Complaint Review: Gold Book (goldbook.ca)

A Gold Book marketing service package was purchased at a Brampton office for online and print promotion of our painting company, on March 3, 2008 at a total cost of $1083.60. Although the Sales Rep. seemed enthusiastic and helpful at first, he was not even employed at Gold Book anymore by Aug. 2008. There doesn't even seem to be a Brampton office anymore.

Reps at the Gold Book office in Hamilton were aware that we were attempting contact, yet never assisted us in finding a new Rep. Upon dealing with the current complaint, all parties at Gold Book have insisted the Sales Rep. is the only person who can compensate for complaints. Having no Sales Rep., we have attempted to contact their Sales Manager, Mary Rickets. We have called and left two messages with her and even wrote a formal letter of complaint. There is still no response. Is this a legitimate business or a scam?

The problem was brought to our attention when one of our painting customers let us know they had entered a positive review of our company on the goldbook.ca site. We never saw this review and did not know it was supposed to be sent to our email. On Dec. 12, 2008 we attempted to test the reviews and email ourselves. None of these went through either. This meant that for nearly eight months, all potential customer inquiries and reviews were totally ignored. This negligence is not the image we wanted to portray in the marketplace with our advertising dollars.

Unfortunately, we still don't know what emails or reviews have been withheld from us by Gold Book. Gold Book representatives that have been contacted have pretended that there was never a problem and have even accused me of "rejecting" the positive reviews. These are gone now, and nothing can bring them back.

Due to our persistence, one email finally came through to our inbox last night. This was a step in the right direction, but when talking to Gold Book's Customer Service Supervisor, Marty Prowse, he denied that Gold Book had done anything to make this happen and insinuated that I was lying about the problem in the first place. I am not a liar and complaining is a chore I would rather avoid. We may never know the damage this has caused us or what emails were previously sent and never received.

For anyone considering Gold Book as an inexpensive alternative to the Yellow Pages, let this complaint be a warning to you. I was foolish to think that because we were paying a lot of money to market our service, that the marketing company would be helping us. Marty Prowse from Gold Book asserted that the missed emails were probably tests or nonsense and NOT actual customers attempting contact with our business. It seems strange to me that a legitimate marketing business would be so confident in its LACK of successful promotion.

Amy
Brampton, Ontario
Canada