The Asbury Park Press and the Garage Sale Ad from Hell
When I placed an ad for a garage sale with the Asbury Park Press I encountered a frustrating mix of incompetence and indifference.
Their website is buggier than the Okefenokee swamp. Getting on proved difficult; at times it wouldn't accept my log in because their database was unavailable. At other times it rejected my password and claimed my email address was never registered with them. However, if I tried registering the address, it rejected the registration because the email address was already registered. I got around this by opening a second account with another email address.
Once in, I experienced some repeated quirks such as defaulting to an estate sale format. No, I was not placing an ad for my own estate sale.
Changes to the draft ad usually took long enough for me to pour myself a cup of tea. I wasn't having any slowdowns due to server problems during this period, and I was using an HP desktop running Windows 8.1 Pro with an i7-4790 CPU and 24 GB RAM, so it certainly seemed it was the APP website that was inadequate.
Having finally composed the ads, I got a Quote for an ad for two days, Friday and Saturday, for a Saturday garage sale. The website rejected three valid credit cards. I got around this by phoning in my acceptance of the Quote and paying with one of the three credit cards.
The ad only appeared on Friday, and was missing on Saturday. In my experience, when we check garage sale ads on Friday, we check them again on Saturday, primarily to see if any new ones have been added. However, if an ad appearing on Fri was gone on Saturday, we assume that the sale has been cancelled. Running the ad on Friday and not on Saturday didn't just fail to attract any buyers who looked only on Saturday, it most likely discouraged potential buyers who had seen the Friday ad and found it absent from the Saturday paper.
When I sent an email to the Customer Service address listed on their website, explaining what had transpired and asking for a refund, the email was returned by the server, after repeated delivery attempts, as undeliverable.
I looked up the name of the APP Customer Service Manager on the Better Business Bureau website and wrote a letter to her asking for her assistance. The letter was never answered.
Incidentally, if you think my experience is an isolated one, I suggest you look up the Asbury Park Press's rating with the Better Business Bureau..
For my next garage sale, I'll only be using one of the free websites which a web search turns up. They usually include a map pinpointing your location, generous word allowances, posting pictures, and I haven't encountered any problems with the functioning of any of these websites. And they're free, and you don't have to deal with the Asbury Park Press. . read more