Mypublisher.com email to USA Today

Hi,
First, apologies for starting a new message chain, but I wanted to start fresh and make sure that as many folks as possible saw this... :)

I am new to this board, but have followed the mypublisher.com situation for a while...I too have had orders cancelled. Unbelievably, I still had the recent USA Today article profiling this and other companies making photo books. I located the author of the article and sent him the following message today. Who knows if it could result in any action, but I finally decided that I had had enough and wanted to write...

Hello Mr. Graham,

I wanted to inform you of a situation regarding this company, referenced in your article "Coffee table can now showcase custom photo books" (July 19, 2004). They had a wonderful "20/20" referral program through which customers were given a $20 discount (possibly resulting in a free book) when they referred someone else, who also would receive the discount. They had many other coupon codes, all of which circulated around the internet in message boards and other venues, as would be expected (and should be anticipated by any online company offering coupons).

Mypublisher also offered free shipping during the month of October. It seems as though many, many orders placed toward the end of that month were declined, with emails from the company that contained inaccurate information. To make matters worse, a credit card number is required, even if an order is ultimately free (due to the coupons/free shipping). In many cases, including my own, orders have been cancelled weeks after they were placed, with customers left wondering what happened, knowing that their credit card information was submitted (though I have never heard where a card was incorrectly charged). Per your article, their CEO Carl Navarre "says he's sold nearly a million books..." and they have been in business since 2001. I feel that this company handled this situation in an extremely unprofessional manner, and have left a large number of customers frustrated, angry, and resolute that they will no longer use mypublisher to make photo books.

I imagine that a company with this much experience having been in the internet business since 2001 would have a robust marketing department capable of foreseeing issues around "improper" dissemination of coupon codes, etc. It is difficult to imagine that they could not have forecasted the widespread interest in this offer. Truthfully, in most instances, the codes were not even improperly disseminated; many people have indicated that they legitimately received the coupon code from a friend or family, but their orders were cancelled. They claim to search their database to determine whether their software was downloaded to identify improper usage of coupon codes or referrals. In my case, the family member I referred works on a Macintosh, which they do not support. So I created his photo book on my PC and placed the order (which of course was cancelled).

I am not sure if you have any insight into this situation or are interested in writing an article around their business practices, but I at least wanted to inform you of the situation, and that many, many, many customers are upset and will no longer be purchasing from this company. With so many other photo book companies coming on board, it seems as though mypublisher made a large mistake by dismissing so many [who could have become] loyal customers.

If you would like any additional information, I would be happy to gather.

Many thanks for your time.

[lucy94103]

Julia, thank you for sharing your email with us. If you would kindly provide Mr. Graham’s email address, I will write him too. Would he respond faster if even more people voice their frustration?

[houseof3boys]

Awesome. I filed a complaint with the BBB after my frustrations with them.

Hi there,
Glad to share Mr. Graham's email address -- it is jgraham@usatoday.com. I checked my email and haven't had a reply yet, but hopefully he will acknowledge the message and might indeed do so faster if other folks jump in. :)

Hope we get a response!

Have you had any response yet? I saw on another thread that Costco has a link to MyPub on their photo site.


http://www.babysfirstsite.org/newtic...8.birthday.png