I’ve mostly joined book and music ones. The music ones, Columbia House and BMG, weren’t too bad, just outrageous shipping charges.
The book clubs:
Mystery Guild - been a member for 15 years, no problems.
Doubleday - EVIL! I requested monthly emails instead of their regular mailings. I didn’t get either, so they kept sending the selection of the month and I kept sending it back. Then after a couple of years they notify me that I didn’t fulfill my agreement. They figure I would’ve spent $65 if I had fulfilled it. So, they said if I sent them $65 they would send me 8 vouchers that I could use to get the books I want. I sent the money. They sent the vouchers with a letter saying I had to choose my books from the tiny pamphlet they included. :mad:
Science Fiction/ Fantasy Book Club - Okay, but most of the new books were sequels to old books that were no longer available.
Cookbook Club - Overpriced. Plus cookbooks are big so the shipping was outrageous.
Craft Book club - didn’t recieve half the ones I ordered, but still got charged for them.
Harlequin Romance ( I was trying to get brownie points with my MIL) - The service was good and they had a lot of freebies, but the books were the same story with different settings.
Other clubs:
Recipe club - lots of freebies, but too pricey.
Gevalia Coffee - Good service, but got too pricey.
**Good Cook ** - Rapidly ran out of cookbooks I wanted. Cancelled.
**History Book Club ** - I actually order about 4 books a year from them, but never the Editor’s Choice.
**Wine of the Month ** - Reds only, please. A satisfied customer for over 10 years. We also belong to several wine clubs which ship every other month or so. Fess Parker ships quarterly. Very satisfied with all of them.
I’ve never joined any, but my wife joined the time of the month club when she was about twelve. Doesn’t seem very pleasant, but she figures she’ll hang in for another fifteen years anyway.
I signed my dad up for a cookie of the month club one year for his birthday from an online retailer. It was kind of expensive but he really loved getting good cookies once a month.
I joined Columbia House CD club many years ago. I now appear to be a member of the “Columbia House, we miss you, please come back!” club. You’d think that after maybe 10 years and an address change that they’d figure out that I’m just not buying that many CDs nowadays…
My mom got me a tea of the month club from Tea Source. They called me up and asked me what kinds of teas I was interested in trying, and then sent me 2 ounces of tea each month for six months. I drink tea daily, but I am only one person, so that basically kept me in tea for a year. Best. Christmas. Present. Evar.
I also joined some cooking thing . . . forget what it’s called. Cooks Club, or somesuch. They had a very nice magazine (which was easily worth the cost of “membership”), and they also occasionally sent you a free gizmo or gadget to try out, with a rating card to fill out and send back. I got two different gadgets to try, and both were pretty stupid, so I rated them as such, and then ended up throwing them out. Then they did that thing were they send you a book and say if you like it, just keep it and you’ll be billed; if not, go out of your way to go find a box to return it in, then drag your ass to the post office to mail it, and even if you do that, we’re going to send you a bill in two weeks anyway, and because the return address label we provided puts the thing on a slow boat to Albequerque, we’ll follow up with another bill two weeks later that accuses you of trying to keep the book without paying for it (which, incidentally, is prefectly legal, since you never asked for the book in the first place, but I didn’t know that at the time.)
This is how you treat customers? I don’t think so. I canceled that membership.
Over the years joined and quit Book of the Month Club several times. Why? Each time I quit, waited a while for them to offer a great inducement to re-join, so I did, fulfilled the 4-book obligation,and quit again. Have gotten the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary, the Complete Works of Shakespeare, and loads of other goodies at a nominal or no cost for joining.
Shipping (and handling) charges are ridiculous. I asked them not to “handle” the books, but they would not listen.
Now, I find that any book I might want can be purchased from Amazon.com for much less than the so-called discounts from any book club. What’s more, if you buy $25 workth at a time, the shipping is free. Sometimes Barnes & Noble will beat Amazon, but not often.
I get quarterly shipments and share them with friends. I don’t drink much coffee but I love their flavored stuff. Once or twice a year they’ll offer a special – buy some new coffee and they toss in a new coffeemaker or a picnic pack or something, and it’s always neat stuff.
