Foothills Focus

Currently, as a business owner, I have never felt so duped in my life. I have run several ads with this paper and although they DEMAND payment for a full month prior IN FULL, the ads haven’t been terrible although not the quality I was expecting for the amount of money paid in advance. (generating the ad and working with their graphics department is another review of complete and total lacking customer service.)
Then, I agreed to ONE full page ad at the price of $ 800.00 and next day I see $ 4,000 removed from my business account. I called quite angry to demand a refund and I’m told this is what I approved (NO, it is not!) and then I’m told it will take a few days to receive my refund.
AND, I haven’t seen the ad I did pay $ 800.00 for…
Basically, I’m done with this paper and if I do not get my ad of which is paid for AND my money back, I will be contacting authorities to file grand theft charges.
I am not kidding.
Follow up: I received a phone call today from John A. and was told I can «F***** file whatever…» and then I hung up. When I answered his call back, I stated he can clean up his language or I will hang up again. He then stated another bold face lie to me that he’s called other papers in the valley about me and they all have had issues. I have dealt with only two other papers, the large ones in the city and neither of them have taken a call from him regarding me. I then asked about the 800 dollar ad ad when to expect seeing it and I stated we will be done. He clarified that we will be done and he began cursing again, I then hung up.
The point is this, I approved ONE ad. I was charged for FOUR of that ad all of which was two, three, four and five weeks prior to the ads running in the first place. I had issue with this. I demanded a refund. I now have 4,000 dollars not in my business account for several days because of this.

This must have been the worst experience as a business owner to business owner I have ever encountered for advertising.
I delt with John A. who took awhile to place my ad, then my ad went to print and when I saw it in the paper it was awful! It was suppose to be black and white and the white was distorted as it wasn’t set up properly.
He called me for my second month of billing and I told him to look at my ad and it took about a week for him to get back with me. He said it looked fine.
I advised I wanted an additonal month due to the unreadable ad.
Needless to say he thinks I should ignore the customer service part and pay him for the second month of ad.
This is NOT a customer service company for a smaller local paper and he has a terrible attitude.
He also has gone to the level to leave multiple harassing messages, etc.
Their competitor has called me to place an ad a few times now and cant wait to do business. Go figure?