I will state before I continue with this review, I would not have awarded any stars, given the choice.
In the summer of 2021, I received a cold call to purchase an advert in the HWRK Magazine for their bully’s campaign. The design team presented me with a boring black and white design with information they seemed to have got from Yell or other free business sites. I told them that this was not suitable, particularly, because some of the information was not correct and more importantly it had no contact details for customers to contact me about my services. I was told this could be changed, but when I was provided with the website link of what I believed was the published summer version of the magazine, it indicated the exact same advert with no contact details, which and was only distributed to the education and teaching subscribers in Essex. Strange! I was originally told the magazine was distributed to education subscribers i.e., teachers, headteachers, etc., in the UK.
I was assured the magazine had not been published and the advert would be changed, where I went along with the design teams suggestions and contributed photos, which I was told would aid the artwork of the advert. However, yet again the same boring black and white advert with no contact details were displayed in the next published (or not!) online version. I contacted the editor to ask for a refund, because of the handling of the advert from the design team. I also wrote a review in Trust Pilot and because of that I seemed to then have attracted HWRK’s attention, where I received a phone call from them at HWRK to withdraw it, with the assurance this time they would do something about the advert I had paid for to be published for a year in the next 4 issues in the UK. We are a further two months on, it is now almost February of 2022, and still no communication. I do not know if it has been updated (even though I provided two email contact addresses) or has been published or otherwise as I have not had any magazine link or other to evidence to support whether my advert has been published, or what it might look like!!
I am so disappointed, not just with them but myself for letting this charade continue. I do not have to keep contacting this magazine, and to keep listening to the apologies of this saga when someone does make contact. I have paid money for nothing, there obviously does not seem to be any contractual obligations. Whereby, I will not be pressured with false promises again, nor will I withdraw this review.
I am still getting cold calls from HNQ, which is associated with HWRK Ltd and saying that I have agreed to the advert and still must pay for the advert, when it has already been paid for. I have already started to act on all of this. Following on from this experience where I author educational and health articles for professional magazines, which are published regularly. Yet one advert struggles to get the teachers, educators even public attention, because it is either the same black and white advert with no contact details, misrepresenting the information of the services I offer, or it just has not been published! I know I will not be marketing in this or any other publication again.