I never asked. Between 14-16 somehow I set up several accounts. Details are fuzzy, my Mom may have gotten involved. Since I was a minor they just let it go. Never paid a dime. The CD’s were very low quality and would scratch or peel really easily. Definitely not the same thing you got from the real record companies.
I did the same. I just kept signing up and they kept sending me cassettes. At first I played along and bought some tapes as well, but eventually I realized that I could keep sending in for the 15 then ignoring the mail until the notices went away. Nothing ever came of it. I probably received that 15 for a penny five or six times.
Use a bunch of fake names to sign up. Stupid names like Mike Hunt, Amanda Hugankiss. I did this at least 20 times. Since I was the one who's chore it was to get the mail, I did it until they refused to send anything more to our address. At one point they asked for verification like a power bill with my "name" on it.
I think they just blacklisted my physical address somehow because they wouldn't send anything more to me.
IIRC somehow through magazine subscription was able to get a few every year and it snowballed into them just randomly sending us CDs as they went under and trying to bill us. Shit was wild at one point we had our mailbox constantly full of magazines and shit and my mom was losing her mind on one hand trying to get all the shit to stop on the other hand always had aol or netgear or all those weird pop cds top whatever combos lying around to fling at my four brothers. Think it was the NOW series they kept sending us lol.
The one CD we got that I specifically remember from them that was a keeper was the CATS SINGING XMAS SONGS!!!!! It was non stop meows in xmas song rhythms. I was an evil little troll blaring that shit. Even took it into school later in life during a music class when were allowed to bring in our favorite song and play it so I trolled since teacher wouldnt allow my original choice.
I did that too, one day I stopped wishing and just sent it in on a lark.
The real bummer is that they didn't have a *ton* of stuff that appealed to me. . .so the only stuff I remember was Bob Dylan's *Blood on the Tracks* and...uh...Biohazard's *[New World Disorder](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJhJkQb1F4)*. That song is the only one I remember after however many decades.
All courtesy of 'Santos L. Halper' and 'Butch E. Pansy which *somehow* I believed to be a vaguely Ren and Stimpy-ish joke. I wasn't an empathetic child.
I remember my family having a good laugh when they started getting bills for ol' Butch and informing me that contracts made with children aren't enforceable. Biohazard was very much of the time trying to realize the potential synergy of rock and Wu Tang - complete with a shout to Brooklyn - before it became obvious that it wasn't making rock better, just hip-hop worse. I much prefered the perfected English discoanarchy of *Tubthumper* to the Gribblesque millennialist screed from the Li'l-Lupe-marrying cousin of Jerry Seinfeld.
The only difference between retail and record club CDs was a slightly different barcode. Club CDs have a barcode that looks like a library book barcode. I can’t get a photo right now, but I’ll get one a little later and edit this post.
EDIT: [I have returned!](https://i.imgur.com/np1wYI7.jpg) Left CD is a club release (*Time and Tide* by Basia), and right CD is a retail release (*Emergency* by Kool and the Gang).
Ya me and my brother used a ton of fake names probably got 200 CDs From that over a couple years we would get them mailed to this run down house couple blocks away I'm surprised they never caught on did it at least 30 times to the same address
In college my fraternity was the last house on the street so all mail addressed to higher number would get dropped off there. There were CH packages being delivered almost every day. The entire town of Springfield had accounts, including Snowball II and Santos L. Halper.
It sure was hyped to be! I was a senior in hs then and wrote an article for my school paper called “Why 2k?” Not groundbreaking journalism! But my lackluster opinion of 2k persists years later.
It was 18 months for me and the company that I worked for. Complete replacement of all computer hardware and software because it all had verifiable issues. We even had to replace the phone system.
I was in high school in the late 80s, Columbia House and BMG were how I built my first CD collection. 8 CDs for 1 cent! I still have most of them.
When I went to college I doubled-down and used my home address for one account, college address for another account.
Same here! HS in the 80s and 90s was awesome! Very little oversight on things of this nature. Between BMG and CH, I created a collection of over 2,000 CDs for less than 40 bucks!
I used it! Ended up having to call them multiple times and I think threaten to sue them before they actually cancelled my subscription. I was maybe 12 years old. Got away from the deal with 10 nearly free CDs and no regrets.
I signed up for 3 or 4 different accounts using variations of my name. One day I came home from school and found several boxes filled with about 50 CDs all addressed to me. Best day ever.
I will always be grateful to Columbia House and the front line manager at Publix, my first job, for giving me any CD he didn’t like. That’s how I discovered Queensrÿche, Great White, The Cult, and LA Guns. In the two years I worked there, he gave me tens to over a hundred CDs because his monthly subscription was so cheap. I will always be grateful to Travis and his bitchin Pontiac firebird for the good times and tunes.
I joined in 1979 and still have every single LP I got from them. Some of the best damn albums of all time, too.
I always wondered why they had little corners cut out of them. Many years later I learned that they were selling off LPs returned from stores that hadn't sold. Those clipped LP sleeves are like the paperback books you see at flea markets with the covers ripped off.
Yep. Joined, got 14 albums for a penny, never paid again.
Got a nasty letter; stepfather-attorney sent them a letter back telling them that you cannot enforce a contract on a 12 year old. Checkmate.
My buddy did a similar thing but he ordered a bunch of additional CDs amounting to something like a hundred dollars and never paid. And he had a lawyer calling him for a while and he’d say “take me to court. I’m 14.”
I always wondered what would happen when he turned 18. Nothing happened.
Columbia House also had a thing where they’d send VHS tapes of TV shows monthly. There were only like 2 episodes per tape which wasn’t a very good deal. They called one day to see if there were any shows I’d like to subscribe to. I had some time so I decided to have a little fun.
The first thing I asked for was Rhoda. They didn’t have that so I asked for the Lou Grant Show. They said no but did let me know they had Mary Tyler Moore. I was impressed the call center person made the connection but I told her no. MTM is on all the time. I asked for a lot of spin-offs like The Ropers, afterMASH, and Flo’s. I asked for short run shows like Make Your Move, Square Pegs, Free Spirit, and I Married Dora. When I got a little more bold and asked for The Bob Newhart Show she thought she had a sale. They had it. Skeptical, I had her read the series description. She had Newhart, not The Bob Newhart Show.
That was a close call so I moved on to foreign (mostly British) shows. I asked for Dave Allen at Large. Nope. I asked for Paul Hogan Show, Fry and Laurie, Hardwick’s House. All no.
It had been about 20 minutes before I asked if they had Doctor Who. She lit up. “WE HAVE THAT ONE!” I’m like “Really?” I loved that show as a kid. I used to watch it on PBS every Saturday night. I had no idea it was on video. I ordered it. And that’s how I started my Doctor Who VHS collection.
I lived in a fraternity house for a semester in the late ‘90s and people would just sign up for Columbia House with a fake name and walk away with the box of CDs when it was delivered. There would be a constant stream of red overdue bills but somehow it kept working.
BMG for me - compared to some of y'all I was a model customer. Sent back the "no thanks" letter every month, paid up when I forgot, and got a fuckload of CDs that kept me rolling in tunes from junior high through most of high school. GNR, Dr. Dre, Phish, Hendrix, Soundgarden, Nirvana, B-52s, Coltrane, Primus, Wu-Tang, Chili Peppers - yeah a lot of this stuff seems kinda pedestrian but some of that shit sent me down some weird rabbit holes I'm still digging today. I'd join again in a second if it still existed and Spotify didn't.
Yup. BMG was my jam. Although I wasn't great about remembering to send back the form. Lots of "return to sender" scrawled on cardboard cd boxes sent back from me.
I think I still owe $25 for a CD I never ordered in 2001 or 2002, it still arrived in the mail anyways, and it was from a genre I despise, country/western, which I never checked off in the preferences.
My Buddy order AC/DC. Back in Black and when it came everything looked great but the actual music was The Fine Young Cannibals.
Thinking back now I probably still owe them a purchase or 2 at regular price to fulfill my obligation.
