Publicity Guaranteed,/Sales Rep: Kyle Myers/President: Alex Konanykhin Sales Rep misrepresented contract, Mr. Konanykhin admitted employees error, but still trying to charge more than what is owed New York Empire State Building, Dania Beach, District of Columbia, New York, Florida

Please pay attention to the facts, as Alex has clearly never understood what facts are as quoted before ans shown in the email received from PGI with ALEX ADMITTING HIS EMPLOYEE MADE AN ERROR:

From my prior posting:

"We are not arguing the fact of placements received, the complaint was that PGI did not honor their contract of staying within budget for the first 45 days - the contract was $5000 for the first 45 days with $2500 for the next 2 months which in total is a contract for $10,000.

Unfortunately when PGI went over the budget of $5000 in the first 30 days and couldn't stand by what their employee explained to us that PGI would eat what ever placements went over that amount AND Alex acknowledged the error [as shown in the copy of the email posted in our original complaint] that when I would not fall prey to extorion by doubling my contract for the remainder of the term, PGI resigned from working on the account."

And a quote from one of the many emails received from PGI wher ALEX ADMITS THE ERROR in his own words, clearly he is not an honest person.
He states that Kyle [Myers] made and error by incorrectly communicating the monthly cap...

exerpt: "Also, Kyle incorrectly communicated to you the monthly cap provision. The Agreement is clear that fees above the monthly installment are NOT waived, and that agreement contains the entire understanding of the agreed-upon terms. However, due to the incorrect interpretation you received, I am prepared to discount the I-Life TV interview by $650.

Our efforts to the day shall result in some additional placements which will consume most of the remaining budget, so to continue with your campaign we will need your new budget instructions.
To give you time to chose the option most suitable to you, I've asked our media relations department to halt all work until we sort out the agreement issue. I am truly sorry for the miscommunications and I hope that the above-discussed credit will compensate for the inconvenience.
Best regards,
Alex"

So he offered a discount - not to write off the debt because I was having cash flow issues, but because his company made a large mistake. He tried to credit PART of the difference, but only if I agreed to double my budget for the next 2 months.

Still threatening lawsuits. When you are a millionaire with unlimited resources, you can file as many lawsuits as you want to but that doesn't make the one filing the lawsuit correct.

Which brings me to my original complaint which is how does a small business owner with limited resources defend themself against a dishonest person with unlimited monetary resources???

I'd appreciate the input on how do deal with someone like this.

Julie Lamarre
Owner Bella Bear Company

Oh, one more important point to add is that there was an additional clause added to the executed contract that stated PGI was not to charge us for any print placements until we received a PDF as proof of placement [which is how they claimed to provide proof of the placement, that is was printed and not just posted online as a BLOG] BUT at the time PGI resigned from working on our account they had not sent us one single PDF even though they had charged us for them.

Of course, I retained all email discussions/correspondence as further evidence.

Evidence that PGI is clearly lacking.

As Alex stated - he would provide the same service he provided to my company. I would take that as a warning and be very cautious before I entered into an agreement with them.

As additional information PGI listed the following placements, but since they are trying to greatly exagerate their placements

"we generated her numerous favorable media placements, including"

New York Observer - Editor made a negative reference comparing my product to a "maudlin plotline" in reference to the velveteen rabbit [jealousy is a positive thing in a media placement?]

ELLE - actually this was a small blog that was burried on Elle.com not printed in the magazine such that the placement fee was only $150. Not exactly a tremendous feat

ABC TV - too vague what was this for exactly? What Market, show???

Star-Ledger - Opening stement from the placement insulted the business also "Two words that should never be mentioned in the same sentence: "teddy bear" and "decadent." "

As well as the other blogs that PGI placed where the editors referred to my business as "creepy" from one blog and "heartlessly inappropriate" by another.

Obvisouly PGI doesn't have as great of a relationship with these editors as they claim.

In addition I have been in contact with many of PGI's past victims all telling horror stories about this company, most are afraid to post here because they are afraid of the reprocussions - but are willing to speak with the media if they wish to pursue a story.

Obviously, I am not the only one who has filed a complaint. As the story progresses and we find out additional details as to how dishonest PGI is and the more false stories they tell, they only prove our point for us.

Well, Ms. Julie L. Lamarre of Bella Bear Company just added a defamation cause to the matters which will be asking the court to adjudicate. I think that the hysterical nature of the posting above clearly shows what kind of statements we are dealing with here. As a quick example of the falsity obvious on its face: an Oct 2007 New York Times quotation about us is twisted in an AD for his company about a contest from several years ago (???).

Frankly, I cannot understand how a client can admit that 1/ she entered into the Agreement which clearly states $10,000 minimum 2/ received over 30 media placements with value greatly exceeding it, then renege on her contractual obligation and post hysterical complaints with false allegations.

