Be Wary When You Use Direct Mail Firms

The Reader’s Digest first heard about Keen Ear hearing aids from its readers, who contacted the magazine because Keen Ear advertised that it was “in Reader’s Digest.” The problem was that Keen Ear had never been mentioned or advertised in its pages.

Keen Ear was apparently a problem for those readers as well. Some people were suspicious at the outset of a hearing aid for $179 ($149 for the second ear), no fitting or examination required, and full refunds guaranteed. One man who was trying to decide whether to order even went to the Digest’s Pleasantville, N.Y., offices to ask if they really stood behind the product.

Some got suspicious only after placing an order with the company, comfortingly described as a group of “Senior Citizens on a mission.” They’d received no hearing aids, or received no refund when, dissatisfied, they tried to return the product and get money back.

Reader’s Digest wasn’t alone in getting calls about Keen Ear. Almost every government agency with possible authority over such sales received complaints, and almost all are looking into the company. They just won’t provide much information, to either the complaining consumer or the general public, and the benefit of their protection is still to come.

The Keen Ear situation illustrates the hazards of ordering goods unseen from companies one can’t visit. “There’s no way to check on the bona fides of a business at the other end of the country,” says Reader’s Digest attorney Charles Prescott. “We had letters on Keen Ear from Louisiana, Florida, Texas. Those people can’t go back to the store or to small claims court.” Indeed, says one consumer, “for all the ballyhoo about today’s sophisticated, consumer-oriented mail order industry, something like this makes you say you’ll never order from any of them again.”

It’s certainly not easy to check them out, though Keen Ear ads named some places to start, many suggestive of trouble. Reader’s Digest told anyone who inquired that Keen Ear was never in the magazine, and wrote the company as well, says Prescott, but “they ignored us.” Keen Ear also advertised membership in “The Better Hearing Institute”--a nonprofit informational group in Annandale, Va., which doesn’t have members. It, too, has taken consumer calls since late 1988 and has written Keen Ear to remove the Institute’s name from its advertising.

Keen Ear also displays a Seal of Honor from the Direct Mail Board of Review--a little-known, uncredentialed, year-old volunteer group of a dozen people in the business. It’s directed from the Lebanon, Pa., offices of Alpert, O’Neil, Tigre & Co.--the first two direct marketing consultants, the third a “6-pound Yorkie” that Peggy O’Neil describes as “in charge of security.”

The Board has awarded about 100 such seals, charging $300 a year for the honor. It’s awarded for “truth in advertising about what you’re offering,” says O’Neil. Not that anyone checks: “The material (Keen Ear) sent us was all right in that it said they would give refunds,” says O’Neil, “but we can’t tell whether they do or they don’t. There’s no way to check the truthfulness.”

Some consumers went directly to outside authorities. If they chose the Better Business Bureau and knew enough to pick the one closest to Keen Ear’s Tarzana headquarters, they actually got some straightforward information.

The BBB’s Cypress office has received more than 1,000 inquiries and almost 500 consumer complaints about Keen Ear, product and company. The bureau tells callers the company has an “unsatisfactory business performance record,” says operations director Lona Luckett, who has put out news releases warning consumers and written “letters to every regulatory agency” about the problems with Keen Ear.

At this point, the ordinary consumer won’t get much from those agencies, although they’re all clearly on the case, one way or another. U.S. Postal Inspectors can seek a “mail stop” (keeping all mail, including new orders, from reaching a business) or a full shutdown of any company using the mails to defraud, particularly with medical devices. But the Los Angeles office will only say it has received complaints and has been “looking into” Keen Ear since last fall.

The state Hearing Aid Dispenser’s Examining Committee in Sacramento will say it gets complaints on the company but passes them on to the state attorney general, having no jurisdiction because mail-order companies selling such devices don’t need licenses. The attorney general will take consumer complaints about Keen Ear (if written to the Sacramento office), and even acknowledges receiving many. But although deputy attorney general Dennis Dawson in San Diego expects “some formal resolution of this problem” at “some point in time,” the office won’t admit to any action on it.

Similarly, the Federal Trade Commission is “interested in hearing” from consumers about Keen Ear, and would discuss hearing aid purchases in general, says Dale Sekovich, an FTC investigator in Los Angeles. But the FTC “can’t comment” beyond that. Even the Direct Mail Assn. in New York, meant to safeguard the reputation of its whole industry, won’t say what it knows of the company, although it will forward complaints to Keen Ear, and if necessary, to government agencies.

With all the stir, “the problem is not as large as it would seem,” says Keen Ear President Bill Brennan. “There isn’t anyone that doesn’t get a refund,” although it sometimes takes time.

While they wait, few consumers can make all these calls, often netting so little. They may get real information, even help. More likely, they get general warnings about the need to have their hearing loss--cause and degree--evaluated by a professional, about phone numbers that are just order lines, about addresses that the post office will identify as commercial mail drops--a company’s way of keeping the public at bay.

But this is not enough. Without better protection from our protectors, only one rule guarantees perfect safety: Buy no direct mail product more complicated than a vegetable slicer from an unknown company, and risk no more than $20.