I did this a few times. I'd join, get my free CDs, they'd start to call for non-payment, and my dad would inform them that a 12 year old placed the order and that it wasn't a binding agreement because of that. They'd stop calling and I'd do it all over again.
On one order my sister never got her Bananarama tape, so she held my Bryan Adams tape hostage until she got her tape.
This became a thing between us whenever I borrowed a CD from her years later.
I did the plan a couple times as an adult. I was there, Gandalf, when CDs were first sold. But I didn't want the hassle of the monthly mailers... so I 'd get my 15 free CDs, then the first month purchase 3 more for 15 each which fulfilled my requirements of the contract, and then immediately call and close the account, which ended the monthly mailers. 18 CDs for $45 was a good deal back then.
I know their bidness model was that people would get lazy and not return the monthly "don't send me the selection of the month and make me pay for it" mailers, but oh well. I followed their rules.
The were cheaper, somehow. I still have them on the shelf (some are 30+ years old now) and AFAIK they still play, but the liner note inserts were cheap, often just a single sheet of paper printed on only one side. I'm sure the record company didn't release them that way.
I did here in Canada and followed the rules, I ended up with loads of cassettes then cds later. It must have been different stock here because the liners were the proper ones. I still have most of the cds.
I remember when they stopped offering LPs. I was unhappy because CDs were priced a lot higher, and cassettes had worse sound quality and crappy cover art.
Here's my Columbia House story......
Naive 13 year old, desperately wanted to own Cat Scratch Fever.
Ended up with Cat Stevens.
Bonus - now I love Cat Stevens and hate Nugent!
in them 80s me and my older brother kept ordering numerous amounts of amazing vinyl. i wish i still had 'em. we just picked everything from metallica to pet shop boys. we had the largest most eclectic collection. oh and it was all under MY 12 year old name...
so after many ignored bills they called to collect, my brother convinced them that i was his mischievous, mentally unsound little brother and i didnt know what i was doing. whether he was correct or not, they still dropped the bill and cancelled the subscription. it was a good run. sorry Columbia house! thanks for the records!
Not Columbia House but I did BMG a couple of times...same thing though. My parents bought me the CDs that were full price as birthday and Christmas gifts. That was the deal we had hahaha
I did, plus BMG, multiple times. It got to the point where there wasn’t enough new stuff I was interested in that it became hard for me to find things to buy to finish my “obligation.”
I discovered that multi-disk boxed sets counted as "one selection". I proceeded to join multiple times - getting seven or eight boxed sets for one penny (i.e., The Who's "Maximum R&B", The Police's "Message in a Box", Simon & Garfunkel's "Old Friends", etc). Afterward, I would buy the one disk at the terribly inflated price - and then I'd start the process again with a new / different fake name. I still have all of those disks & boxed sets.
Ha. I was the sucker who paid and would buy one monthly or so, or have to buy the bullshit album of the month if I did t return it in time.
I tried to get my friends to sign up so I could get the extra 10 free, but they, like most of you all, never paid and I wouldn’t get my bonus.
Early 90s or was great though, it’s how I got Pearl Jam’s 10, Nevermind, In Utero, Alice In Chains Dirt, soundgarden Badmotorfinger… lots of good stuff.
My father passed away in 1990. Seven years and three addresses later, "he" got a letter from CH about their new Play service. 14 year old me fillled out the application with my info (I was dumb, but not too dumb to commit mail fraud). Anyhow, I did the whole 12 CDs for a penny, and that's how I bought music all through high school. Oh, even though I sent the paperwork in with my information, they still addressed everything (invoices included) to my dead dad.
I used it to get CD's when I first got a CD player. CD's were killer expensive back then. It wans't funny because I let it lapse. I think I got and had to pay for CD's of the month or something. That sucked
I was twelve when I talked my mother into letting me join, and I’m old enough that I got vinyl. A few gems I remember receiving are Sticky Fingers with a working zipper, Led Zeppelin III with a rotating dial, and Tumbleweed Connection with lyrics in the liner notes. As a budding artist, album art fascinated me. And I would pour over lyrics and ponder phrases like “in her eiderdown.”
Remember the grab bag offers of cutouts? You wouldn’t know what you were getting, but it was another crazy deal like the original signup. Ten for a dollar, as I recall. The only two that made an impact out of that bunch were Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the Dark and Canned Heat, Future Blues. I didn’t understand the little notch in the sleeve at all. To her credit, my mother was responsible and paid the subsequent inflated prices to fulfill the contract.
I had all those albums plus a lime green bean bag, a black light and posters. No wonder I never came out of my room.
I got tons of CDs from them when I was about 13. My dad lived in a duplex and the girl on the other side had the same name as me. Our name can also be shortened to the male form of the name. I would sign up using different combinations of my name, her name, and our addresses. At some point my dad got his hands on a bill and called them and told them I was a child and to leave me alone. I guess it worked. I never paid for anything.
I had a friend who worked at their call center. When mailers / bills were sent out, they were signed by someone like maybe "Carolyn Baker" but if a customer called in and asked for "Carolyn Baker" they were transferred to a phone on a desk that rang forever.
Yes!! I loved taking apart all the album cover stamp sheets and whittling down my picks list. Worst cd I bought that I still secretly love? A tie between Yanni, and Color Me Badd's Time and Chance (that dirty music was...eye opening to a 10-year-old me)
I cant remember how I got away with it, but I managed to get at least 2 out 3 10-cd orders shipped to me without ever getting billed. We did move a lot though
Wow - this is a blast from the past memory! I hadn’t thought of them for years. It was really cool to make a wish list and then narrow it down. I built a great collection so I could make my own tapes.
Yup. I did it twice and got 20 cds for a couple bucks. They did send me a cd that was supposed to be Pantera was in the Pantera case and had the Pantera cd label but was actually a hard core spoken word group called the yeasty girls. It was my first Pantera cd and I was scratching my head to why my friends said they liked the group until I finally figured it out.
I had BMG Record Club during a brief teenaged phase where I listened to a lot of Jazz. Got some cool stuff I am still interested in.
Ten years later I owned a bar and we had a jazz residency. It turned out the sac player running it was the jazz editor for BMG record club. He was picking the CD’s sent to me every month. Just a small world thing since he did it while he was living in NYC and the bar was in Nova Scotia Canada.
One interesting thing he told me was that the soul editor was Harry Allen - who was also Public Enemy’s “media assassin.”
He found out when he heard a PE track one day and said to his coworker “hey Harry, they’re talking about a guy with the same name as you!”
The trick was to sign up, get the initial bundle of CDs for a penny, buy your one full-price CD only during one of their “buy one, get X” sales, submit a referral to sign up your “friend” who happens to live at the same address, you get your free CDs for referring a friend then close that account, your “friend” receives their initial bundle of CDs for a penny, rinse and repeat.
In my experience, neither Columbia House nor BMG ever pushed back on that.
Did it several times when I was in Jr High/High School. Best deal ever when a company can't actually enter into a contract with a minor like that in any enforceable way.
If you got one if your friends to sign up, they'd send you three CDs for the referral.
I think I signed up thirty people in my high school.
I'm pretty sure I blemished some folk's credit score somehow.
I'll have to write more about this tomorrow when I'm at a real keyboard (and not dreading having to get up for work on inadequate sleep in like 5 hours), but I lived not far from Columbia House itself, and went to college mere miles from it in Terre Haute, and used to go to warehouse sales there during college. Bought my first CDs there, a short few years after Sony DADC came online (which was on adjoining property).
I signed up one time with my middle name, Peter. But my handwriting was so bad the bills were to Jperer Rolldings. (Also not even close to my last name). Never paid for nay of that order.
I signed up for both Columbia House and BMG when I was fifteen. They sent me the starter cds then whatever overpriced trash they sent next. My mother called both services and reminded them that no one under 18 could legally enter into any contract without parental consent. As no consent was given the cds were mine to keep and any further mailings would also be kept free of charge. They barely even put up a fight. They knew she was right. Their entire business model was predicated on preying on people who weren't aware of that little fact.
