Bramble Berry recently ran a full page advertisement in a national magazine. The full page did not come cheap. The ad ran but printed incorrectly. The design was … off. The ad looked odd. The ad didn’t look terrible, just wrong.
I phoned my rep and left a generic, “Something was wrong with our ad. Please call me.” The message was friendly, polite and to the point.
The phone message I got in return was defensive and arrogant. “You clearly submitted the ad incorrectly. In the future, we will require you to send out proofs for every single ad you want to run.”
I like the magazine so I decided to try to work this out via email since phone messages obviously weren’t working.
I of course, love XYZ Magazine (who couldn’t?) but am disappointed at how this issue was handled.
This communication worked out much better. The magazine in question is running a (small) free ad in the next issue to compensate for the incorrect rendering in the original ad.However, I still might not do business with this company again for a few reasons:
1. Future ads will now be inconvenient to send. We can’t upload them to the FTP ad server. Now we need to submit a print out proof for each ad, via Fed Ex.
2. There was no effort made to address the underlying problem. The ad ran incorrectly. We submitted the ad correctly (blustery and defensive assertions to the contrary).
3. I don’t want to deal with testosterone driven, obtuse jerks. I like to work with people that admit mistakes and work to correct errors. Defensive blamers are a pain to interact with. Life is short. It’s good to surround yourself with people that are fair, decent and don’t cause you too much stress.
I’m still simmering on this issue and haven’t committed to any future ads with the magazine yet. They did make the mistake right by running a comp ad, gratis. But, it took more effort than I would have liked to get to that resolution.
If anyone has feedback or a shared experience that might help me out with whether I should run more ads with the magazine in question, please let me know. I’m very open to feedback on this issue.
This post is old so I’m sure you’ve figured it out… but why not send a jpeg file along with your PDF, rather than a FedEx proof? It really sounds to me like they’re proving a point by making you go through that ridiculous process. By saving the final PDF as a Jpeg (which you can do in Acrobat) you will have an image of the ad which will show the font and layout exactly as you see it on your computer. This won’t be the file to print from, but it will be a proof that looks exactly the same on every computer. That is, except for colours, which will vary from machine to machine.
Fonts are often a problem in PDFs, if they not available on the newspaper’s machine, and are not embedded in the file.
(Though I think I would just tell them where to stick it. FedEx proof???)
-Print nerd Jen (who would be happy to help you with any printy nerd questions!)
Wow! Thank you everyone for this great feedback. Christine, you especially helped to provide perspective. Thank you for your comments.
I haven’t signed up again with them yet but I’m much more inclined to now after reading all of these comments.
Think of what you would want your customer to do if it was turned the other way … you would want them to try to come straight to you and handle it, rather than leave and go somewhere else.
The person you dealt with obviously is a salesman and nothing more. (I have nothing against people in sales if they are good — but it sounds like this person was not.) I would try to get in touch with the design team to find out what went wrong. One of my ads *has* to be done in CMYK, and my monitor is calibrated for sRGB for my printing lab; I don’t do CMYK. So they send me a printout of the ad to “confirm” that it is ok. It costs me $25, but for the peace of mind knowing that the ad is right? I’ll gladly pay it. It is a small price compared to the cost of the ad itself.
Find someone else to talk to — someone that CAN fix the problem. Then get the power to FTP back, because anything else would drive me crazy. 😉
Isn’t that photo great?! It’s my friend Heather, from Seattle. She’s being a great sport about having it posted on the blog. =)
P.S. Love the picture!
Anne-Marie~ Three things come to my mind (without knowing the actual name of the publication) 1. Either the publication is so BIG that a mistake on their part is just that & they know they have plenty of people willing to buy their “space”, 2. They are way too BIG for their bridges with a shortage of trained staff, and 3. Their whole team needs a refresher course on “quality customer service.”
I’d be simmering too, knowing what ads cost, & once something is in print~ it’s forever.
I agree wholeheartedly with Jason, although it can get sticky going over one’s head, but as an owner of my biz? Well, I would want to make things right and work with anyone who was unhappy. I believe in an open heart.
I think this is the reason why your company is so successful. The first and only time I called Bramble Berry’s customer service was last year. I did not have access to a computer, so I left a message. I figured I would not get a call back and would have to send an email once I get to a computer, which was going to be a complete inconvenience as I did not own a computer. To my surprise, I received a call back within a couple of hours and he was absolutely pleasant. The merchandise was replaced immediately and I was such a happy soapmaker.
Reason I continue using Bramble Berry and highly recommend you to other new soapmakers that I meet is because of that great customer service I received last year. Your company is very pleasant to deal with and I always look forward to making my next purchase (though my husband is not).
Honestly, when I have a bad experience with a company, I just simply take my business somewhere else.
Stephanie Mitchell
I had a similar situation to this in the past and it turned out it was a bad rep and not a bad publication. We spoke with someone higher up in the publication and we felt like we were taken care of and listened to.
Also, if I owned that magazine, I’d want you to call me with your issue so I could deal with customer service problems like this one rather than be unaware.
My advice – approach someone above this rep with your situation and see how they respond before deciding how to proceed with the publication.