People of Lanark County –The Rest of the Story — Weitzenbauer – Maberly

Photo from ––Up the line: More portraits of the Ottawa Valley Perfect

In 1986 CP. Weitzenbauer, of Maberly, was fed up with Reader’s Digest and vowed to live out the rest of his life avoiding what he calls the ‘non-human’ approach of dealing with customers. His frustrations started earlier that year when he ordered a subscription to the magazine for himself, a friend and a copy of an atlas the magazine was promoting. In all, he sent the company cheques totalling $64.91.

The magazines made it to their, destinations but the atlas vanished. He wrote to the company in an attempt to hunt it down but he discovered he was writing to a fictitious person. He called the Digest. No one wanted to take the blame for the mix up. As far as he was concerned, his cheques were cashed in January, the atlas never arrived, and no one would admit he had ordered the book.

Frustration turned to anger, and by this point all he wanted was his money back and compensation for some of his expenses in trying to find his atlas. A few weeks after writing to us, a cheque for $71 was sent to his home. It was meant to cover the two subscriptions, the atlas and $6 for expenses. But that didn’t end it. Several weeks later a letter and another cheque, this one for $5, arrived. The money was for his postage and telephone calls. The letter indicated there was no record of his order for an atlas. It also asked that he let the company know if he still wanted to cancel his subscriptions. So much for the computer world and the ‘non-human’ approach to dealing with customers.

Saldy Peter died in 1989 and Ann passed away in 2007

Ann and Peter were married in 1948 in Munich and came to Canada in 1951 and had their children here. They had $11.50 when they arrived on the shores of Canada having come to Canada via the Canadian government costing $340.00. They paid the full sum back to the government within the year.