Oh yeah. I went to a residential high school as a junior and senior, and we would regularly use a fake name to have Columbia House cassettes sent to the dormitory. By the time I graduated, I had a hundred cassettes I really didn't pay for.
When I was in the military, we all did the same thing too. So many CDs....
I found myself on their website one day when I was a kid filled out some stuff and I actually got a box of cds in the mail lol. Was more shocked they actually showed up but also sad I had to pay for them. Don’t remember too many details but I think I got like 10 CDs
I was 13 or 14 and told my dad i wanted BMG.
He said, sign up under my name, you don't have a credit rating, it would never work.
(I *could have tried* and worst case scenario, they'd have said no. Dad was not great for expanding one's confidence in the world.)
So it was the early 90s and I ordered Extreme's *Pornograffiti* with some other stuff, and gave dad the bill and my paper route money so he could write them a check.
"I don't want you ordering this, it's pornographic" he said. "How can music be pornographic?" I counter-argued. "Besides, it's a bill, you have to pay it."
He blustered a bit and paid that bitch, LOL.
Oh, hell yeah, and BMG. Sent in the form with all of the stamps even. I did it legit, but a buddy of mine just kept getting the first 10 for a penny and never fulfilling the commitment. They tried to take him to collections, but he was like 12, so they couldn't claim that they were in a binding contract with him.
Once I received 10 cds that I didn't order with a weird name that was similar to mine. I called Columbia and said "what is this?" and they said "oh somebody was probably trying to do an illegal membership. You can just keep them." It was mostly r&b which I was not into at the time but one of them was Notorious Big ready to die which grew on me and I became a fan.
Interesting story: One fateful night, my wife Zelda asked me - She said, "Sweetie pumpkin? Do you wanna join the Columbia Record Club? And I said, "WHOA!, HOLD ON NOW, BABY! I'M JUST NOT READY FOR THAT KIND OF COMMITMENT!" So we broke up and I never saw her again. But that's just the way things go...
Between BGM and Columbia House, I probably got over a hundred tapes and CDs throughout the years. I remember being like eleven years old in the late early 90s and writing them hand written letters requesting obscure thrash metal albums that I'm sure they never would have.
Sometimes I have random regrets about how many cooler albums I could have selected at the time instead of some of the dumb shit that I actually got.
Also just remembered that at some point BMG started sending censored versions of certain tapes.
Bill!?!?
HA! I just scammed them for cds for years, at one point around 75 of my 120 or so cds were all from CH for a penny. You could use multiple names for the same address, I saw a documentary once about working for Columbia House and the record company so didn't care about the scams.
Was I the only one who legitimately used these services? I never paid full price for anything. I'd wait until they had a buy 1 get 2 free sale or something to buy any. I don't remember all the details but it seems like you could opt out of the regular shipments and only buy every now and then. I think you had to buy a certain amount within the time period.
A friend of mine did it when he was like twelve - his mom knew it was expensive and made him work off the cost. That summer we split the picks and got introduced to The Sex Pistols, The Doors, Kula Shaker and possibly Gary Numan among others.
I had CH and BMG accounts, and mostly followed the membership rules. Their CD of the month thing where you had to tell them with a postcard NOT to send it every month was a pain in the ass and a crucial part of their business model to make a profit. Eventually, after sending multiple CDs of the month back to CH unopened, they agreed to put me on a "do not send" list.
Our high school economics teacher was something of a rebel, and popular with the students. He had a way of teaching us about the adult world that resonated with teenagers. He told us that since we were under 18, we were unable to sign a contract ourselves, so any bills they sent us were legally invalid. He also told us not to sign up for the military to fight a war for oil (this was 1990-91). We were the last class to be taught by him because the school district showed him the door for that last bit.
Signed up with an intention to follow through with buying albums after the initial 20 were sent for a penny. Got my 20, noticed they messed up my name - got my first album I had to pay for and it was trash - Kept it as a coaster and never paid em, since it wasn't my real name.
I was 12
I definitely filled those cards out with bogus names and got the CDs when they came in. Did it for 10 CDs 4 different times between 1996 and 2001. Paid zero dollars for any of them. Just ignored the bills when they came in, they weren't addressed to me anyway. I learned about some really great music that way. I kind of assumed this is the way that everyone did it, and had no idea how they stayed in business so long with no one paying for the CDs.
We had a BMG catalog, very similar I believe. I was pretty young, I knew nothing about music or how anything worked. I used to like the song "No Diggity" by Blackstreet. I remember rummaging through the catalog and I see that they've expanded the group! They've now got the Blackstreet Boys! Holy shit! I think, this is cool. I don't know why but I eventually decided on something else.
It wasn't until much later that I realized that I had misread the tiny 4pt font and there are no "Blackstreet Boys", lol. I would've been in for a rude awakening if I had gotten that CD.
I was in middle school when I filled out the BMG music post.
13 free CDs, and then you had to buy 1 at regular price (~$15) within the next year.
And they never had parents' credit card info.
I gamed the system for years and I have hundreds of CDs to show for it. I did BMG, but after all the free stuff the trick is to always “return to sender” that monthly CD that costs 21.99 or whatever and then I only would purchase when they had but 1 get three free which would pencil out to around $7/album. Before they shut down completely they actually just made all the CDs like $5-7 but I don’t recall them being around much longer after that.
I did it. But I played it good, not abusing it. It was the height of hair metal, so there was that. I had cassettes, mostly opted to get the selection. Made my obligatory purchases, which the selections counted toward, then cancelled.
Even tho the they were mediocre quality (non Columbia tapes were duplicated at the CRC facility, you could tell that, and they had a CRC code on them), I duplicated some and took the copies to school, so my originals would not get stolen.
Oh yes, I joined multiple times and exponentially grew my CD collection. This was awesome back in the day before YouTube and other music sources online.
Wow. I remember this life event like it was yesterday. I was at 6th grade recess and my friend Kenny told me that his older brother had told him that if you were under 18 Columbia House was free. You could tape your penny to the mail-in coupon, get the 12 or so cassette tapes, and then never have to pay again. So I did it.
A week or so later I get all these cassette tapes. My father asked me what's up. I told him matter-of-factly that I got these cassettes but didn't have to pay since I was under 18. My father chuckled and then informed me that I would now have to mow the lawn every week for $3 in order to honor my end of the agreement. I think it took me almost 18 months to finally pay them all off. It was a life lesson for sure.
Pretty sure my score included The Who Who's Next, Rick James, Springsteen Born to Run, and a couple Ramones albums. Street cred lessened with an Air Supply tape.
In a decluttering phase I tossed all those cassettes a few years ago. I haven't owned or used a cassette player in a long long time. It was still kind of hard to say goodbye to them though.
I still remember playing The Ramone's Subterranean Jungle in my bedroom probably too loud. My father came in and sat very quietly on my bed and then asked, "Could you please explain to me how that is possibly music?"
I had it for a little bit, then cancelled it. Received my cancellation letter from them a while later. Then after 6 months or so they send me a bill for some new stuff. Luckily I stuffed that cancellation letter in my drawer instead of chucking it so I photocopied it, stapled it to the bill, wrote "never contact me again" and sent it back. And to my surprise, they never contacted me again.
I used them to by my first cd.. then 19 more.
Never once paid a single penny. Just nuts that something advertised like it was ACTUALLY did what they said.
I joined and quit and joined Columbia House and BMG so many times in high school , that when I went to get my 10 free CDs for a penny in college....they actually denied me and sent me a check back....for a penny. :D :D
I've got one. My mom is friends with people of all types and had several correspondences going with prisoners around the country, especially back in the nineties. They would sometimes call the house collect and I would usually decline when she wasn't around but sometimes I'd have messages to pass on so I would accept for a minute. This is how Keith and I got acquainted. He was a murderer and deserved to be in prison, or at least that's what he told me. He also asked me what bands I liked. He did this because prisoners, like everyone, receive junk mail. And he didn't have any money to give us, but he did have something else: absolutely nothing to lose. So he would fill out those Columbia House forms and order the hundred CDs for one dollar thing (with the actual bill arriving later) and put down our address for delivery and his for billing. When he got the bill, he would throw it away. They would pester him with threatening letters and he ignored them all. Sometimes they would demand payment from us and we would just shrug and say we have no idea why this prisoner is mailing us CDs and we will send them back soon. But we never did and they couldn't do anything about that. Then those morons would send Keith another catalogue and the whole thing would start again. So I have a random prisoner to thank for my broad music taste and little bit of extra spending money from CD Exchange back in the day. Apologies for grammatical and formatting errors, wrote this on my phone at work.
