Credits and Adjustments
This is probably as good a time as any to talk about credits. When an ad does appear incorrectly in a newspaper, sometimes the advertiser is due a credit. When and how much is up to the newspaper itself, so check with your manager. Most times it's judged on a case by case basis, however, here are some general guidelines.

The first rule is, try to never let go of the money that you've already generated. Therefore, if there's a mistake in the ad that's the fault of the newspaper and deems some sort of an adjustment, don't tell the advertiser they don't have to pay the full amount of the ad that was wrong. Instead, give the advertiser credit toward the next ad they run or, in extreme cases, run the ad correctly a second time and still bill them for the first one.

The reasoning behind this is that rerunning the ad correctly is much cheaper for the newspaper than refunding any of the money he paid for the ad. In the case of a $500 ad, for example, the newspaper could either return the advertiser's $500 or run the ad again correctly, costing the newspaper perhaps $200 in paper and ink. By rerunning the ad correctly, you've still hung on to most of the revenue. So the first rule, always rerun instead of refunding.

If it's a partial credit that's needed for a small error, the same idea applies--run it again correctly at a discount instead of crediting the previous ad. The question is, though, what kind of error deserves an adjustment? Again, it's going to depend on your newspaper's policy, but usually it's something like this. If the error is so large that it creates no value (or even causes problems, as was the case in the ad for spider vein transplants, which he said embarrassed him in front of his colleagues), a full adjustment in the form of an ad rerun correctly is in order. This category would also include ads where major elements are missing or wrong, like the company name, phone number, address, or prices. More minor errors like one price out of 10 being wrong or something not being centered like the account wanted may be handled in a couple of ways.

Although some newspapers will automatically rerun an ad like this just to keep the customer happy, other newspapers will figure that the advertiser got partial value from the ad and will only make a partial adjustment, usually in the form of a minor discount towards rerunning the ad. In fact most rate cards, which, as you'll discover in the next lesson, explains the rate structure at your newspaper, will also include the newspaper's legal disclaimer, and include a line in it that says that errors in ads will only be adjusted by the amount the size of the error is in proportion to the ad size. So if an incorrect phone number only takes up one-twentieth of the ad, then the newspaper reserves the right to adjust the cost of one-twentieth of the ad.