Responded to a message left on my cell phone to some publishing company. Turns out they were selling ads in a magazine that supports Edmonton Firefighters. I bit, and decided to place an ad in a magazine with a circulation of 20,000+/- and is placed in professional offices throughout the Edmonton area.
The ad cost $366.45 including GST (GST#870624756)
I received a proof, which I corrected and faxed back with the note "Please re-send proof after changes". I never received a second proof to confirm the changes as requested. This was back in late November.
Last week, I received an invoice and a copy of the magazine. My website address was wrong. I faxed back the invoice and the proof that I originally sent (which had the correct address) and wrote "Please cancel - website published wrong, see corrected proof".
I received a fax this morning that was the invoice with my note on it where the person wrote "My apologies for the mistake in website, however that does not constitute a free ad. We can't cancel this invoice. We will make not [note] of the mistake and correct it in the future if you choose to renew your ad. Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience and thank you for your support."
My wife called this morning and the person on the call spoke about how the invoice cannot be cancelled - my wife explains how the ad is useless as the ad was published as ".com" while our website ends in ".ca". The person offered to knock $66.00 off the bill (big deal!) or run a free ad in the spring, but we still had to pay.
I will be writing a letter which explains our position and that we will NOT be paying for an ad that was wrong.
I went to google the company's name after receiving that note and found that Crimestoppers has a warning out about this company that goes around invoicing people without their consent. I then found a few reports in the ripoff report and decided to add my experience. I have placed ads before in more legitimate publications and reviewed multiple proofs until the ad was right. If it's a mistake, fine, but don't expect payment if the product delivered wasn't what was ordered. In this day and age a website is the primary means of gathering information about a company and if one letter is wrong, it's useless.
Incidently, I noticed that this company doesn't have a website.