Who to trust
Three nights ago, I received a call from a man offering me a great deal on my first book. If I bought 50 copies, I would receive a 60% reduction on my author purchases. It sounded good. I had been thinking of buying some more copies and had been waiting for another deal such as this to come up. I asked him to send me an email to confirm his offer. There was a bit of confusion as to who this man worked for. Initially he said Xlibris, but when I informed him my book was published by Balboa, he said he was also that company. Investigation revealed the two are under the Author Solutions umbrella.
Still, I was a little hesitant, not being sure he was legitimate. I decided to phone the company in Australia and ask them if this man worked for them. He did and was the head of marketing sales. So, I decided I would go ahead and accept this offer. He phoned last night, and asked for my credit card details. ‘’Hang on,’’ I said, ‘’I haven’t even said that I’m going to buy the books yet.’’ He rabbited on for a bit longer, before I confirmed I was going ahead with the purchase.
‘’Just one moment and I will put you through to finance.’’ I waited to silence on the phone for a couple of minutes, then hung up, thinking I must have been disconnected from that division. He rang me straight back. ‘’Just wait,’’ he said. A few minutes later he came back on the phone, apologising that the postage was now going to cost more than he had estimated. The new price was going to be $100 more than quoted. ‘’NO,’’ I replied firmly. “You don’t give me a quote then charge me a whole lot more.” Off he went again and returned with a different speal. ‘’I am going to give you all my author credit, no other author, it will all go to you.’’ However, that quote was still $40 more than the original one. At that point I told him I was not interested and hung up. Over the course of the next 90 minutes, he tried nine more times to reach me on three different phone numbers. I ignored every one of the red, scam alert, calls that came and turned off my phone as I hopped into bed, just to be safe.
Now this man could very well have been legitimate. How would I know? I did wonder who would be working in finance in Australia at that time of night. His last call was about 9.40pm which would have been 7.40pm in Sydney. And I also wondered if he was taking someone else’s name. I wouldn’t think the head of marketing sales would be calling me late in the evening. Surely, he would leave that job to the telemarketers.
I will do some more investigation later this afternoon when I return from my writer’s group. It is a sad situation when we can no longer trust the people who ring us. But I have been bitten before and I don’t want to throw away any more money unnecessarily.