From: "Gary C" <gcdiskman@email.msn.com>
To: <CyberPagan@OutoftheDark.com>
Subject: Damark International
Date: Mon, 13 Mar 2000 17:28:42 -0800

To whom it may concern:

I have a major concern with the company Damark International, Inc.  It seems that this company obtains your credit card number, bank account number or whatever that is attached to its customers money and they charge everyone a membership fee.

They charge everyone in their database, without their knowledge and without authorization.  When you catch the charge on your credit card statement, they give you a sales pitch for the "membership" they charged you for.  After I declined, the company only credited back to me a portion of what they illegally stole from me in the first place.  I again had to make another follow up call after I got my credit card statement a month later when I noticed they did not fully credit my account.  They pitched me the fact that since I called one month after the initial charge to my card that this is the "pro-rated" amount.  I got very upset with the company at this
point and asked to speak to a manager because this is absolutely ridiculous. 

This company illegally charged my credit card without my authorization and then they do not credit me back the full amount because I did not cancel the membership in time.  Well...  I never spoke to a manager.  I have gotten nothing but the run around.

So...  I have done some research on the company.  Here is a small sampling of what I have found.  I found a press release to its stockholders that reports this:
(I found this at this url:)
http://www.mediacentral.com/channels/marketing/925285414_414.html

  Damark membership up; catalog sales down
 STAMFORD, Conn., April 28 (Catalog Age Weekly) - While the membership base of general merchandise cataloger and membership services company Damark International (www.damark.com) grew 17%, contributing $25 million to the company's first-quarter revenue, catalog sales fell nearly 26%, to $84 million from $114 million last year

My goodness... according to this, Damark illegally obtained $25 million from the customer data base.  This is so unbelievable.

I also obtained several e-mail addresses of people who have been burned on this scam.  I found their e-mails in a stock chat session found at www.stock-talk.com.  Here are the url's for the letters that I read about this scam on ther people.

http://www.stock-talk.com/talk/DMRK.shtml?0.549530029296875
http://www.stock-talk.com/talk/DMRK/12.shtml
http://www.stock-talk.com/talk/DMRK/14.shtml
http://www.stock-talk.com/talk/DMRK/3.shtml
http://www.stock-talk.com/talk/DMRK/5.shtml
http://www.stock-talk.com/talk/DMRK/9.shtml

What I am hoping by sending you this e-mail is that you will help me in my quest.  I am hoping you will uncover more details about this illegal practice.  This company is making major money by illegally charging its customers.  I will bet that since the dollar amounts are relatively small,
most people are just letting it go because it is quite frankly not worth their time.  However, after I have done just a little research I see that it is not a small amount of money after you add it all up, it is $25 million dollars.  This is a very large sum of illegally obtained money.

Would you please help me in my quest.  Would you please investigate this scam more thoroughly.  Help put this company out of business or stop them from this illegal practice!

Sincerely,

Gary Clarke
Mathematics Teacher
San Jose, California