Phoenix New Times

Review: The Phoenix New Times and my business entered into a contractual advertising agreement on 4/19/2013. The advertisement was to run for 26 weeks total, at $180 a week. The advertisement was to include 1/16 of a page print ad in the Phoenix New Times newspaper, 10,000 online banner impressions weekly, and free social media and twitter impressions. The print ad was as discussed with my account manager. The online banner impressions were never provided for the entire time I ran our advertising, and finally cancelled as of July 14, 2013.

This is what I received from Phoenix New Times:

WEEK OF MAY 12-MAY 18 6,580 Impressions/Views

WEEK OF MAY 19-MAY 25 9,617 Impressions/Views

WEEK OF MAY 26-JUNE 1 9,242 Impressions/Views

WEEK OF JUNE 2-JUNE 8 9,678 Impressions/Views

WEEK OF JUNE 9-JUNE 15 8,838 Impressions/Views

WEEK OF JUNE 16-JUNE 22 7,376 Impressions/Views

WEEK OF JUNE 23-JUNE 29 8,472 Impressions/Views

As you can clearly see, for weeks on end (from the documentation I have from Phoenix New Times - they failed to provide me documentation from the early weeks of our agreement) they failed to provide the service that we agreed upon. When I called and requested a reason why they were failing to provide me the amount of online impressions we had initially agreed upon, I was told that "it will all work out by the end of your contract, sometimes you have weeks where you get more, and sometimes there are weeks where you have less." I don't agree with her reasons. If I pay a weekly amount for an advertising term that BOTH OF US agreed upon, this should be upheld WEEKLY. I never had a week were I had impressions that were over 10,000. I never had a week where the impressions were even 10,000.

I additionally had billing issues with their business department. At times, the credit card they had on file declined. I promptly provided them updated payment information (within 24 hours) and billing was processed with no issues. When we entered the agreement, it was explained to me that all charges would be paid for the advertising week to follow, which makes complete sense from an advertising perspective. As we entered July, (July 3 at 2:30p to be exact) I had noticed that my account was charged TWICE in one week for the week following. A call to the business department later made me quite uneasy as they couldn't explain to me the reasoning for my account being charged twice in one week. About 10 minutes later I received a phone call from my Account Manager's boss. She was clearly annoyed and peeved that I had requested the information "the day before a holiday weekend" and that she couldn't possibly figure it out before she was going to leave for the long weekend. I explained to her that I needed IMMEDIATE assistance, that The Phoenix New Times has no right to charge customers extra fees without explanation. She then says to me that my original billing agreement was to be charged for the week prior, but because I had charges that were declined in the past they decided to change my account to paying up front for the next week's ad space. So therefore, even though I had been charged all along for the next week's ads, she decided that I hadn't been and they had to make up for it. Upon exploring this issue further, I came to the conclusion that the business department at Phoenix New Times keeps highly inaccurate records and I disputed the two charges with my credit card company because they were unable to logically explain to me why two charges would be debited from my account.

The two above issues with the Phoenix New Times are the reasons I could not in good faith continue my contractual agreement with them. Another attempt to reach out to them via email on July 16 was unsuccessful as they replied "we no longer can conduct business with you any further."Desired Settlement: At this point, I would like the contract to become null and void. I would also appreciate a refund to my account for all of the weeks I ran ads with them that they didn't provide the service that they had agreed upon.