First Word

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 ...

You know those moments when you completely scratch your head and just don't get it. Life is loaded with absurdities. Rather than get angry (although I still do get irritated at some of it), I thought I would share the most absurd business relationship I ever got into and JUST extricated my company out of it. Our now former distributor Atlas/Bookmasters (thank goodness we're done with them) did all kinds of things that one could call absurd, ridiculous and incompetent. Let me start with the list for your enjoyment. Perils of Printing -- We initially worked with them on a print job. It went awry immediately. When we tried to remedy all of the mistakes and over-charges and hidden fees, the president (not the staff) told us we were incompetent. First, you never tell a client they are incompetent (horrible customer service) ... oh wait what's my second point again? Oh yeah, you NEVER tell a client they're incompetent. AND they had the nerve to try and win our business on ...