Big Business Bullying – Biz as Usual

I am a book publisher that has dealt with Lightning Source/Ingrim the biggest POD printer in North America, and pretty much the world.  This is a perfect example of a company that has control of a market and can do whatever it wants to do to its customers.  The customers have to roller over and take the ass f… and enjoy it.  They get to be a Big Bully and they know they CAN and WILL get away with it.  Here is my example of what has happened.

A customer service representative by the name of J. Killebrew had sent me an email telling me that I am too emotional in my correspondence with him and that I need to stop being that way.  Yep, I am a small business man who is struggling to keep his business open.  So when things are not done the way they are suppose to be done, or I am reprimanded by a customer service rep, well, yeah, I am going to be emotional.  It’s my life they are playing games with, not with their life.

This same customer service rep told me that he would fix an issue with my book covers that were not showing up properly on Amazon.com.  I did not ask him to do this; in fact, I had questioned him when would the database updates happen so that the covers would properly show up.  He chose to do this, I thought.  In fact, months later when I saw that they had not been done, I questioned him about it.  Instead of addressing the example I sent to him, he addressed another book that was showing up ok.  That lead I to believe that he lied to me, was caught lying to me and used another book to wiggle his way out of failing to do as he promised he would.

During this time, I found out that Lightning Source was changing information in my ISBN database without my permission.  Removing the fact that the titles were available for sale, and who the distributor was and wither they were returnable or not.  These issues cost me to lose a great number of sales, which thus affected my income.    In addition to the hours of communication with the ISBN database management company to find out what was going on, I lost more time and money.

At the same time, I owed them money, and I had always been clear with them that I wanted to get caught up with payments and had pledged my income from their sales of my books to this debit.  We agreed to make weekly payments, even though it was a hardship to me, I knew that my books would continue to sale well enough to help pay this off quickly.  After the sales were applied, I had a balance of $800 plus owed to them.  When I agreed to payment terms, I was not aware of the above factors playing into the sales aspect of my books.

When I addressed this issue with Mr. Killebrew’s supervisor, a Mrs. L. Pflueger, I received no communication back from her to indicate that she received my email, or that she would look into the mater, absolutely nothing.  Which clearly indicates to me, the poor quality of customer service, and what I am willing to say is the mind thought of Lightning Source to continue their Bullying practices.

When I was contacted by a book store and advised that my books were not available for ordering, I then contacted a Mrs. D. Jackson, VP of Credit who I had been working with to make the payment plan to find out how my payments were going.  It was when she had a subordinate call me and advised me that Lightning Source had closed my account.  My books were no longer available for sale.

Now is this how you handle customers?  They challenge one of your employees and instead of looking into the issue; they choose to close your account.  “Let’s hope the problem goes away, and we will make them look like the bad guy and blame them for their problems.”

I’m sorry, I don’t have a college degree, but I cannot believe that you are taught in business school to treat customer like this.  Blame the customer for the problems and have a ‘We did nothing wrong.’ mentality.

Yes, the actions done by J. Killebrew caused me to lose sales.  Yes, the actions done by Lightning Source to change the database information in the ISBN database without my permission caused me to lose sales.  Yes, I did everything humanly possible considering my homelessness to make payments to them in order to keep my account in good standing and yet, they choose to close out my account because I questioned the behavior and actions of what their employee did.  How is that my fault?  Oh, because I choose to stand up for what was right, that’s how it is my fault.

Fine, Lightning Source/Ingrim, you are the Big Bad Bully and you WON!  My business is not forced to shut down.  I am now going to be sued by a variety of people for failure to meet the contract requirements because I cannot sale the books that were published through your company.  Nor do I have the money to pay for another company to do half of what you can do.  Nor do I have the money to sue you for damages.  Nope, I have to roll over and get f…up the ass and enjoy it.

While I am not afraid to put my name on this, I will not add additional damage to my company at this time. 

And now I can understand why a Presidential Nominee can say that it’s the 47% of American’s who won’t take responsibility for their actions.  He supports big business, thus his previous actions and I believe his future actions clearly side with Big Biz Bullies.

With Respect,

A Client Who Doesn’t Like Getting Screwed!