries aren't themselves stealth spam, which would be in keeping with the dishonesty of calling random subscriptions "exclusive charter memberships." I don't think that's at all what Jim Lewis is doing since he has a posting history in the Bonsai ng, but it's a little odd to say the least that these queries are so common & seem to be slight variations off a template. This past thread: http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...04ax.com#link1 indicates that some people have had serious problems with them rebilling for things already paid for or for things never actually received. "Rebilling" is a standard method of bad companies hoping bills are just paid by people who don't actually keep very good records & don't ever realize they're paying multiple times for each thing or for things they didn't actually get. Checking quickly sundry complainers around the web, one person complains that after a full year she still hasn't gotten the free sheers or any other free stuff but is being billed to rejoin (she perhaps failed to look close enough at all the ad enclosures; you have to read all the crappy little bits of paper full of pitches in order to figure out how to get the sheers. Sending your money that one time won't do it automatically). Even so, she thought the magazine was worth the money anyway. Another person claims she has become a regular product tester for them & has never been asked to do anything but fill out forms about each product, which is how it would be with a legit research company. But yet another soul complains that she received products she never requested, returned the unrequested items, but was hasseled for months to pay up or get turned over to collections, while all her attempts to communicate with them about the error failed (again, probably did not read all attached flyers; some "clubs" demand that you explicitely inform them beforehand you don't want to buy a product or it will be sent automatically & you will have to pay up. This is arranged so that the average human being that does not read every scrap of junkmail, but just tosses junkmail summarily, can be billed & threatened until they cave in & pay up). As they also sometimes threateningly bill for things never even sent, they seem to have worked every possible gambit into their system, all of it designed so they can credibly deny it was anything but a mistake, every time the Better Business Bureau gets involved. Yet some people seem honesty to like the magazine itself, & can't find any agregious accounts of people feeling more than the most mildly duped. -paghat the ratgirl -- "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher. "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature. -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers" See the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com/ |
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