I was a member of the Leisure Horror Book Club for awhile, but they aren’t set up for automatic payments of any kind, and I hate writing checks, even one a month, so I dropped them.
I was in the Cosmetique club for several years. Every month a new selection of cosmetics packed in cute little bags. I rarely use makeup so I gave most of it away. I think I only stayed in because it was so much fun, seeing what was coming. $25 a month.
I really liked that when I stopped Cosmetique (twice), all I had to do was call. No questions, no sales pitch to stay in, no pressure.
I was in both BMG & columbia house. I stayed with BMG much longer and I really got my money’s worth out it. Good Service and very easy going about the Don’t send me the selection of the month unless I ask for it. Built a very large cd collection largely from them.
I was briefly in columbia house Movie Club, It was terrible and I completed my agreement and quit.
**Science Fiction/ Fantasy Book Club ** for a while in the 80’s. Selection was terrble and quality of hardcovers was poor. Several problems with getting wrong books.
[QUOTE=Podkayne]
My mom got me a tea of the month club from Tea Source. They called me up and asked me what kinds of teas I was interested in trying, and then sent me 2 ounces of tea each month for six months. I drink tea daily, but I am only one person, so that basically kept me in tea for a year. Best. Christmas. Present. Evar.
[QUOTE]
Is the tea in bags? If so, my mother would love this…but I don’t see a link from the website. Help?
I joined BMG about 15 years ago and bought plenty of CDs from them. I was always annoyed with the “don’t send the selection” post cards I had to mail each month. One day a co-worker gave me a secret phone number where I could call and ask them to never send me monthly selections again.
Maybe things have changed, but at the time that was unheard of.
Once I called the special number, my monthly mailer would come, but the portion with the “don’t send” checkbox was xxxx’d out. I apparently have some magic flag set for my account because they continue sending me the packs even though I haven’t bought a disc from them in ten years. I always have the opportunity, though
I used to be in both the Quality Paperback Book Club and the Book of the Month club. Not bad, but having to send back the cards in time telling them I didn’t want the monthly selection got tiring after a while (as well as returning the “accidental” arrivals).
It was a real breakthrough. I had joined around 1987 and had the magic switch made around 1988. I was in the Navy and with FPO’s and mail trying to catch up, the club wasn’t working. About a year ago, my account finally atrophied and died. I hadn’t bought a CD in over 5 years.
Heh. I joined a “Boxer of the Month” club one time. I think it was Joe Boxer brand boxer shorts. Every month they’d send you a pair of boxer shorts, a different, random pattern each time. It was fun the first six months or so, but the patterns & colors started getting really ugly, and I don’t know where they got their cotton, but the fabric was really coarse & scratchy. They said 100% cotton on the label, but you could wash these suckers 50 times and they were still kinda coarse. I eventually quit when the patterns just got too ugly & obnoxious, even for boxer shorts. Plus, they really weren’t shaped all that well. The seat was too baggy.
And with all due modesty:I’ve got a great booty! It’s the only thing that still gets me compliments, in my advancing age.
well, I attempted to join a wine of the month club, and I found that they could not deliver to MD or DC. ummm, what?
Next, I attempted to join a recipe of the month club and my email would not accept any of the recipes - spitting them back as spam. umm, what?
Lastly, I am the member of a woman’s only month club…one week a month where I get mood swings and cramps delivered to my doorstep. That club seems to deliver on-time, every month without fail. Go figure.
BMG was pretty good, but after iTunes it became kind of redundant.
We’ve done a couple of wine clubs, but there’s only two of us so “of the month” was a bit overboard. Beer-of-the-month was FUN, and we got to share those. Now we’re on to coffee-of-the-month. Somewhere in between was probably drunk-of-the-month and hangover-of-the-month.
So, they said if I sent them $65 they would send me 8 vouchers that I could use to get the books I want. I sent the money. They sent the vouchers with a letter saying I had to choose my books from the tiny pamphlet they included. :mad: