Missing the Connection Between Love and a Loophole

Granted, maybe Susan Fahrney’s problems don’t stack up against the momentousness of a national election.

You want to read about politics, you can find plenty of stories elsewhere in the paper.

But you want to read about the price of vulnerability, this is the place.

Fahrney is a 43-year-old assistant director of a nonprofit social services agency in Westminster who found her love life on the skids last spring.

This is her tale of what happens when smoke gets in your eyes and makes you unable to read the fine print:

Coinciding with her faltering social life, Fahrney said, she got an unsolicited mailer last spring from the Connections video dating service in Orange. Fahrney filled out the club’s questionnaire and took it to the club’s office to find out more about the service.

“It looked like my relationship was not going to work out, and sometimes you have to take a drastic step to get out of the impasse you’re in,” she said. She decided to look into video dating, she said, because “I don’t like the game of sizing people up, I don’t do the bar scene. . . .”

When she went to Connections in March, Fahrney said, a saleswoman told her she could get a special annual price of $1,575, down from the usual $2,250. According to Fahrney, she told the saleswoman she needed more time to think about it. The Connections employee told her she could have 30 days to change her mind, according to Fahrney’s version of events, but that she needed to sign up that day to qualify for the discount.

Fahrney signed, and you can probably guess the next part. A few days shy of the 30-day period, Fahrney returned to say she had decided not to join. She and her boyfriend were trying to reconcile.

She said she left the video service that day in April thinking all was well. Subsequently, however, the $1,575 charge showed up on her charge card. It remains there today, seven months later. Fahrney wrote a letter to Connections in September, recounting her version of events and claiming that there had been “misrepresentation and exploitation” over the 30-day proviso.

So far, she says, she’s received no reply.

The video service has sent a copy of its contract with Fahrney to the bank, showing that she in fact signed it. Fahrney sent me a copy of the contract, which, typical of contracts, stipulates that the signee has read both sides and agrees to everything.

It says the signee has three days to rescind the contract and adds that “. . . no oral representations by either party shall in any way (affect) this agreement.”

Although she knows she can’t prove the saleswoman gave her the 30-day window, Fahrney insists that she did.

I haven’t been able to get anyone at Connections to return phone calls, although company official Jeanne Callahan, to whom Fahrney addressed her letter of complaint, told me in a brief conversation about a month ago that she would look into Fahrney’s contention. Another employee, who wouldn’t identify herself, said there is “no way” any salesperson would have told Fahrney she had 30 days to change her mind.

Given that you signed the contract, I asked Fahrney, what’s your argument?

“I think particularly in the business they’re in, they’re dealing with emotions, people who are vulnerable,” she said. “They need to have a higher consciousness and ethics. I feel they’re in it for the money. It seems to me that people come to them who are vulnerable, and they take advantage of them.”

Not knowing the Connections folks, I won’t go that far. I have no way of knowing whether someone told her she had 30 days to make up her mind. I have my suspicions, but they are best locked in the recesses of my mind.

It doesn’t matter. As Ross Perot would say, this is a slam-dunk.

Fahrney was at the club twice, once when she foolishly signed the contract without reading the small print and a second time when she told the saleswoman she wasn’t interested.

Fahrney never went through videos of eligible men. She never got matched up with anyone. She never had a date with anyone. She never made a video of herself to put in the files.

In short, the company is out nothing and should have refunded her money on the spot with the cheerful send-off, “Thanks for considering us and have a darn good life, OK?”

I asked Fahrney whether she learned any lessons from all this.

“Hindsight is great. I should have done several things differently. It was a very emotional time for me, it was something I had never done before. I was trying to move into a new area of life that was very scary for me. I really feel they may have a wonderful service. I never used it, but if it’s so good it should stand on its own. . . . I should have recognized ahead of time my vulnerability and not allowed myself to be put in that position, but I’m not sure it (the lesson) was worth 16 hundred dollars.”

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.