How do I opt out of book clubs and stop receiving books/bills from them?

Question

It's only been a week since i started receiving books from the following book clubs...:

>Literary Guild Select Club

>Quality Paperback book club

>Book-of-the-month Club

And I don't know how to stop them... I don't even remember applying/ordering these books I received. And I have to pay for these books...

I've searched on the internet and I've found many complaints about these book clubs... and not yet found a solution to my problem...

I have opened only one of my packages to see the contents...and I've noticed there's no phone number/email address/etc. So there's no way to communicate with them. I've been advised to send them back un-opened. But I know that probably won't stop them from sending books to me and I'll just have to keep paying shipping charges...

Someone help please. >_<

I may have been doing some marketing (surveys) which probably got me into this mess...

Answer 1

Postal Regulations state that you do not have to pay for items sent to you through the mail which you have not ordered.

However, if you have joined a book club -- that is, answered an ad, commercial, direct mail -- and agreed to become a member and take a minimum number of offered books in exchange for a premium (&quot;Take any 3 books for $1.00!),

then you entered into a contract and you are obligated to fulfill your part of the contract.  You may cancel it by returning any premiums you received for joining the book club.

You are receiving books that you haven&#039;t ordered because book clubs operate on a marketing device called &quot;negative option and reader&#039;s inertia.&quot;

Book club members are sent advance notice of book club selections -- books which have been chosen by the club as the current offering of the club. These advance notices  are masked as book reviews but are actually promotions. As a book club member, you are given the OPTION of refusing the book -- usually by returning a form enclosed with the advance notice ... or not doing anything and having the book sent to you automatically. This is negative option. Book clubs survive because readers are lazy --this is reader&#039;s inertia -- and they fail to return the rejection form.

Now...when you joined the book club, the agreement was that you would buy a minimum number of books offered by the club.  Readers who remember the terms of their agreement will often allow several books to be sent to them automatically in order to fulfill their obligation. Then...they forget that they don&#039;t have to buy any more books and indeed could resign from the club without any penalty. The book club continues to send these advance notices and then the books and the reader, who has now gotten into the habit of regularly receiving these books, automatically pays the invoices that accompany the books. This sometimes has gone on for many years. (Book of the Month Club is 81 years old.)

Send the Club a letter resigning from the Club and see what happens.

You may get a stern note saying that there&#039;s a &quot;quid pro quo,&quot;  you took the premiums agreeing to buy a minimum number of books and you still owe a certain number of purchases. Or you may get a letter saying, return the premiums and that will be an end to it.

Idea: in every communication with the book club, &quot;cc&quot; Postal Inspector.That is send a copy of your letter to your local Postal Inspector, noting that you have done so on the bottom of your letter to the book club.  That might get their attention!