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For Otaku : : By Otaku

A Meager Triumph: PiQ Closing its Doors.

See more info on the subject at this link @ Newsarama.com

You will rarely see a malicious Len-Vesper. I don’t like it when I feel mean. But I feel justified in this moment of ‘yea, they deserved it’.

That goddamn ‘PiQ’ magazine has shut its doors. It’s about damn time. People that still have subscriptions should contact their credit cards and demand reimbursement ASAP before the mag goes into receivership!

Some of you more old-school readers may remember my brief faito with PiQ back in the month of April, when Newtype USA closed its doors and these guys decided it would be awesome to take everyone’s subscriptions to what was a All Anime/Manga/J-Protoculture magazine and transfer it to their own, which was a generic movie, tv, games, and some anime mag. The new mag was produced by the old staff of Newtype, and they didn’t warn anyone of the move, nor give anyone a choice.

Of course, there were lots of idiot fan-types going ‘oh ya this is going to be so cool thanks guys’ despite getting screwed out of their cash pretty bad. To give the brief in point form:

• They didn’t notify anyone of the change over and called it ‘commonplace for magazines to do this’
• The new magazine was less than 25% anime-manga-jstuff, compared to Newtype which was about 80%. It actually covered more about movies and North American Media than Japanese Media.
• The cost of subscription was $40-45CDN a year, compared to Newtype which was $110CDN. But they offered a 2:1 standing subscription ‘reimbursement’.
• They were not offering any of the goodies that usually came with Newtype.
• None of this came with any warning. The new issue simply ‘arrived’ with a ‘oh by the way Newtype is closed’.

Which is kind of lol since…

• VISA thankfully informed me that this is NOT normal practice and is indeed illegal as per bait-and-switch laws.
• The mag content wasn’t even considered relevant to what people originally subscribed to.
• The ‘reimbursement’ 2:1 ratio of subscription wasn’t cutting the cost of the original subscription to begin with, meaning heavily depreciated value. (20% loss right off the getgo)
• They had the balls to contest VISA when I declared default on payment. I can imagine they contested other reimbursement demands as well!
• All of this happened one month into my subscription. D:

Seriously, how could they think they could keep loyal clients with behavior like that? They were really rude with me when I asked simple and polite questions regarding what kind of content PiQ would have to compare to Newtype, because I bought it for the posters, goodies, and DVDs. They gave me a non-answer, and told me that I wasn’t going to be able to request a reimbursement of my subscription fee.

Well the fact that I was $117.95 less in debt a few months ago would state that I was right and they were wrong. But the fact remains: What do you people that just now realized you got totally hosed do?

IF YOU PAID WITH A CREDIT CARD:

• Contact your credit card provider, inform them of the magazine’s shutdown and demand the remainder of your money back. You will have to ‘pro rate’ the amount against the value of the magazines you already received.
• Inform them that the press release has already stated that PiQ Magazine has already vacated their offices making phone, fax, and mail contact impossible as they have not sent any physical notification to subscribers, only a press release over the internet. The website has been shut down, making email contact impossible.
• Inform them that you were guaranteed fulfillment of the original subscription paid to Newtype USA, the prior label of PiQ Magazine at the time of the forced subscription transfer, which was a promise from the merchant at the time the subscription was forcibly transferred from Newtype USA to PiQ.
• Request to make a dispute over the remaining amount.

The dispute process takes aprox 2-4 weeks depending what kind of contact VISA/MC/Amex gets with the company. They will contact whatever accounts department is viable or whatever legal authority is viable and get their side of the story. Eventually you will be credited the amount, if all goes well.

If you did not pay with a Credit Card…

I don’t really know what you can do. If you sent in a cheque or money order, kiss that money goodbye. I’ve scoured as best I could to get info on any contact for PiQ for disputes but they pretty much shut everything down in one swoop.

There’s not much a person can do, as far as I know.

In any case, once again, PiQ has shown its colors, simply letting people know with little grace or warning of what’s happening, and from what I can tell - not giving anyone a way to get their cash back. Welcome, PiQ, to the list of businesses that try to exploit and screw friendly Otaku out of their trust and money.

May you be shattered, May you rest in peace, You deserve it.

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