Chamber president Mike Coston says beware of map scam

A map company has been calling Kilgore Chamber of Commerce members implying it is seeking advertisers for the chamber's city map, but don't be fooled.

It's a scam.

Mike Coston, chamber president, said he learned of the map sales and immediately e-mailed an emergency alert to all chamber members regarding Hometown Productions of Peoria, Ill., AKA Universal Adcom, which has offices in Arlington and Fort Worth, as well as two others in Illinois.

"This company does not represent us," said Coston.

Hometown Productions had already sold advertisements to at least two chamber members before Coston learned what was happening. A rep from one local business advised she planned to cancel her payment.

The chamber will not begin its map advertising sales after the first of the year and its maps will be printed in early spring, Coston explained.

Hometown Productions sales reps apparently obtain other organizations' maps and then contacs the advertisers to ask them to renew at a discounted price. Per a receipt received by one Kilgore business, the buyer receives a 5 percent discount if he pays by credit card. However, Coston said the ad buyer isn't "renewing" anything because the chamber's maps are not prepared by that company,

The chamber manager said he happened to run into the business manager of a local company and she advised she had renewed her ad for the chamber map.

Hometown copied the business' ad from last year's official chamber map, which, incidentally, is copyrighted. The company also told the advertiser the chamber will distribute the maps. That's not true, either.

"They said they were going to print 10,000, but I hear they will print less than a thousand," Coston said. "They have done this in the past."

Per a search on the Internet, Universal Ad d.b.a. Hometown Productions is well known to the Better Business Bureau through complaints from across the country. Lawsuits have been filed in several areas because the company has defrauded chambers, school districts and other groups by telling customers portions of the money made from ad sales will benefit those entities. That apparently never happens.

The Illinois Attorney General sued Universal Adcom in 2003 because it marketed its products as fundraisers for particular groups and none of those groups received any money. In some cases, local businesses that declined to advertise on the maps were included anyway and then invoiced.

Coston said the Kilgore chamber's maps are a fundraiser for the chamber, as well as a service to the community and its visitors.

"We are able to hand out these maps for free, thanks to our advertisers," Coston said.