- Report: #1145146
Complaint Review: Author Solutions - Bloomington Indiana
-
Author Not Confirmed
Why?
Author Solutions
1663 Liberty Drive Bloomington, 47403 Indiana, USA
Phone:
1-888-795-4274
Web:
www.authorsolutions.com
Categories:
Business Rating:
(0)
Tell us has your experience with this business or person been good?
Author Solutions trading in Australia as XLibris scammed my 78 year old mother of at least AUD$164,000 using pressure sales techniques Bloomington Indiana
Author Solutions trading as XLibris has business practices that extend to harassing and haranguing clients for money akin to the worst excesses of call centres.
They have no system to vet any prospective client either for the quality of their work or their vulnerability.
They purport to sign up aspiring authors potentially for a number of works over the course of time but require up-front payment of fees for all the proposed works before publication, let alone any one of them. An ethical approach would be to charge an author for each publication as it is produced.
They do not assess clients in terms of their financial status or ability to meet financial requirements.
They have no system of reporting or accountability for the money paid to them.
Author Solutions, trading as XLibris, has staff in many countries who harass and upsell vulnerable and susceptible people, denying online negative reviews with such words as:
“If you look real hard, you might find 100 people out those 10,000 that had a bad experience with us. That tells me that less than 1% of our authors are so unhappy that they lodge a complaint online or with the Better Business Bureau. Companies like McDonald's and Disney that are the leaders in their industries dream of having less than 1% of their customers complain. The Better Bureau sees this as a high rating for this very reason.”
The Publishing Consultant who wrote this email was referring to the Better Business Bureau, which has received 351 complaints, including one from my 78 year old, ill mother. XLibris claims an A rating. Well, it is now A minus and deserves a C minus.
XLibris promotes itself to would-be authors as being owned by Penguin and Random House, which gives comfort to would-be authors wishing to be published by a respectable and legitimate publishing company.
My mother has spent her life’s savings with Author Solutions trading as XLibris. She has 50 copies of a poorly printed and badly edited paperback children's book in return. XLibris has told her that there are thousands of copies that have been sent to a warehouse in the US, yet there is no proof of this.
XLibris is a print on demand vanity press which does a poor job of editing and illustrating, charging extra for further edits resulting from their editing errors.
Their team of high pressure sales people from The Philippines up-sold my susceptible mother into buying a very expensive marketing and publicity package with the offer of "a 45% discount".
My vulnerable mother was convinced to pay for the printing of a large quantity of not-yet-written books. When my mother was in the process of writing her children's book, she was urged by XLibris staff to do a rush job in order to comply with an XLibris imposed deadline, and then charged extra for further editing.
XLibris collects money by credit card and international funds transfer.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Sebbie
LA,California,
The BBB rating means nothing
#2Consumer Comment
Sun, May 25, 2014
I found out that all an "A with the Better Business Bureau" actually means is that Xlibris paid their fee to the BBB that is ALL it means. Xlibris then uses this all the time to pretend it means something more and scams people.
All the things you mention are being done to vulnerable and elderly people all over the world.