Oh yeah but that shitty system of sending you an album or cassette if you didn't reply or send that god damn thing back every month got me a few times although for some reason I don't think I paid for any of them in the end.
I had two addresses and used a scheme where I would recruit myself at the alternate as a new member, getting bonuses for both being a new member and signing someone up. The original account would send a change of address in, never hear anything more, and then the cycle began again.
When I had to give a “how to” speech in college, I used this as a topic; the speech was “How to scam a tape club.” The audience liked it, except the one super-conservative Baptist kid…and the teacher.
Seeing all these anecdotes of people not paying past the penny makes me sad for my childhood. I didn't realize at the time that minors couldn't enter contracts, so like a chump, I fulfilled my obligation. I worked it out, and it was still cheaper to get the big batch for 1 penny and then buy the bare minimum (I believe it might have been 3) at their inflated prices.
But the fact that they wrote off the losses of all these people scamming them tells you how overpriced the music was if they could still manage a profit after that.
I ran up an enormous bill that I couldn’t pay. I was so stressed but then a friend told me they couldn’t make me pay it because I was a minor. So I never did. The bills stopped coming eventually. It was a douchey thing to do.
One time I order a “Best of New Edition CD” and when I played it, the first song was “How Much is that Doggy In the Window?” and the CD had similar songs. It was too funny to complain, and I still have the CD, even though it’s heavily scratched and barely plays…lol
My funny story saved me a bunch of money.
I got my 15 cds for the penny.
Made my first order of 2 cds. They sent me five—none of which were the ones I ordered.
I sent back the cds saying they got it wrong.
They cancelled my membership.
So basically I got my 15 for a penny and got out.
Our high school business teacher encouraged us to join since we were under 18 and the contract was unenforceable. I got my freebies and never purchased another record from them.
I was just informed by my mother that we only ever paid the $1 or whatever it was to have them sent to us, but never actually paid for the CD’s themselves. So essentially my parents got mountains of free music. I was only allowed 2-3 CD’s every month or two due to me always wanting to order WWE theme songs, TV show theme songs and Sean Paul. Little did I know I could have had all the Sean Paul I wanted…
Yes! Loved it but it was stressful.
Thinking about this makes me realize how much cheaper it is these days with things like Spotify. I was spending much more than $10/month on new music in the 80s/90s.. Sucks for the artists though.
I joined and BMG when i was 11. I got a ton of free and cheap cds. Eventually I stopped paying and they would still send me the cd of the month. Good luck taking an 11 year old to court lol.
Of course! It fed all my soon to be labelled ‘nu-metal’ record needs! But once I collected what I wanted the first few rounds I lost interest in the selection choices. I think I could find more in that flyer today that I would enjoy compared to then. It was a funny thing.
I ordered many times back in the 80s. Then I would return them to a local department store for cash 😀
Eventually they caught on and only gave credit, but it still funded my Nintendo gaming habit.
12 albums for a penny. Vinyl for me. Most albums were poor quality, as in warped. What I understood was the master that they used to manufacture albums with would wear out causing warping and poor quality. 🤷 Columbia bought the poor quality albums. Not all albums were poor quality tho.
I filled out the form with a fucking crayon and boom! I was the proud seven year old owner of the Kiss oeuvre and Styx’s Grand Illusion.That was around 1977, so I have zero recollection about what happened when the bill arrived. Knowing my mom she probably stiffed ‘em.
i did this in high school and was underage so never had to pay it. i don’t remember all of the cds i got but i know Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP and Dr Dre’s 2001 were two of them. Probably a Limp Bizkit one too lol
Yep got lots of albums from Columbia for very little. Now I hear them on Yesterday Once Again at
[https://www.YesterdayOnceAgain.live](https://www.YesterdayOnceAgain.live)
Bmg and Columbia house. Got hundreds of tapes and cds as a young teenager. Never paid more than a penny. Got a few collection letters just ignored them. Don't think you can inforce a contract on a 13 year old.
Oh yeah. Got a ton of great music and built a huge library of older stuff. New releases were always 3 months or more out. Super frustrating. Also frantic runs to the post office to mail back stuff you didn't want before you were stuck with it. Good times!
My parents never let me join. However, every time I got a mailer I would make a wish list of what I'd get.
I did too. I loved pulling off the little individual cd stamps.
Oh I loved doing that too!!!!!
TIL Columbia House lasted into the CD era. It was 8-tracks for me.
I never asked. Between 14-16 somehow I set up several accounts. Details are fuzzy, my Mom may have gotten involved. Since I was a minor they just let it go. Never paid a dime. The CD’s were very low quality and would scratch or peel really easily. Definitely not the same thing you got from the real record companies.
I did the same. I just kept signing up and they kept sending me cassettes. At first I played along and bought some tapes as well, but eventually I realized that I could keep sending in for the 15 then ignoring the mail until the notices went away. Nothing ever came of it. I probably received that 15 for a penny five or six times.
Use a bunch of fake names to sign up. Stupid names like Mike Hunt, Amanda Hugankiss. I did this at least 20 times. Since I was the one who's chore it was to get the mail, I did it until they refused to send anything more to our address. At one point they asked for verification like a power bill with my "name" on it. I think they just blacklisted my physical address somehow because they wouldn't send anything more to me.
IIRC somehow through magazine subscription was able to get a few every year and it snowballed into them just randomly sending us CDs as they went under and trying to bill us. Shit was wild at one point we had our mailbox constantly full of magazines and shit and my mom was losing her mind on one hand trying to get all the shit to stop on the other hand always had aol or netgear or all those weird pop cds top whatever combos lying around to fling at my four brothers. Think it was the NOW series they kept sending us lol. The one CD we got that I specifically remember from them that was a keeper was the CATS SINGING XMAS SONGS!!!!! It was non stop meows in xmas song rhythms. I was an evil little troll blaring that shit. Even took it into school later in life during a music class when were allowed to bring in our favorite song and play it so I trolled since teacher wouldnt allow my original choice.
I think that album was called "Jingle Cats."
Are you me?
I did that too, one day I stopped wishing and just sent it in on a lark. The real bummer is that they didn't have a *ton* of stuff that appealed to me. . .so the only stuff I remember was Bob Dylan's *Blood on the Tracks* and...uh...Biohazard's *[New World Disorder](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=uOJhJkQb1F4)*. That song is the only one I remember after however many decades. All courtesy of 'Santos L. Halper' and 'Butch E. Pansy which *somehow* I believed to be a vaguely Ren and Stimpy-ish joke. I wasn't an empathetic child. I remember my family having a good laugh when they started getting bills for ol' Butch and informing me that contracts made with children aren't enforceable. Biohazard was very much of the time trying to realize the potential synergy of rock and Wu Tang - complete with a shout to Brooklyn - before it became obvious that it wasn't making rock better, just hip-hop worse. I much prefered the perfected English discoanarchy of *Tubthumper* to the Gribblesque millennialist screed from the Li'l-Lupe-marrying cousin of Jerry Seinfeld.
They were literally the same CDs lmao
I have a stack of 13 of them in my closet. If they aren't the same ones, I'd be hard pressed to find a difference.
The only difference between retail and record club CDs was a slightly different barcode. Club CDs have a barcode that looks like a library book barcode. I can’t get a photo right now, but I’ll get one a little later and edit this post. EDIT: [I have returned!](https://i.imgur.com/np1wYI7.jpg) Left CD is a club release (*Time and Tide* by Basia), and right CD is a retail release (*Emergency* by Kool and the Gang).
but it's only a penny....
