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Christmas is almost upon us so
let me take this opportunity to wish you and yours the merriest
of Christmases and a prosperous New Year.
I'll be taking some time off and won't be doing my usual weekend updates. What I am doing is resurrecting a couple of columns that continue to generate comment from readers on a regular basis.
In June of 1999 I wrote about attending an introductory meeting for UCC TotalHome with my wife. It's a pricey consumers club that lets members pool their purchasing power to buy products, mostly furniture, at wholesale prices.
I expressed some skepticism at the time about its usefulness as an investment, particularly if you were not immediately in the market for furniture. I was also very critical of their hard sell approach. And I opined that the usefulness of such a club might become obviated by the Internet as more and more manufacturers decide to sell directly to the customer.
After this article was published, I received a number of emails complaining about the UCC and alleging problems with deliveries, quality of merchandise and more. I followed up my original article with another one in November of 1999 in which I outlined some of these complaints.
Since then I've continued to receive emails on my articles in three categories - readers who read the articles and thanked me for helping them avoid a costly mistake, readers who read the articles after they had joined UCC and asking me how they could get out of the deal, and a couple from satisfied UCC customers and/or employees who thought I was unfair to the company. The majority were in the first two categories.
Because of the continuing popularity of these columns, I've updated them to our new format, eliminated bad links and offer them here for new readers who may not have seen them before. Additionally, I've included a new page - Getting Out of the Deal. Happy Reading!
Consumer Clubs: Are
They Worth the Price?
Consumer Clubs Under
Fire
Getting Out of the Deal
Comments? Suggestions? Why not post them on our Bulletin Board or email me.
E-mail me!
ZZZNEWSLETTERSIGNUP1ZZZ
Copyright Notice: The mail graphic was taken from Icons For HTML and is believed to be in the public domain. Please advise me if that is not the case. The Christmas Tree graphic is from About.com's Guide to Horse Racing Cindy Pierson. The midi file is from The Midi Farm.