Google AdSense, Adify, IDG and BlogAds take care of advertising slots on this blog but there are times when companies and digital marketing agencies representing their clients come directly for advertising.
One such company that contacted me in October 2008 was Media Contacts – it’s an interactive agency owned by Havas Media. The India office of Media Contacts contacted me for an HCL campaign – we agreed on a price and the campaign went live in the next two days.
That was October 2008 and 14 months later, I still haven’t received my payment from Media Contacts for the HCL campaign even after dozens of phone calls and email reminders. In May 2009, they asked me to send a new invoice, I did that but the payment was never issued.
Some of the Media Contacts team members who were involved in the original campaign have already quit Media Contacts. I tried reaching the managing director of Media Contacts via Facebook – he was courteous enough to reply saying that he’s looking into the issue but nothing was actually done to release payment.
I have finally given up because it takes just too much time and effort to follow up with them.
There’s however one important thing that I learned – if you are dealing with an unknown agency, always ask for advance payment because you’ll really have no options if they later ignore your payment reminders as what happened in my case with Media Contacts.
Update [January 24, 2010] – A day after writing this story, I got a call from the Accounts department at Media Contacts saying that they were sorry for the delay and they also issued me the pending payment the very next day.
It seems that their senior management got involved this and the matter was therefore quickly resolved. I appreciate the prompt response.
Find this article at: http://www.labnol.org/tech/bad-experience-with-media-contacts/12463/
