Last year was the first year we had ever paid a vendor to distribute our brochures for us. We used Personal Attention, Inc. Out of Washington, DC, and they required that we pay half of the total fee ($2500) before the project began, and then the other half upon completion of the project. We paid them $1250 at the start of the project as agreed upon, and they came when promised to pick up enough brochures and display stands for 1,000 sites in the greater Indy area.
However, after about 6 weeks, we began to wonder why we hadn't received any delivery location lists yet. After we asked several times, we did receive one list with about 100 locations listed, and were assured that "more were on the way." Over the next 2 or 3 weeks, we received a few more lists—this was about two months into the project.
Then, about 6 weeks before our actual event, the distributor showed up to our office unannounced and dropped off about 14 boxes of brochures and stands. She simply said she never finished the project because the boss in DC refused to pay her. She went into great detail about a dispute she was having with the headquarters in Washington, DC, none of which I, as the paying customer, had anything to do with.
All in all, she had delivered to only 300 locations, leaving the other 700 simply not done. We wrote to Personal Attention, letting them know that not only would we not be paying the other half of their $2500 fee, but that we also would like a refund since our first installment was enough to cover 500 locations, and she had only completed 300 in all. We never heard back from them again, and ended up losing hundreds of dollars—not to mention wasting thousands of brochures and not having time to even formulate a backup plan for further distribution.
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