Best Price • $5 Million Penalty Assessed • Probes Target Best Price USA • Consumer Complaints • America's Advantage Complaints • How To Quit

October 26, 2000
Federal and state agencies are looking carefully at Best Price USA, Triad Discount and other "buying services" operated by the Triad Marketing Group of Boca Raton, FL. At least 20 states and the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) are sasid to be investigating the firm's operations.

Typically, consumers respond to an infomerical or order something from a catalog or Website and later find that they have also "joined" a discount buying club for $96 per year. If they don't notice the charge and dispute it, their account is "renewed" a year later for another $96.

Florida Assistant Attoroney General Jody Collins says at least 90 percent of the company's "customers" are actually victims of deception. Records produced under subpoena show the clubs added 3.3 million new members during the first quarter of 1999 and recorded 445,000 renewals. Most of the renewals are simply consumers who didn't notice and contest the first charge, Collins said.

All of this sounds quite familiar to the Federal Trade Commission, which has a history of cases involving Triad President Ira Smoley. In 1993, another of Smoley's companies, Synchronal Corp., agreed to a $3.5 million settlement for its infomercials promising cures for baldness and cellulite.

In 1990, Smoley paid a $400,000 settlement for alleged mail-order misrepresentation through a direct-marketing company that he then operated. The Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel reported recently that Smoley also had pleaded guilty to federal mail fraud charges three years earlier but this could not be immediately confirmed.

Smoley reportedly lives in a 4,300-square-foot oceanfront condo purchased four years agao for about $1.5 million.

Although questions have been raised about how customers are signed up, investigators say that Triad does have a consistent record of making refunds when consumers complain.

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How To Do It If you have been charged for a membership you did not order, you can send a letter demanding a refund.