In order to escape the clutches of Mountain Area Communications you must write them a letter. Yes, it is that simple, though very few of their employees will tell you that (some will, if you are nice). Write a letter kindly explaining that you would like to cancel your subscription and send it to Mountain Area Communications, P.O. Box 738, Sneedville, TN 37869. This address may change, so I would recommend giving them a call to verify it. I also recommend paying the extra couple of bucks for some sort of delivery confirmation, just in case.

Next, call 866-640-9631 and tell them you would like to cancel. This is a service called Benefits that Mountain Area Communications probably signed you up for, and you are being charged $34.95 a month for it!

Now, check your statements daily and jump all over anything that looks out of place. You probably won’t have any problems, but never assume. Good luck, and godspeed!

Here’s how it works:

First, you will probably receive a phone call from someone (who may claim to be from a group called Publishers rather than Mountain Area Communications) explaining that you have won some sort of gift certificate for using a Mastercard or Visa. You will soon find out that in order to receive the gift certificate you must subscribe to magazines. The magazine subscriptions are for a 60 month period, but they bundle the payments together so that you have paid in full by the time 20 months have passed. It is a decent deal if you like magazines and want to pay for a 5 year subscription in a year and a half.

Once you have decided to take them up on their offer (which over the long run could cost you more than the gift certificate is worth depending on how many subscriptions you choose) they will put you through a verification process that involves three phone calls. You will be recorded answering certain questions, and you will also be informed that you cannot cancel because they pay everything up front for the magazines. Then you wait for all of your information to come in, select your magazines, and fill out some information in order to receive your gift certificate.

The problems:

1. You can’t cancel.

2. The “large” selection of magazines does not even fill one whole page.

3. The gift certificate is to a website that has a “constantly changing inventory” but after 90 days your gift certificate expires (read:worthless).

4. You can’t cancel.

5. You will be signed up and charged for other things.

6. Did I mention that you can’t cancel??

Of course, there are ways to cancel. Find out how to cancel an account with Mountain Area Communications.

There are a lot of scammers out there, and there are plenty of watchdog sites like snopes.com out there keeping the world informed. This site has a bit of a different purpose. There are certain organizations that masquerade as legitimate businesses, while in fact they are what I call “legal criminals.” The goal is to shut these places down. Awareness is key, but is not the only piece. This blog intends to be an ongoing discussion of how to effectively prevent these people from taking any more money, and how to escape their ridiculously legal hold.