Coin ads in Southeast Ohio newspapers draw challenges from the Better Business Bureau
Coin ads in Southeast Ohio newspapers draw challenges from the Better Business Bureau
By: David Forster
ATHENS, Ohio (WOUB) — Recent advertisements in some southeast Ohio newspapers urged readers to buy rolls of half-dollar coins, claiming they were in limited supply, selling fast and potentially worth a lot of money.
The ads were accurate but potentially misleading, according to the Better Business Bureau. The BBB over the years has challenged what it considers problematic language in many ads run by two companies that are based in Ohio.
The advertisements were part of a dispute at three newspapers that resulted in the editor of one newspaper being fired and four other newsroom employees resigning in frustration, including the editors of the other two newspapers.
The dispute began in December when the editor of The Courier, which serves Jackson and Vinton counties, initially refused to run advertisements for coins sold by Federated Mint. The editor was concerned by complaints filed against the company with the BBB, which has given it an F rating.
Similar advertisements ran in the Athens News and the Athens Messenger and weeks later each newspaper received a call from a reader who said they paid for the advertised coins but had not received them.
(Read the full ad that ran in the Athens News here and here.)
This is a common complaint against both Federated Mint and National Mint and Treasury, which began running coin ads in these and other newspapers owned by APG of Ohio in November. Both companies have the same owner, with an address in Canton.
After the Athens News editor published a post on the newspaper’s Facebook page mentioning the readers’ complaints and apologizing for the advertisements, she was fired for violating company policy.
Almost all of the complaints filed with the BBB against National Mint and Treasury are from customers who said they paid for coins and never received them. These complaints often detail multiple attempts by the customers, in many cases over a period of several months, to get an answer from the company on when the coins would be shipped. Customers often complained that their calls and emails to the company went unanswered, or if they did connect with someone they were assured the order would ship soon.
In each case, after the customer finally resorted to filing a complaint with the BBB, the company responded quickly with a letter, which in most cases said the coins had just been shipped or a refund had just been issued.
Federated Mint has received many similar complaints and its responses to these complaints have been the same.
There are too many calls to handle
Helen Mac Murray, an attorney who represents both companies, acknowledged that the companies are experiencing longer shipping times. It’s now running about 90 days, she said.
“We think complaints increased because consumers didn’t recall or forgot about the shipping delay or how long it would be,” Mac Murray wrote in an email to WOUB in response to questions about the ads.
State law requires sellers to deliver a product within eight weeks of payment. If it’s going to take longer, the seller must notify the customer of the new shipping date and give them a refund if they ask for one.
The companies’ current 90-day average shipping time is well beyond eight weeks, and Mac Murray wrote that the companies makes customers aware of this delivery window when they place their orders.
Many customers who filed complaints with the BBB against both companies said they did not receive the product within whatever delivery window they were promised when they placed their orders. And many said the company did not contact them with a new delivery time, but instead they had to reach out to the company and sometimes found it difficult to reach someone and get an answer.
Mac Murray acknowledged that because of an uptick in call volume, the companies had trouble keeping up with all the calls. They hired a third-party call center to assist but there were issues with the transition, she said.
“These products cost hundreds and even thousands of dollars so consumers get very nervous when a product of this value hasn’t arrived,” Mac Murray wrote. “They reached out to my clients and many of them had a hard time getting through due to the above-described issues. That certainly caused many of the complaints.”
To process calls faster, Mac Murray wrote, the companies empowered someone at the call center to make decisions that before had to be made by internal company representatives, which took more time. Most of the call volume issues have been resolved, and customers can expect better communication from the companies, she said.
Mac Murray acknowledged that customers who filed complaints with the BBB suddenly got prompt service. “Frankly, when the BBB sends my client a consumer complaint, it expects them to immediately address the issue or risk their BBB grade or other negative actions,” she wrote. “These consumers then skip to the front of the line.”
The BBB works to bring them up to code
Amanda Tietze, vice president of operations for the BBB office in Canton, said that given the volume of business the companies do nationwide, the number of complaints against them isn’t excessive.
Where the BBB does have ongoing concerns is with the advertisements themselves. Federated Mint earned its F rating in part because of its advertising.
Kim Taylor is director of ad review and investigations for the BBB’s Canton office. When she comes across advertisements that fall short of the BBB’s code of advertising, she works with the businesses to try and bring them into compliance.
It’s a voluntary process. The BBB has no authority to force companies to change their advertisements. And it can involve a lot of back and forth negotiations over language that can take weeks or months.
Taylor has challenged multiple advertisements by both Federated Mint and National Mint and Treasury. She said that every new advertising campaign by the companies usually includes some language she finds problematic.
Most recently Taylor has been working with National Mint and Treasury on an advertisement that ran in the Athens News and other newspapers owned by APG of Ohio.
The advertisement, like many of the coin ads, is designed to look like a news story. In this case it was two stories over two pages, with headlines, text arranged in columns, a photograph and other graphics, and stories written in the journalistic style, including quotes from sources presented as officials or experts.
Advertisements like these are called advertorials, because they mimic editorial content and capitalize on the credibility that comes with news stories.
In some cases the resemblance is so close it may be difficult for a casual reader to distinguish these advertisements from the news, at least in terms of their presentation. One way to tell is at the top of advertorials is usually some language indicating it’s an advertisement, although it may be in very small type.
Alex Hulvalchick, who said she resigned as editor of the Athens Messenger in protest over the coin ads, said she was disturbed by how much these ads looked like news stories. She said she sent her mother a picture of the advertisement with the two stories.
“She looked at that and she asked me where I found the information for the top story, and I said, ‘Mom, I didn’t write that top story, the whole thing is an ad. And she couldn’t believe that.”
“There’s already so much distrust of news nowadays from a variety of different sources,” Hulvalchick said. “I don’t want to be part of making that any worse, and I don’t want to give readers any reason not to trust their local news.”
In a column he wrote defending the advertisements and the decision to continue running them, Mark Cohen, president of APG of Ohio, wrote that Federated Mint and National Mint and Treasury “clearly mark ‘Paid Advertisement’ on all print ads.”
This is not the case. The ads that WOUB reviewed instead have the words “special advertising feature” in a small but all caps font over the top. This language does put the reader on notice, but it is arguably not as clear or explicit as “paid advertisement.”
The BBB is parsing the language of the ads
When the BBB’s Taylor reviews advertisements, she’s often looking for language that may be factual but is misleading, especially when it’s intended to make the reader think the product is more scarce or valuable than it may actually be.
She found plenty to challenge in the recent National Mint and Treasury advertisement, which is for half-dollar coins minted from 1916 to 1947 that feature Lady Liberty walking with the sun just over the horizon in the background. The coins are known as Walking…
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