Dear citizens of Marlin, and current and past subscribers to, readers of, and advertising customers with the Marlin Democrat:
In a previous post, I mentioned I felt 'uncomfortable' about some things at the Democrat.
Well, I am going to identify one by name.
IT"s called overcharging advertising customers.
And, I say 'overcharging' rather than 'overbilling' deliberately. That's because of how it works.
The Phillipses have been very aggressive about getting personal as well as business customers to leave credit card information on file, from what I have heard.
Then, they may bill a person twice, three times, or even six times for an ad that was only supposed to appear once.
Like a classified ad for a garage sale. No need to run that six times. (That's confirmed from a customer.)
It's overbilling rather than overcharging if the customer has a credit card on file and, say, once a month, gets a new billing for that same classified ad.
I talked directly to this particular person and I take their word at it, as I have heard similar things happened to others.
Accident? Possible. But, the more often it happens, the less likely it seems an accident.
I saw an ad for a nonprofit group out of Hearne, a combination ad for both papers, that was still listed on a 'run sheet' of ads the week after their big event was done.
Having already heard what I listed above, I didn't run the ad in the Marlin paper. Even if it was an accident, it didn't need to run. If this, too, was deliberate, I wanted to be no part of this.
Nor of this practice in general.
As I noted, this was a combination ad, sold out of the Hearne office.
Whether such things were done deliberately in Hearne before they took over the Marlin papers, I don't know.
But I can't stop others from speculating.
I have now shared this with a few more people.
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