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Associated Publishers Subscription Services is a magazine subscription agency that can handle magazine subscriptions for numerous publishers. There is not necessarily anything wrong with ordering through a magazine agency, but if you are considering ordering from or have ordered from Associated Publishers Subscription Services, you should be aware of the following:

• According to the solicitation, your subscription is automatic "with receipt of your payment." We honestly don't know what this means. We have to wonder if this means that renewals of the subscription will be automatic, and if we'll be charged a higher price than we might otherwise pay for the renewal, and if we would be allowed to cancel an automatic renewal, and if we were allowed to cancel, if we would be charged a processing and handling fee of $20 or an increased fee if they decide to increase this fee.
• According to the solicitation, "upon receipt of this offer you will automatically be enrolled in the American Consumer Publishing Association." We have no idea whether this may be of any value to us, but we wonder if there will be some obligation after the free one-year membership, or if we'll have any use for the extra mail that will result from this membership.
• According to the solicitation, the price includes a $20 processing and handling fee. This is not a common industry practice, since most subscription agencies want to encourage your business and not give you a reason to buy your subscriptions someplace else. We wonder, if the subscription price has had this extra charge added to it, how it can be a very good deal. And we wonder, since thcancellations are not permitted after 3 business days, whether they might charge us $20 if we decided to cancel within 3 business days.
• According to the solicitation, the subscription price of $56.82 for 3 years of Popular Science is 47% off the cover price. We wonder how this price compares to the regular subscription price, since that's the comparison that makes the most sense.
• We wonder why anyone would want to purchase a subscription through this company, given its onerous policy that all sales are final, when most subscription agencies and publishers will allow subscribers to cancel and receive a refund of the unused term of the subscription.
• According to the solicitation, the notice sent is a "marketing offer, not a bill or invoice." We wonder why they state at the top that it's a NOTICE OF RENEWAL when they have no idea whether your subscription is expiring, and why some people think that it appears to be an invoice, and we wonder whether, if you've sent money to this company because you thought it was an invoice, whether the Postal Inspectors would want to hear about it. We think so!
• According to the solicitation, information about the benefits of ACPA membership is available at their web site http://www.acpai.com -- but we wonder why, instead of including information about the purported benefits, they have posted a diatribe against the Attorney General's Office of the State of Oregon, which apparently has reason to believe that the marketing practices used by them are deceptive.

Read the American Consumer Publishing Association Diatribe .

States sue Publishers Services Exchange: http://www.directmag.com/ar/marketing_oregon_washington_sue/

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