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Karen T., Illinois

Several people have mentioned the results of boldness lately, so I thought I’d share a story about what happened to Cindy Bettinger and myself, as we routinely advertise cooperatively.

I recently had an incident with our local newspaper, and because of this, I decided to email the corporation that owns the newspaper. Cindy found the corporate website, and I found the publisher’s name and email address there. Here is the letter that I wrote on behalf of Cindy and myself:

“Dan,

First let me say that I’m fully aware nothing can probably be done for us at this point. Having said that, I still would like to make you aware of something that happened to us recently in Charleston, Illinois.

My associate and I run two piano studios in Charleston that teach a unique, Australian piano method that we have spent the last two years introducing to the area. We have advertised on average, every 2 or 3 months with the Times Courier/Journal Gazette. We have tested the results we get from different size ads, putting it on different pages, putting it in different days, etc.

From time to time, errors are made and they have been corrected either for free, or for a 50% discount to compensate for our financial loss in the mishandling of the ad. This was handled very much to our satisfaction, we certainly understand mistakes can happen, and as long as it is handled properly, there is no problem whatsoever.

We have discovered that our most effective results come from inserting a flier into a Monday edition of the newspaper. We had 8,000 fliers printed and delivered, scheduled to be inserted into the Sept. 15th edition. Our plan was to take calls and new-student enrollments all that week, and begin lessons when school started on the 22nd.

The flier was not put in the paper on the 15th, and no explanation was given as to what happened. I asked that it be run on the following Monday, free of charge, to compensate for the lost new-student tuition fees for that week. I was offered the option of putting it in the Tuesday or Wednesday paper, but I explained what we have discovered about the results we get. It was scheduled for Monday the 22nd, at a 10% discount.

I explained that this was not acceptable, a mere 10% off does not cover the lost income from the new students we were not able to start. We get $40 – $60 an hour for this unique piano method. I was asked what I would like to see happen. I said we would be willing to pay 50%, which I think is a reasonable solution for the error.

Someone at the office in Decatur (this is a town an hour away from where the papers are printed), was contacted, and she said we could only get 35% off. So I had the flier shipped back to Mattoon (this is a town 20 minutes away from where the local office is), and we picked them up ourselves. We then made several plans of ways to distribute them ourselves.

I want you to know that I am not angry, I am incredulous. I think this is a ridiculous way to handle the whole situation, and a very poor way of doing business with us after 2 years of using the Times Courier/Journal Gazette.

Thanks for listening.”

Yesterday the publisher of the newspaper called me. We had a long talk. He asked a lot of questions and did some figuring. He offered to run our flier in both newspapers, for less than half the cost of running it in one. We will reach 18,000 subscribers instead of 8,000, and for only $250. Plus of course we have to have another 10,000 fliers printed, but our printer is very good to us. He is doing this for $271.

Orignal discussion started September 1, 2005