Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, August 27, 1993                   TAG: 9308270127
SECTION: BUSINESS                    PAGE: A7   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: PAT BROWN STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

DON'T PAY EVERY JOB-AD `BILL' YOU GET

In a stack of bills and checks an assistant had readied for his signature, Wilner came across what looked like a bill from Employment Classifieds of Santa Ana, Calif. The notice included the first line of an ad that Wilner's Entre Computer Center had written and run earlier this month in the Roanoke Times & World-News classifieds.

As owner of the Roanoke County company, Wilner knew he already had paid about half the $240 the California company was seeking.

Experiences such as Wilner's prompted the Better Business Bureau of Western Virginia to include a warning in a newsletter being sent today to its 2,000 member businesses. BBB Executive Director Fran Stephanz called Employment Classifieds' solicitation a "fake invoice."

The blue-and-white page bears a disclaimer that says it is not a bill, but those words are in yellow type across the lower portion of the page, while red ink at the top urges the reader to "Make Check Payable and Remit." In four other places, the document urges the recipient to pay up. A pre-addressed envelope is enclosed.

"If you were not savvy, you would certainly think it is a bill," said Wilner. "I could easily see how a large company with people in different offices - or different cities - might pay this."

Text on the back of the company's mailing explains that Employment Classifieds is offering to include a copy of an ad already printed in local newspapers in its publication, which is distributed twice monthly.

"I don't feel [the solicitation form] is fooling anybody," Gus McPherson, manager of customer service for the California company, said in a telephone interview.

He said his company places 20,000 copies of the paper in grocery and drugstores in "several hundred towns" in Southern California. The amount on the "solicitation" is the cost of running an ad once in the publication.

He said customers who pay his company by mistake will be given refunds if they request them.

McPherson said Southern California's high unemployment rate makes it a good area for companies to advertise their job openings. He claimed his company was in compliance with a postal regulation that regulates the size of the disclaimer lettering.

But Stephanz said the lettering does not meet the Postal Service's standards for reproduction. "Print color must be reproducible on copying machines," said a BBB pamphlet. In the bulletin going out to BBB members, the copied and reduced disclaimer is illegible.

Stephanz said sending invoice look-alikes has been a popular practice for some time. She called the current spate of complaints "a new twist on an old angle.

The solicitation forms are "all over," said Stephanz. She has received complaints, including one notice for $1,200, from various parts of her territory, the state's western half. "I just wonder how many people have paid."