Quality Food Online review: Mis-sold advertising contract 1

We are feeling very annoyed at the mis-selling of a 2 year contract for advertising in a takeaway menu with quality food online / DSM Media...

A salesman visited our home in July 2010 and told us - no fee for advert artwork - all included as part of the service, and we told the salesman at the time of signing up we would supply our own artwork - he was happy with that.

He said artwork would remain the same unless we sent through a new file in time for a reprint, we were informed the menus would be printed within 6 weeks of us agreeing our advert.

The payment would be in 4 equal payments that we could spread out over the two years as we were a start up company with no budget for advertising - we really stressed this part to him before agreeing to advertise. The first payment had to be made by cheque there and then to secure our advert and its placing in the menu - he really put the pressure on at this point!

We then signed up to advertising in the menu for 2 years - believing all points we had raised were part of this contract and noted on a sheet he had. Also as part of the advertising deal we would get a voucher for £8.00 a week to spend at the restaurant.

Now it seems there is an artwork charge even though we had been informed there wasn’t and we had agreed we would supply our own file anyway.

Just had an invoice for an amount MUCH higher than we were expecting for our final payment for the two years. so I emailed them to change it back to the agreed amount - but they said we must pay the artwork set up charge.

We had no chance to read the contract and only saw it to sign it before he left. We believed that what the salesman was telling us was correct - he basically told us what we wanted to hear to make us sign. We were pushed to sign up straight away to get the 'deal' he was offering us. (no chance to take paperwork away to look through at our leisure before agreeing to advertise).

3 months on still no confirmation of when the advert/menu will be printed - and turns out it may never happen at all if the restaurant pull out, even though we have now made 3 of the 4 payments.

The contract also in the small print stated payments for the remaining 3 amounts after the deposit/1st payment must be made over the next 3 months, not what we had been sold at all - we have struggled to pay these and feel very let down that we were basically lied to - to make us sign up there and then! Part of us agreeing to do it was that we would have plenty of time to pay - the business was being set up as mark was made redundant - we made it very clear we were unsure about signing up as money was very tight.

No sign of the gift vouchers, and we were sold the fact they could be 'rolled over' so you could spend £16 every other week, but it now looks like you can't do that either! And that you also can't use them for takeaway meals and the restaurant may not even honour them - total con!

We cannot make the extra large payment to cover the artwork charge and feel unwilling to do so as we did our own artwork! - very mislead about the whole thing!