ComplaintsforDirect Promotions and Renewals, LLC

• Initial Complaint

  06/25/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  Direct Promotions has targeted my 81 year old mother (a legally vulnerable adult) with predatory practices. Every time I tried to call their phone number listed on the credit card statement - it went to voicemail. When reporting fraud they claimed products were received and charges valid. It should be illegal for a company to purchase senior citizen information from medigap / ******** D insurance companies to sell bogus magazine subscription bundled renewals! For over a year my mom had been trying to get a $339.60 charge reversed. (No idea yet, how many she paid before that) Her social security barely covers her ******** premium - has no way of paying off bogus costs. IE late costs, interest etc related to Direct Promotions. A single $339 charge has ballooned to well over $550 10 months later. Not to mention all the stress it has caused her.

  Business response

  07/02/2024

  First off we have never purchased senior citizen information from medigap / ******** D insurance companies. We would not even know how to do that. Our business has made several attempts to contact ************************* to no avail. If she were to leave a message we always return calls within the next business day. We have refunded the last charge of $369.55. We have had them as a customer since 2016. We have no idea how old a customer is as we do not have that information. We have left multiple messages with the number the daughter provided but no return call. We even provided our hours. At this point that is the best we can do.

• Initial Complaint

  03/08/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  This company has been misleading my 89 year old father about consolodating magazine subscriptions. They are charging a very high price for these subscriptions and talking an older adult into buying extra "gift" subscriptions. When I call the listed ***** number at 1pm mountain standard time there is only a message that says the offices are closed. So, when I read that they are legit and would "fix" issues, I doubt the truthfulness because it appears that there is NO WAY to contact them by calling.This is definately a predatory situation for senior adults who are struggling to hear and often, more isolated and vulnerable. I'm sure they do discuss lots of details and are upselling throughout the whole process.

  Business response

  03/17/2024

  We have no way of knowing the customer's age and we do not ask them that question. If we would have received a message, we do return calls the following business day. We were finally able to contact the daughter and offered a sokution. We are refunding some of the orders. WE are also adding the customer to the Do Not Call List. We strive to keep our customers happy and were not aware of the situation. Please accept our apology for any inconvenience

• Initial Complaint

  01/19/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Service or Repair Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  The company Direct Promotion Renewals ************, have been scamming my 97 year old dad for 2 years billing him over $200.00 a month for magazines which he did not order. We filed a dispute with his credit card company and the Direct Promotions claimed he has renewed every month when they call him. My dad may be 97, but is pretty sharp and never would have agreed to these magazines. I have called them several times, but either I never get anyone or they never call back. This is a total scam with the elderly and I want it stopped before they scam more people. I have read several reviews and they have been doing it for years. Hope you can help, not so much about the money, but what they are doing to the elderly at this time.

  Business response

  01/23/2024

  We spoke to the complaintant on Friday and did the 1st refund, then spoke to her again on Monday when the 2nd refund was processed. We will be doing a 3rd refund next Monday which is what was agreed upon in the conversation on Friday the 19th of January.

• Initial Complaint

  01/08/2024

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  This company has been charging my credit card for unauthorized magazine subscriptions. I have contacted them to get credits for these charges but that resulted in additional charges. I am now seeing over $1900 in charges in a 9-month period. Any reasonable person can see these are fraudulent charges. I have macular degeneration, so I have no desire to receive magazines. I have difficulty reading anything. I have found other reports and reviews on-line from others being victims of the same type of fraud. They need to be shut down one way or another.

  Business response

  01/16/2024

  None of the charges were unauthorized, as we spoke to the customer, went over the order and were provided the credit card and the order was verified, All the customer had to do was contact us through the number that we provide, instead of disputing the charges. We contacted the customer last week and spoke to the customer's daughter. When we spoke we agreed to refund the last 2 orders, but have to wait for the time frame of the dispute process to end before refunding per our merchant. As it could cause the customer to get double the money back. One charge will be refunded in February and the other in March. We have guidelines we have to follow. If customers call us before disputing or contacting BBB we are pretty easy to work with. Most of our previous disputes through BBB were always resolved to the best of our ability.

• Initial Complaint

  12/29/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Billing Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  On 10-28-2022 I got a call purporting to be from ATT U-verse loyalty program regarding my monthly bill. They offered me a $60 monthly discount on my almost $300 monthly bill. They had personal information about my monthly bill and after determining quite wrongly that they were legitimate I gave them a check number to pay the new $207/ month bill and they said I would not have my autopay charged in November as Id already paid. My November payment was paid automatically so I call the number I was given and spoke with an ******************* who promised me that he would make sure that my December payment would not be taken. I called yesterday ***** to **** and they could not see any record of the calls and transaction that occurred from the loyalty program which, by the way, does NOT have a separate phone number. I was informed that I had probably been scammed and my cancelled check is made out to direct promotions.luv and it was cashed by you/ them.

  Business response

  02/03/2023

  I know this is not our company, first because there is a company by the name Direct Promotions LLC but not ours. Our company is Direct Promotions and Renewals LLC. We call existing customers for the publications and nothing else. We have had our customers mention being called by a company called Direct Promtions but only a few. I apologize for this issue but not our company.

• Initial Complaint

  07/16/2022

  Complaint Type:

  Sales and Advertising Issues

  Status:

  Answered

  More info

  From October 22nd, 2021 to April 5th of 2022, Direct Promotions Renew billed my 91 year old mother's credit card totalling $1,993. She signed on with this company to renew subscriptions on two magazines that could have been done for a fraction of the cost. B of A is also investigating our complaints. Reading past reports on this platform, I see that this company has a history of preying on the elderly.

  Business response

  08/08/2022

  Business Response /* (1000, 5, 2022/07/22) */ This is in response to the complaint filed by Mr. **** regarding in his mother and charges on her credit card. First and foremost, all he had to do was call us and we would have handled the situation with possible refunds and adding her to our Do Not Call List. Although other complaints in here say we prey on the elderly, that is not the case. We have shown that each time. We have no way of knowing a customer's age or health status. She was very aware of what she was doing because Visa has something in place where it will not process the charge unless the customer calls the bank and authorizes the transaction. She did that each time and called us back after she spoke to the bank. We do not force anyone to do anything. She did not sign on with us like a contract or anything. Customers go through a verification process where the representative goes over the entire order to be sure that is what they want and then to processing. His mother ordered gift subscriptions for 2 gifts. I believe on 1 of the orders she ordered 1 publication for herself, and the rest was for the 2 gifts. And it was more than a couple of subscriptions, and these were for 1-year terms as we do not do anything longer than that. As stated, if Mr. **** would have called us, we could have done a refund, but at this point we cannot do that as he also disputed it with the bank and when that happens, we must let it go through the dispute process in its entirety. Nothing can be done while it is in dispute status per the merchant processing. That can take up to 45 -60 days for the dispute process sometimes. But Mr. **** never called us once. There was no need to file a complaint because if he would have looked at everything, he would have seen that a good percentage of complaints were resolved satisfactorily. We do our very best to make sure our customers are happy. Mr. ****'s mother was very pleasant and never said anything to anyone that she wasn't happy. We have responded to Bank of America with the proper paperwork and are awaiting their decision. Once that is determined Mr. ****'s mother will either get her money back or it will be reversed in our favor. While it is in dispute status there is nothing we can do. I apologize for any inconvenience this may have or is causing. He could have even left a message and it would have been returned the next business day. Hopefully this can be resolved once it is complete as far as the dispute process.

*Some consumers may elect to not publish the details of their complaints, some complaints may not meet BBB's standards for publication, or BBB may display a portion of complaints when a high volume is received for a particular business. ↩