As the matter is referred to litigation, we will not be posting any additional communications on this board, until the judgment is rendered.

To all prospective clients, we pledge to provide exactly the type of service we provided to Bella Bear Company: delivering on a small $10K budget numerous print and broadcast placements and honoring the budget cap specified in the Agreement, despite the over-delivery.

Alex Konanykhin
CEO

Someone needs to investigate this dishonest company. In addition to not complying with his own agreement.

First - the agreement that we signed is NOT posted online, because we were encouraged by the PGI Sales Rep Kyles Myers to made modifications to the origian contract before signing it.

Second - the quote "From communications with her, we understood that she was experiencing severe cash flow problems" is a blatant fabrication and since we have kept all correspondence with PGI we can add this to his list of deceitful practicies. The only cash flow issue that we had was a dishonest company trying to make fraudulent charges in direct violation of his own contract and make excuses about how their employee made an error, but they would not comply.

Third - the following quote by PGI "I intended to just write off the outstanding balance as the bad debt." Is laughable at best because all PGI ever did was threaten to sue us, use his connections with the media to defame us and now he adds to this by making blatant false statements.

Fourth - another quote from PGI "Now that she falsely accused us of dishonest practices" stands for itself. My accounts are fact based, backed up by communications with PGI and are certainly NOT false statements put forth by my company.
The only dishonest person making false statements is this PGI rep who clearly does not know what honest is and given his history provides further proof of this fact.

We are not arguing the fact of placements received, the complaint was that PGI did not honor their contract of staying within budget for the first 45 days - the contract was $5000 for the first 45 days with $2500 for the next 2 months which in total is a contract for $10,000.

Unfortunately when PGI went over the budget of $5000 in the first 30 days and couldn't stand by what their employee explained to us that PGI would eat what ever placements went over that amount AND Alex acknowledged the error [as shown in the copy of the email posted in our original complaint] that when I would not fall prey to extorion by doubling my contract for the remainder of the term, PGI resigned from working on the account.

The little commercial PGI added to the end of the rebuttle is funny....he is listing an AD for his company about a contest from several years ago?

The point of this is what, "HEY EVERYBODY WHO READS THIS NEEDS TO KNOW THAT WE RECEIVED GOOD PRESS BEFORE PEOPLE REALIZED OUR COMPANY SWINDLES PEOPLE?"

Seriously...

To put it simply, this is a case of client trying to avoid an agreed-upon payment for services she requested and received.

Our Agreement (which is posted on our www.PublicityGuaranteed.com website click the Terms button) is very clear that we don't accept campaigns with budgets less than $10,000. This client signed the agreement and, based on her promises to pay, we generated her numerous favorable media placements, including New York Observer, ELLE, ABC TV, Star-Ledger, and many others.

The client stated that she would only pay $5,000 despite her written agreement to pay $10,000. From communications with her, we understood that she was experiencing severe cash flow problems and I intended to just write off the outstanding balance as the bad debt. Now that she falsely accused us of dishonest practices, I see no alternative of finding a legal resolution to this matter. She and we will present the facts of the case and we get a fair judgment, which I believe will confirm that this client is in a violation of the Agreement.

Hundreds of clients have used our service and we received a lot of praise from our clients. Specific results, rates, customer feedback, as well as the contract itself, can be found on our web site. As the New York Times reported: "Publicity Guaranteed has a novel approach where it charges only for each article it successfully pitches; in 2005 and 2006, articles [placed by Publicity Guaranteed] about the tuition contest appeared in more than 40 newspapers, including USA Today and The New York Times."

Alex Konanykhin
CEO

I was checking on status for my report and noticed another complaint - I too had to completely re-write my own story and get my money refunded for the $285 they charged me.

When I received the copy, I was so disappointed. Jacqueline Bodnar had written it, but when I commented on quotes that she created of what I "said" and corrected her, she was completely insulted and was almost in tears. In lieu of hjer attitude, I re-wrote the entire thing!

Another interesting note is that Cher Murphy PGI VP was our media contact. The placements were in small town newspapers or obscure blogs. Several of the blogs that were posted were NEGATIVE insulting my business.

PGI puts on this big front that they have all of these contacts with the media in order to get GREAT placements for companies, that they don't just blast the same article to all of the media outlets. They are able to get these editors to publish our articles.

In most cases, it was the article I wrote verbatim that was placed.
In other cases the article was turned into a negative BLOG - so when it goes poorly and you ask PGI if they really knew the editor they were talking to that they had NO IDEA how the article would be spun.

If they have such great connections with these editors, wouldn't they know if they were going to take your product and turn it into something negative?