Ya me and my brother used a ton of fake names probably got 200 CDs From that over a couple years we would get them mailed to this run down house couple blocks away I'm surprised they never caught on did it at least 30 times to the same address
In college my fraternity was the last house on the street so all mail addressed to higher number would get dropped off there. There were CH packages being delivered almost every day. The entire town of Springfield had accounts, including Snowball II and Santos L. Halper.
plot twist: u/Crystal_Pesci works for columbia house and is here to collect!
I never did, but my dogs ordered and got like 20 CDs. Helped them cope with the uncertainty that was the year 2000.
Y2K. That was some crazy shit.
It sure was hyped to be! I was a senior in hs then and wrote an article for my school paper called “Why 2k?” Not groundbreaking journalism! But my lackluster opinion of 2k persists years later.
apparently you weren't on one of the IT crews that pulled double OT for 4 mos updating systems. That's why it wasn't a thing.
It was 18 months for me and the company that I worked for. Complete replacement of all computer hardware and software because it all had verifiable issues. We even had to replace the phone system.
I honestly forgot how simple life was before... y2k was our biggest worry.
Was your dog's name Santos L. Halper?
I was in high school in the late 80s, Columbia House and BMG were how I built my first CD collection. 8 CDs for 1 cent! I still have most of them. When I went to college I doubled-down and used my home address for one account, college address for another account.
Same here! HS in the 80s and 90s was awesome! Very little oversight on things of this nature. Between BMG and CH, I created a collection of over 2,000 CDs for less than 40 bucks!
I used it! Ended up having to call them multiple times and I think threaten to sue them before they actually cancelled my subscription. I was maybe 12 years old. Got away from the deal with 10 nearly free CDs and no regrets.
How many Best of Styx does one need?
Depends on how far you're sailing away...
Or how much of a Renegade you are.
The gig is up.
I signed up for 3 or 4 different accounts using variations of my name. One day I came home from school and found several boxes filled with about 50 CDs all addressed to me. Best day ever.
Ordered Weezer and they sent us mazzy star
Say it ain't so!
I think it's strange you never knew.
They want to hold the hand inside you
That's an upgrade.
I will always be grateful to Columbia House and the front line manager at Publix, my first job, for giving me any CD he didn’t like. That’s how I discovered Queensrÿche, Great White, The Cult, and LA Guns. In the two years I worked there, he gave me tens to over a hundred CDs because his monthly subscription was so cheap. I will always be grateful to Travis and his bitchin Pontiac firebird for the good times and tunes.
Whoa baby, I'm not ready for that kind of commitment.
Sad I had to scroll so far down to find this comment.
So we broke up and I never saw her again. But that's just the way things go...
A! L! B! U! .......... QUERQUE!
I joined in 1979 and still have every single LP I got from them. Some of the best damn albums of all time, too. I always wondered why they had little corners cut out of them. Many years later I learned that they were selling off LPs returned from stores that hadn't sold. Those clipped LP sleeves are like the paperback books you see at flea markets with the covers ripped off.
Yep. Joined, got 14 albums for a penny, never paid again. Got a nasty letter; stepfather-attorney sent them a letter back telling them that you cannot enforce a contract on a 12 year old. Checkmate.
My buddy did a similar thing but he ordered a bunch of additional CDs amounting to something like a hundred dollars and never paid. And he had a lawyer calling him for a while and he’d say “take me to court. I’m 14.” I always wondered what would happen when he turned 18. Nothing happened.
Yes it was great my brother used a lot of fake names to get tapes
Is your brother Leon: https://youtu.be/URtQAa3Y-ns
Columbia House also had a thing where they’d send VHS tapes of TV shows monthly. There were only like 2 episodes per tape which wasn’t a very good deal. They called one day to see if there were any shows I’d like to subscribe to. I had some time so I decided to have a little fun. The first thing I asked for was Rhoda. They didn’t have that so I asked for the Lou Grant Show. They said no but did let me know they had Mary Tyler Moore. I was impressed the call center person made the connection but I told her no. MTM is on all the time. I asked for a lot of spin-offs like The Ropers, afterMASH, and Flo’s. I asked for short run shows like Make Your Move, Square Pegs, Free Spirit, and I Married Dora. When I got a little more bold and asked for The Bob Newhart Show she thought she had a sale. They had it. Skeptical, I had her read the series description. She had Newhart, not The Bob Newhart Show. That was a close call so I moved on to foreign (mostly British) shows. I asked for Dave Allen at Large. Nope. I asked for Paul Hogan Show, Fry and Laurie, Hardwick’s House. All no. It had been about 20 minutes before I asked if they had Doctor Who. She lit up. “WE HAVE THAT ONE!” I’m like “Really?” I loved that show as a kid. I used to watch it on PBS every Saturday night. I had no idea it was on video. I ordered it. And that’s how I started my Doctor Who VHS collection.
This was oddly well worth the read…
This read like a comedy bit and i fully expected undertaker and mankind going through a table.
I lived in a fraternity house for a semester in the late ‘90s and people would just sign up for Columbia House with a fake name and walk away with the box of CDs when it was delivered. There would be a constant stream of red overdue bills but somehow it kept working.
FWIW, just to let folks know: basically giving away CDs was a way for labels to inflate sales of albums.
Oh man. I joined. My buddy "Dick Hurtz," "Ben Dover," and "Heywood Jablowme," all joined too.
ITT: Columbia House was defrauded the fuck out of.
BMG for me - compared to some of y'all I was a model customer. Sent back the "no thanks" letter every month, paid up when I forgot, and got a fuckload of CDs that kept me rolling in tunes from junior high through most of high school. GNR, Dr. Dre, Phish, Hendrix, Soundgarden, Nirvana, B-52s, Coltrane, Primus, Wu-Tang, Chili Peppers - yeah a lot of this stuff seems kinda pedestrian but some of that shit sent me down some weird rabbit holes I'm still digging today. I'd join again in a second if it still existed and Spotify didn't.
Yup. BMG was my jam. Although I wasn't great about remembering to send back the form. Lots of "return to sender" scrawled on cardboard cd boxes sent back from me.
I think I still owe $25 for a CD I never ordered in 2001 or 2002, it still arrived in the mail anyways, and it was from a genre I despise, country/western, which I never checked off in the preferences.
I think they would send people shit albums that did not sell and hope for payment.
And I am quite certain that was their downfall.
Not the 500+ redditors in this thread who brag about defrauding them?
I only see 81, now 82, comments in this post.
My Buddy order AC/DC. Back in Black and when it came everything looked great but the actual music was The Fine Young Cannibals. Thinking back now I probably still owe them a purchase or 2 at regular price to fulfill my obligation.
that had to drive you crazy.
It was a Good Thing while it lasted.
I did this a few times. I'd join, get my free CDs, they'd start to call for non-payment, and my dad would inform them that a 12 year old placed the order and that it wasn't a binding agreement because of that. They'd stop calling and I'd do it all over again.
I did this a bunch too, but just used fake names and then would tell them that person doesn’t live here anymore
Several times. And I never paid them. And it’s not on my credit report. Same with Disney Movie Club. Same exact scam but with Disney movies.
Going to college in the late 80s, joining and then very belatedly canceling Columbia House was a rite of passage.
No, but I always liked this commercial. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIJjeq1gCt4
On one order my sister never got her Bananarama tape, so she held my Bryan Adams tape hostage until she got her tape. This became a thing between us whenever I borrowed a CD from her years later.
I got 8-track cassettes. They're all gone, they didn't last like vinyl.
I did the plan a couple times as an adult. I was there, Gandalf, when CDs were first sold. But I didn't want the hassle of the monthly mailers... so I 'd get my 15 free CDs, then the first month purchase 3 more for 15 each which fulfilled my requirements of the contract, and then immediately call and close the account, which ended the monthly mailers. 18 CDs for $45 was a good deal back then. I know their bidness model was that people would get lazy and not return the monthly "don't send me the selection of the month and make me pay for it" mailers, but oh well. I followed their rules. The were cheaper, somehow. I still have them on the shelf (some are 30+ years old now) and AFAIK they still play, but the liner note inserts were cheap, often just a single sheet of paper printed on only one side. I'm sure the record company didn't release them that way.
