Consumer Alert: Beware of Atlas/Bookmasters!

I have been a spectator watching the ball bounce back and forth between our former distributor Atlas/Bookmasters, a client and my operations manager. Our former distributor's level of incompetence is absolutely mind-blowing. Of course, it was shocking the entire time we worked with them, but the level of just pure stupidity is really astounding. Even though they made a shipping mistake on their end, they forced us to pay it or they would not close our account. They even admitted they made the mistake, but under the guise of "doing us a favor" (I think I need to look up favor in Webster's and send them the definition ... and it doesn't include making us pay for their mistakes), they insisted we pay the extra roughly $150. I don't know about you, but $150 by most American's standards these days matters. And this on top of the already couple thousand dollars we were forced to pay, which include inane charges such as a $5 "handling" fee just to move the books to ship them. Oh, I'm sorry, did I mention that's $5 PER BOOK! Yeah, the books retails on average for $14.95. We pretty much should have just bought the books at that rate. Of course, this entire corrupt system was part of a larger bigger problem. They had so many hidden fees like this, you could have played a game of hide-and-go seek and lost every single time. Then even though most commercial shipments cost considerably less to deliver to, we had our books indeed delivered to a commercial site, and they told us there was roughly only a $3 difference between the commercial and residential delivery fees (um what?!). Let me repeat that, what! If you know anything about shipping large boxes you know that is absolutely incredible. When I work with our very reputable printer, we receive discounts up to $200 or $300 per shipment of a pallet to a commercial location. As my husband said, "They just made a lot of money off sticking it to you!"

Let me leave you with these final words. My BAD for ever doing business with them in the first place. Their BAD KARMA for being so incompetent and for absolutely no shame in forcing us to pay for their mistakes and twisted fees. Do not do business with Atlas/Bookmasters lest you be on the receiving end of this kind of horrible customer service.