From: "nathan williams" <natejwilliams@home.com>
To: <CyberPagan@OutoftheDark.com>
Cc: <johnculhane@home.com>
Subject: Damark complaint
Date: Thu, 25 May 2000 22:58:41 -0700
 

Hello... several years ago my mom called me about something she had purchased through Damark (a down comforter), it sounded interesting so I had her order the item for me and gave her my credit card # to use since I was purchasing it... (it turned out to be duck down which wouldn't have been too bad had they bothered to pluck the feathers off the duck instead of including the whole thing but I ate well for a while and slept lousy as they made quite a racket... I am, of course, being facetious but I'm ticked! -oops pun intended)
 
This year I noticed a charge to my account for $89 from DMK.. I called and found out it was for her "membership" fee but she had since canceled her credit card and so they found the next available #... mine...  I asked for a refund and received a partial refund but was told I had to pay the "pro-rata" share since I could have used the services from the time they charged my account until the time I told them to take it off.
 
When I called about the partial credit they told me the did not have the ability on their computers to refund the pro-rata share from my credit card... but would send me a form as the "head" office had that mysterious and awesome power. Naturally I wanted to call the home office (there really must be aliens on our planet from the Damark Galaxy) but they wouldn't give me the telephone number as they didn't have a number they could only contact their home office through their internal intranet....  but assured me they would mail the complaint form to get the partial credit...
 
Of course that was a couple weeks ago so I filed a complaint here in Washington with the Atty General's consumer complaint division... then decided to look Damark up on the internet and found your sight... Thank-you for letting me vent. I will contact the consumer complaint division and give them the additional info. regarding the litigation MN and WI have against Damark for their illegal charging of people's credit card accounts...
 
Now I am wondering if they charged me last year and I just wasn't paying attention... First and foremost it is illegal to charge someone and they must know that because when you call you get an option in the phone maze for "if you have been charged for a membership fee that you shouldn't have"  they don't tell you it's not for the total amount.  Even if they refund they make $ on the interest... 
 
last... yeah right.. the home office doesn't have a telephone? Apparently they're still using telegraph (purchased through Damark ironically enough which explains why it doesn't work)...   and the computers in the billing dept. can only credit the account for up to the pro-rata share...  again a Damark computer...  the whole thing is a big rip-off scheme and I wonder how many other people get charged and either don't catch it or catch it and get part of the bill credited and figure they'll just pay the smaller pro-rata share and call it good...  what a rip
 
In the meantime I have called my bank to have them take the pro-rata share off and charge it back to the company and I just got to their web site via your link and sent an e-mail complaint....
-Nathan Williams