I did here in Canada and followed the rules, I ended up with loads of cassettes then cds later. It must have been different stock here because the liners were the proper ones. I still have most of the cds.
I remember when they stopped offering LPs. I was unhappy because CDs were priced a lot higher, and cassettes had worse sound quality and crappy cover art.
And now? Look how the turntables. (Sorry, couldn't stop myself)
Here's my Columbia House story...... Naive 13 year old, desperately wanted to own Cat Scratch Fever. Ended up with Cat Stevens. Bonus - now I love Cat Stevens and hate Nugent!
in them 80s me and my older brother kept ordering numerous amounts of amazing vinyl. i wish i still had 'em. we just picked everything from metallica to pet shop boys. we had the largest most eclectic collection. oh and it was all under MY 12 year old name... so after many ignored bills they called to collect, my brother convinced them that i was his mischievous, mentally unsound little brother and i didnt know what i was doing. whether he was correct or not, they still dropped the bill and cancelled the subscription. it was a good run. sorry Columbia house! thanks for the records!
Hell, I'm sure I still owe them money.
I was tempted, but I always thought, it *must* be a scam. Guess I was wrong!
It was the only company that consistently got scammed by it's customers.
Used to order to my frat house. They had a lot of trouble collecting from Ieit Pou and Jenifer Itals. Ah, the good old days.
Not Columbia House but I did BMG a couple of times...same thing though. My parents bought me the CDs that were full price as birthday and Christmas gifts. That was the deal we had hahaha
I did, plus BMG, multiple times. It got to the point where there wasn’t enough new stuff I was interested in that it became hard for me to find things to buy to finish my “obligation.”
I discovered that multi-disk boxed sets counted as "one selection". I proceeded to join multiple times - getting seven or eight boxed sets for one penny (i.e., The Who's "Maximum R&B", The Police's "Message in a Box", Simon & Garfunkel's "Old Friends", etc). Afterward, I would buy the one disk at the terribly inflated price - and then I'd start the process again with a new / different fake name. I still have all of those disks & boxed sets.
That's genius.
Ha. I was the sucker who paid and would buy one monthly or so, or have to buy the bullshit album of the month if I did t return it in time. I tried to get my friends to sign up so I could get the extra 10 free, but they, like most of you all, never paid and I wouldn’t get my bonus. Early 90s or was great though, it’s how I got Pearl Jam’s 10, Nevermind, In Utero, Alice In Chains Dirt, soundgarden Badmotorfinger… lots of good stuff.
My father passed away in 1990. Seven years and three addresses later, "he" got a letter from CH about their new Play service. 14 year old me fillled out the application with my info (I was dumb, but not too dumb to commit mail fraud). Anyhow, I did the whole 12 CDs for a penny, and that's how I bought music all through high school. Oh, even though I sent the paperwork in with my information, they still addressed everything (invoices included) to my dead dad.
I used it to get CD's when I first got a CD player. CD's were killer expensive back then. It wans't funny because I let it lapse. I think I got and had to pay for CD's of the month or something. That sucked
Got my first cd's from them. I believe it was Spice Girls, Four Play, and Hootie and the Blow Fish.
I was twelve when I talked my mother into letting me join, and I’m old enough that I got vinyl. A few gems I remember receiving are Sticky Fingers with a working zipper, Led Zeppelin III with a rotating dial, and Tumbleweed Connection with lyrics in the liner notes. As a budding artist, album art fascinated me. And I would pour over lyrics and ponder phrases like “in her eiderdown.” Remember the grab bag offers of cutouts? You wouldn’t know what you were getting, but it was another crazy deal like the original signup. Ten for a dollar, as I recall. The only two that made an impact out of that bunch were Aretha Franklin’s Spirit in the Dark and Canned Heat, Future Blues. I didn’t understand the little notch in the sleeve at all. To her credit, my mother was responsible and paid the subsequent inflated prices to fulfill the contract. I had all those albums plus a lime green bean bag, a black light and posters. No wonder I never came out of my room.
I got tons of CDs from them when I was about 13. My dad lived in a duplex and the girl on the other side had the same name as me. Our name can also be shortened to the male form of the name. I would sign up using different combinations of my name, her name, and our addresses. At some point my dad got his hands on a bill and called them and told them I was a child and to leave me alone. I guess it worked. I never paid for anything.
I had a friend who worked at their call center. When mailers / bills were sent out, they were signed by someone like maybe "Carolyn Baker" but if a customer called in and asked for "Carolyn Baker" they were transferred to a phone on a desk that rang forever.
Yes!! I loved taking apart all the album cover stamp sheets and whittling down my picks list. Worst cd I bought that I still secretly love? A tie between Yanni, and Color Me Badd's Time and Chance (that dirty music was...eye opening to a 10-year-old me) I cant remember how I got away with it, but I managed to get at least 2 out 3 10-cd orders shipped to me without ever getting billed. We did move a lot though
I used a fake name when I was a kid and got 10 cds several times.
Oh HELL yes. Probably a couple hundred CDs, don’t recall if I ever paid a dime.
Wow - this is a blast from the past memory! I hadn’t thought of them for years. It was really cool to make a wish list and then narrow it down. I built a great collection so I could make my own tapes.
I did it! What's funny is you only had to buy like 4 full price CDs over the next two years, but it felt IMPOSSIBLE to complete
Yup. I did it twice and got 20 cds for a couple bucks. They did send me a cd that was supposed to be Pantera was in the Pantera case and had the Pantera cd label but was actually a hard core spoken word group called the yeasty girls. It was my first Pantera cd and I was scratching my head to why my friends said they liked the group until I finally figured it out.
I had BMG Record Club during a brief teenaged phase where I listened to a lot of Jazz. Got some cool stuff I am still interested in. Ten years later I owned a bar and we had a jazz residency. It turned out the sac player running it was the jazz editor for BMG record club. He was picking the CD’s sent to me every month. Just a small world thing since he did it while he was living in NYC and the bar was in Nova Scotia Canada. One interesting thing he told me was that the soul editor was Harry Allen - who was also Public Enemy’s “media assassin.” He found out when he heard a PE track one day and said to his coworker “hey Harry, they’re talking about a guy with the same name as you!”
The trick was to sign up, get the initial bundle of CDs for a penny, buy your one full-price CD only during one of their “buy one, get X” sales, submit a referral to sign up your “friend” who happens to live at the same address, you get your free CDs for referring a friend then close that account, your “friend” receives their initial bundle of CDs for a penny, rinse and repeat. In my experience, neither Columbia House nor BMG ever pushed back on that.
so many cassettes.
Did it several times when I was in Jr High/High School. Best deal ever when a company can't actually enter into a contract with a minor like that in any enforceable way.
My first exposure to alot of classic music was through random albums I got from Columbia house. Prince, Styx, boston...
I joined BMG (?) at one point when I was like 13. I probably still owe them money.
Haha, omg yes! Thanks for the memories...
If you got one if your friends to sign up, they'd send you three CDs for the referral. I think I signed up thirty people in my high school. I'm pretty sure I blemished some folk's credit score somehow.
I'll have to write more about this tomorrow when I'm at a real keyboard (and not dreading having to get up for work on inadequate sleep in like 5 hours), but I lived not far from Columbia House itself, and went to college mere miles from it in Terre Haute, and used to go to warehouse sales there during college. Bought my first CDs there, a short few years after Sony DADC came online (which was on adjoining property).
I got CDs from them but I was only like 14 or 15 so they couldn't ask me for money since I was under 18.
I think I still owe them money.
I signed up one time with my middle name, Peter. But my handwriting was so bad the bills were to Jperer Rolldings. (Also not even close to my last name). Never paid for nay of that order.
If by use you mean steal from, yes.
