ATLANTA — Channel 2 Consumer Investigator Jim Strickland is getting results for small business owners across the metro Atlanta area. The businesses bought into a slick advertising campaign, but wound up with more regrets than new customers.
"It seemed like such a great deal, I mean really good," Tia Severino said.
Her new high-paying job was supposed to start with the bustling lobby of the local Kroger store. Shoppers there could snap up a free magazine called American Home Today. Severino's job was to sell the ad space for a California publisher called Adco Media.
Channel 2 Investigates got video of Severino's Adco trainers talking about the small business owners buying the ads.
"Buyers are liars...as soon as he starts moving his lips and words come out, I figure he's full of (expletive)," said the trainer on the video. "He's lying to me."
Severino said, "The key term that he used was buyers are liars. So therefore, we should be prepared to lie to them to make the deal." She said she was told to use a magazine mock up showing lots of ads were already sold, even when they weren't.
"I'm of the opinion you don't have to lie in sales to be successful," said Severino.
Former salesman Tim McCann says Adco suggested a different fib for him. "Tell (them) you're representing Comcast, Google and Kroger," he said.
The magazine has a sister Web site running ads, but it's not affiliated with Google. As for Comcast, businesses were supposed to get 20 cable TV spots. Channel 2 Investigates heard from more than a dozen metro business people. All complained they spent hundreds of dollars and got no results.
"Our response was zero," one said.
"Not one red cent have I gotten off of that, nothing," another told us.
Rita McCallon of Tucker's Park Pet Retreat says she had trouble even finding the magazine. "They were not visible, they were not readily available," she said.
We went to several Kroger stores where the magazine had been stocked, but it wasn't always there.
Restaurateur R.J. Jean said he scoured cable TV and not once saw his 30-second commercial. It turns out, his mention was only 5 seconds.
Documents we obtained from Adco's media buyer shows Jean's spot ran only seven times. None of the companies got all 20 commercials and none ran during prime time.
We've confirmed Ricky's Collision, Romeo's NY Pizza and 20 other businesses never got TV spots at all.
As a result of our investigation, they have started receiving partial refunds up to $100.
"You want to rob me, bring a gun, bring a gun, not a briefcase," business owner Gene Romeo said.
We wanted to find out where the missing TV commercials went. Comcast told us it reserves the right to deny advertising to companies that aren't a good fit.
Adco says soon after we started our investigation, Comcast refused to run Adco commercials. Adco president Jack Brown sent Strickland an e-mail that said, "In the 9 years that Adco has been running TV ads, this is a first!"
Brown says the trainer who said "buyers are liars" no longer works for him. Still, he didn't comment on the recordings and refused our invitations to go on camera.
STATEMENT FROM COMCAST REGARDING ADCO MEDIA:
Comcast Spotlight accepts advertising from a wide variety of advertisers and reviews that advertising on a case-by-case basis for compliance with our business imperatives and guidelines and we reserve the right to decline advertising or to engage in business relationships that don't meet our business needs. We're not aware of any additional pending orders from ADCO.
WSBTV
