There are some lessons that most of us have to learn the hard way – and I think one of those is definitely if something sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Hopefully, it’s a lesson you only have to learn once.
OP learned it at 17 when he signed up for Columbia House Music Club.
So this happened over 30 years ago when I was 16 in the 1980’s.
In those days there were adverts in the press for a record club (this is actual physical albums) where you could get some albums free by signing up and then get sent three a month after that which you had to pay for by a money order within 30 days or get charged interest.
So I used it for a few months and it was okay but then there was less and less good choices and I wanted to cancel the subscription.
Which he explains, in case you are a young’un.
Each month I got the albums I could return them in prepaid plastic envelopes, but for the first few months I kept the albums so had a load of spare prepaid envelopes (important for later).
When the quality of albums went down I just sent them back, but this was becoming a nuisance since it was getting close to when I was due to go to College and move away from home.
When he called to cancel, they smugly informed him he’d signed a contract.
I contacted the company to cancel the subscription but that’s when they nuked me by saying that I’d agreed a 36 month rolling contract, from each agreed purchase.
Waiting 3 years to get rid of this was not an option because I’d need to return every month to my parents to return the albums. I told them I was moving away, they were not interested thinking they had me and they did.
They told me to send anything back I did not need each month and pay for what I kept and they would start the ending of my contract from when I stopped buying albums.
So, he figured he’s send whatever he could find back in their prepaid envelopes.
I made it clear I had stopped.
Cue the Malicious Compliance. I thought about all the things I did not need, that I could send them apart from the garbage albums I was being sent each month.
My Dad did building work on the side of his main job so we hard hardcore and cement in abundance, at the back of the house.
So I got one of the first plastic prepaid envelopes and filled it with hardcore and wet cement waiting for it to set.
It was almost too heavy for me to carry to the post office, but I got it there.
The company had to pay by weight for whatever was in the envelope, so it would have cost a lot.
I phoned them two weeks after that, I mentioned I had quite a few envelopes and they wisely decided to cancel my account immediately.
If it looks to good to be true, then it is, I learnt that at 17.
Success!
This person said they took a different tactic.
Apparently a few parents had to deal with it.
Back when mailing lists were the actual mail.
They had one for books, too.
You only have to pay with your soul.
I can’t believe a 17-year-old was clever enough to think of this.
And yes, as a fellow older Millennial, I am jealous.
Want to read another story where somebody got satisfying revenge? Check out this post about a woman who tracked down a contractor who tried to vanish without a trace.