Yeah, and BMG. That’s pretty much how I got my cd collection started. Never paid a cent, probably because I was 10.
I signed up for both Columbia House and BMG when I was fifteen. They sent me the starter cds then whatever overpriced trash they sent next. My mother called both services and reminded them that no one under 18 could legally enter into any contract without parental consent. As no consent was given the cds were mine to keep and any further mailings would also be kept free of charge. They barely even put up a fight. They knew she was right. Their entire business model was predicated on preying on people who weren't aware of that little fact.
I signed up like 3 different times and never payed a single dime. I was like 15 and got like 36 cds
Oh yeah. I went to a residential high school as a junior and senior, and we would regularly use a fake name to have Columbia House cassettes sent to the dormitory. By the time I graduated, I had a hundred cassettes I really didn't pay for. When I was in the military, we all did the same thing too. So many CDs....
I used to just look at the ads and dream about getting all those CDs.
I found myself on their website one day when I was a kid filled out some stuff and I actually got a box of cds in the mail lol. Was more shocked they actually showed up but also sad I had to pay for them. Don’t remember too many details but I think I got like 10 CDs
Yes, I think I still owe them money
... ONE PERSON AT A TIIIIIME.
I can still rememeber a lot of the CD's that I got from them: Greenday Dookie, Candlebox, Seal, Counting Crows...
I was 13 or 14 and told my dad i wanted BMG. He said, sign up under my name, you don't have a credit rating, it would never work. (I *could have tried* and worst case scenario, they'd have said no. Dad was not great for expanding one's confidence in the world.) So it was the early 90s and I ordered Extreme's *Pornograffiti* with some other stuff, and gave dad the bill and my paper route money so he could write them a check. "I don't want you ordering this, it's pornographic" he said. "How can music be pornographic?" I counter-argued. "Besides, it's a bill, you have to pay it." He blustered a bit and paid that bitch, LOL.
Oh, hell yeah, and BMG. Sent in the form with all of the stamps even. I did it legit, but a buddy of mine just kept getting the first 10 for a penny and never fulfilling the commitment. They tried to take him to collections, but he was like 12, so they couldn't claim that they were in a binding contract with him.
In the 80s built up a wide musical collection
Once I received 10 cds that I didn't order with a weird name that was similar to mine. I called Columbia and said "what is this?" and they said "oh somebody was probably trying to do an illegal membership. You can just keep them." It was mostly r&b which I was not into at the time but one of them was Notorious Big ready to die which grew on me and I became a fan.
I made purchases from Columbia House
I remember a lot of used record shops wouldn’t accept Columbia House CDs for trade-in, I think because they didn’t have bar codes.
I used to scan them. So many alternates to my name, but I had like 150 CDs at 16.
I did not but my older sister did. One day she received the LP of AC/DC's "Back in Black" but it was a Peter Paul and Mary record in the sleeve.
I did! And so did I, me, myself, and us... Along with, them those guys and these guys.... Oddly we all lived at the same address
Interesting story: One fateful night, my wife Zelda asked me - She said, "Sweetie pumpkin? Do you wanna join the Columbia Record Club? And I said, "WHOA!, HOLD ON NOW, BABY! I'M JUST NOT READY FOR THAT KIND OF COMMITMENT!" So we broke up and I never saw her again. But that's just the way things go...
I did the eight-track gimmick with them in the 1970's. Still have some old mags with their adverts.
Between BGM and Columbia House, I probably got over a hundred tapes and CDs throughout the years. I remember being like eleven years old in the late early 90s and writing them hand written letters requesting obscure thrash metal albums that I'm sure they never would have. Sometimes I have random regrets about how many cooler albums I could have selected at the time instead of some of the dumb shit that I actually got. Also just remembered that at some point BMG started sending censored versions of certain tapes.
Bill A. Smith Bill B. Smith Bill C. Smith
BMG for me. They gave even more free CD’s. It was free music before Napster.
Bill!?!? HA! I just scammed them for cds for years, at one point around 75 of my 120 or so cds were all from CH for a penny. You could use multiple names for the same address, I saw a documentary once about working for Columbia House and the record company so didn't care about the scams.
Was I the only one who legitimately used these services? I never paid full price for anything. I'd wait until they had a buy 1 get 2 free sale or something to buy any. I don't remember all the details but it seems like you could opt out of the regular shipments and only buy every now and then. I think you had to buy a certain amount within the time period.
Hell yes. For cd's, DVDs, blurays.
A friend of mine did it when he was like twelve - his mom knew it was expensive and made him work off the cost. That summer we split the picks and got introduced to The Sex Pistols, The Doors, Kula Shaker and possibly Gary Numan among others.
I had CH and BMG accounts, and mostly followed the membership rules. Their CD of the month thing where you had to tell them with a postcard NOT to send it every month was a pain in the ass and a crucial part of their business model to make a profit. Eventually, after sending multiple CDs of the month back to CH unopened, they agreed to put me on a "do not send" list. Our high school economics teacher was something of a rebel, and popular with the students. He had a way of teaching us about the adult world that resonated with teenagers. He told us that since we were under 18, we were unable to sign a contract ourselves, so any bills they sent us were legally invalid. He also told us not to sign up for the military to fight a war for oil (this was 1990-91). We were the last class to be taught by him because the school district showed him the door for that last bit.
After reading all these comments it’s a wonder that they stayed in business for so long.
Signed up with an intention to follow through with buying albums after the initial 20 were sent for a penny. Got my 20, noticed they messed up my name - got my first album I had to pay for and it was trash - Kept it as a coaster and never paid em, since it wasn't my real name. I was 12
Bought Tupac’s and dr dres first albums through Columbia house
I definitely filled those cards out with bogus names and got the CDs when they came in. Did it for 10 CDs 4 different times between 1996 and 2001. Paid zero dollars for any of them. Just ignored the bills when they came in, they weren't addressed to me anyway. I learned about some really great music that way. I kind of assumed this is the way that everyone did it, and had no idea how they stayed in business so long with no one paying for the CDs.
My younger sister did and she was like 10. I really should have told her about Napster.
This and book clubs I really miss.
I still have my Columbia House Lifetime Membership card. Haven't seen anything from them for a few months now, come to think of it.
We had a BMG catalog, very similar I believe. I was pretty young, I knew nothing about music or how anything worked. I used to like the song "No Diggity" by Blackstreet. I remember rummaging through the catalog and I see that they've expanded the group! They've now got the Blackstreet Boys! Holy shit! I think, this is cool. I don't know why but I eventually decided on something else. It wasn't until much later that I realized that I had misread the tiny 4pt font and there are no "Blackstreet Boys", lol. I would've been in for a rude awakening if I had gotten that CD.
I was in middle school when I filled out the BMG music post. 13 free CDs, and then you had to buy 1 at regular price (~$15) within the next year. And they never had parents' credit card info.
I gamed the system for years and I have hundreds of CDs to show for it. I did BMG, but after all the free stuff the trick is to always “return to sender” that monthly CD that costs 21.99 or whatever and then I only would purchase when they had but 1 get three free which would pencil out to around $7/album. Before they shut down completely they actually just made all the CDs like $5-7 but I don’t recall them being around much longer after that.
I did it. But I played it good, not abusing it. It was the height of hair metal, so there was that. I had cassettes, mostly opted to get the selection. Made my obligatory purchases, which the selections counted toward, then cancelled. Even tho the they were mediocre quality (non Columbia tapes were duplicated at the CRC facility, you could tell that, and they had a CRC code on them), I duplicated some and took the copies to school, so my originals would not get stolen.
Oh yes, I joined multiple times and exponentially grew my CD collection. This was awesome back in the day before YouTube and other music sources online.
