(EMAILWIRE.COM, August 04, 2006 ) POCOMOKE CITY, MD -- The staff at REauction.com was surprised thursday to learn that Gannet Publications affiliate, The Salisbury Daily Times, considers it a privilege for small businesses to advertise in their newspapers.

The announcement was made on Thursday, August 3, 2006, by Donna J. Richards, advertising manager for the Daily Times, in a written statement. “…Advertising in The Daily Times or any of our Delmarva Media Group properties is a privilege... it is no longer beneficial for our company to do business with Billy Burke…”

Burke said this was a contradiction to Ms. Richards' apology for three months of auction advertising with three to five mistakes per ad due (wrong time/date) to publisher negligence that hurt his auction business last year.

This is the latest twist in a struggle between serial entrepreneur Billy Burke of Pocomoke City, Md., and the nation’s largest publishing company. Burke said it’s a long story “…it started with having to go through five people to place real estate auction ads in the local paper and went downhill from there… They made three to five critical errors in every single ad we placed for the first three months of 2005. As a real estate auction company having the publisher print wrong times and dates has a very negative affect on a time sensitive event like an auction. They printed conflicting times and dates for property worth millions and didn’t care. When I opened my account with the company we asked for tear sheets for every ad as a standing order to be presented to our auction customers in the sale reports. It took over 14 months for the Daily Times to deliver us tear sheets and correct invoices only after I contacted the Chairman of the Board. I had to eat over $10,000 in advertising that we could not bill our customers plus my competitors carry our ads with conflicting dates in their pitch books!"

The level of arrogance from the publisher is amazing considering that Burke was purchasing up to five full color full page newspaper ads per week promoting real estate auctions. Standard practice for newspapers is to provide advertisers a ‘proof copy’ of ads to approve before printing, then a ‘tear sheet’ with the bill.

The Daily Times in Salisbury, Md., informed Burke that they “…could not provide the level of service demanded…” All Burke wants is advertising that is correct and a copy of the printed ad with invoices. He said “it’s sad that the largest publisher in America is shutting its doors on small businessmen like me. Auctions have traditionally been advertised in newspapers and it feels like they are trying to put me out of business.”

Burke is not sure how he is going to handle promotion of local auctions but says he has a few ideas, claiming: He sold his first parcel of real estate in 1994, founded the first B2B Internet auction in 1998 (www.liquidation.com), signed the largest auction contract in history with the Dept. of Defense in 2001, building a successful dot com but was swindled out of his stock before the company went public (LQDT) earlier this year.

"Its always a David versus Goliath fight with me," said Burke. "There has to be another way to advertise an auction." Burke said he is considering litigation under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act but would rather be building his business.

Published by ASMarketingCenter.com a division of http://www.auctionservices.com and the http://www.nationalauctionlist.com.

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