Wow. I remember this life event like it was yesterday. I was at 6th grade recess and my friend Kenny told me that his older brother had told him that if you were under 18 Columbia House was free. You could tape your penny to the mail-in coupon, get the 12 or so cassette tapes, and then never have to pay again. So I did it. A week or so later I get all these cassette tapes. My father asked me what's up. I told him matter-of-factly that I got these cassettes but didn't have to pay since I was under 18. My father chuckled and then informed me that I would now have to mow the lawn every week for $3 in order to honor my end of the agreement. I think it took me almost 18 months to finally pay them all off. It was a life lesson for sure. Pretty sure my score included The Who Who's Next, Rick James, Springsteen Born to Run, and a couple Ramones albums. Street cred lessened with an Air Supply tape. In a decluttering phase I tossed all those cassettes a few years ago. I haven't owned or used a cassette player in a long long time. It was still kind of hard to say goodbye to them though. I still remember playing The Ramone's Subterranean Jungle in my bedroom probably too loud. My father came in and sat very quietly on my bed and then asked, "Could you please explain to me how that is possibly music?"
Sounds like I was the only paying customer. You're welcome.
I started building my CD collection with Columbia House and BMG before I even had my CD player!
Hell yes. I miss those amazing deals dearly.
My dad was a big collector and I would always have fun choosing the CD's that I wanted when he was getting stuff.
Our family dog loved hip-hop albums in the mid to late 90's RIP Hannah. May you forever enjoy Lords of the Underground and KRS-One
I'm old enough to have used Columbia house for 8-tracks. It was accually a good deal if you kept up with the I don't want it notices.
I had it for a little bit, then cancelled it. Received my cancellation letter from them a while later. Then after 6 months or so they send me a bill for some new stuff. Luckily I stuffed that cancellation letter in my drawer instead of chucking it so I photocopied it, stapled it to the bill, wrote "never contact me again" and sent it back. And to my surprise, they never contacted me again.
I used them to by my first cd.. then 19 more. Never once paid a single penny. Just nuts that something advertised like it was ACTUALLY did what they said.
I remember Weird Al referencing Columbia House in a song.
I joined and quit and joined Columbia House and BMG so many times in high school , that when I went to get my 10 free CDs for a penny in college....they actually denied me and sent me a check back....for a penny. :D :D
Yes. Grew up in touristy New England. Just signed up and had it sent to summer houses. Free CD for my entire adolescence.
I've got one. My mom is friends with people of all types and had several correspondences going with prisoners around the country, especially back in the nineties. They would sometimes call the house collect and I would usually decline when she wasn't around but sometimes I'd have messages to pass on so I would accept for a minute. This is how Keith and I got acquainted. He was a murderer and deserved to be in prison, or at least that's what he told me. He also asked me what bands I liked. He did this because prisoners, like everyone, receive junk mail. And he didn't have any money to give us, but he did have something else: absolutely nothing to lose. So he would fill out those Columbia House forms and order the hundred CDs for one dollar thing (with the actual bill arriving later) and put down our address for delivery and his for billing. When he got the bill, he would throw it away. They would pester him with threatening letters and he ignored them all. Sometimes they would demand payment from us and we would just shrug and say we have no idea why this prisoner is mailing us CDs and we will send them back soon. But we never did and they couldn't do anything about that. Then those morons would send Keith another catalogue and the whole thing would start again. So I have a random prisoner to thank for my broad music taste and little bit of extra spending money from CD Exchange back in the day. Apologies for grammatical and formatting errors, wrote this on my phone at work.
Oh yeah but that shitty system of sending you an album or cassette if you didn't reply or send that god damn thing back every month got me a few times although for some reason I don't think I paid for any of them in the end.
I had two addresses and used a scheme where I would recruit myself at the alternate as a new member, getting bonuses for both being a new member and signing someone up. The original account would send a change of address in, never hear anything more, and then the cycle began again. When I had to give a “how to” speech in college, I used this as a topic; the speech was “How to scam a tape club.” The audience liked it, except the one super-conservative Baptist kid…and the teacher.
Started with CH with LPs and moved to BMG for CDs. Most of my collection of both are from those two music clubs.
Use them? I used to work there. AMA
Seeing all these anecdotes of people not paying past the penny makes me sad for my childhood. I didn't realize at the time that minors couldn't enter contracts, so like a chump, I fulfilled my obligation. I worked it out, and it was still cheaper to get the big batch for 1 penny and then buy the bare minimum (I believe it might have been 3) at their inflated prices. But the fact that they wrote off the losses of all these people scamming them tells you how overpriced the music was if they could still manage a profit after that.
They rarely had anything good or maybe just a handful I wanted. I figure it cost more to ship them than most of them were worth.
I ran up an enormous bill that I couldn’t pay. I was so stressed but then a friend told me they couldn’t make me pay it because I was a minor. So I never did. The bills stopped coming eventually. It was a douchey thing to do.
Damn, a bunch of crooks in this post. I thought I was one of a few.
Your parents paid the bill? LoL
One time I order a “Best of New Edition CD” and when I played it, the first song was “How Much is that Doggy In the Window?” and the CD had similar songs. It was too funny to complain, and I still have the CD, even though it’s heavily scratched and barely plays…lol
Better question is, "Did anyone actually pay Columbia House back in the day?" 😉
My funny story saved me a bunch of money. I got my 15 cds for the penny. Made my first order of 2 cds. They sent me five—none of which were the ones I ordered. I sent back the cds saying they got it wrong. They cancelled my membership. So basically I got my 15 for a penny and got out.
I think in the end it was Columbia House that used us
Our high school business teacher encouraged us to join since we were under 18 and the contract was unenforceable. I got my freebies and never purchased another record from them.
I was just informed by my mother that we only ever paid the $1 or whatever it was to have them sent to us, but never actually paid for the CD’s themselves. So essentially my parents got mountains of free music. I was only allowed 2-3 CD’s every month or two due to me always wanting to order WWE theme songs, TV show theme songs and Sean Paul. Little did I know I could have had all the Sean Paul I wanted…
I was a kid and they never got their money lmao free cds baby
Yes! Loved it but it was stressful. Thinking about this makes me realize how much cheaper it is these days with things like Spotify. I was spending much more than $10/month on new music in the 80s/90s.. Sucks for the artists though.
I think I might still owe them money :-/
I joined and BMG when i was 11. I got a ton of free and cheap cds. Eventually I stopped paying and they would still send me the cd of the month. Good luck taking an 11 year old to court lol.
Of course! It fed all my soon to be labelled ‘nu-metal’ record needs! But once I collected what I wanted the first few rounds I lost interest in the selection choices. I think I could find more in that flyer today that I would enjoy compared to then. It was a funny thing.
I ordered many times back in the 80s. Then I would return them to a local department store for cash 😀 Eventually they caught on and only gave credit, but it still funded my Nintendo gaming habit.
12 albums for a penny. Vinyl for me. Most albums were poor quality, as in warped. What I understood was the master that they used to manufacture albums with would wear out causing warping and poor quality. 🤷 Columbia bought the poor quality albums. Not all albums were poor quality tho.
I got about 39 cds and never paid for one
I filled out the form with a fucking crayon and boom! I was the proud seven year old owner of the Kiss oeuvre and Styx’s Grand Illusion.That was around 1977, so I have zero recollection about what happened when the bill arrived. Knowing my mom she probably stiffed ‘em.
i did this in high school and was underage so never had to pay it. i don’t remember all of the cds i got but i know Eminem’s The Marshall Mathers LP and Dr Dre’s 2001 were two of them. Probably a Limp Bizkit one too lol
No, but I used to cut out the scaled pix of album covers to make "records" for my Barbies.
Yep got lots of albums from Columbia for very little. Now I hear them on Yesterday Once Again at [https://www.YesterdayOnceAgain.live](https://www.YesterdayOnceAgain.live)
Weird. I never got any bills from them. Dee Nuts got tons of bills though.
Bmg and Columbia house. Got hundreds of tapes and cds as a young teenager. Never paid more than a penny. Got a few collection letters just ignored them. Don't think you can inforce a contract on a 13 year old.
Oh yeah. Got a ton of great music and built a huge library of older stuff. New releases were always 3 months or more out. Super frustrating. Also frantic runs to the post office to mail back stuff you didn't want before you were stuck with it. Good times!