The Truth
I completely understand your concerns having read the content of what remains online. My hope is that you will entertain a brief conversation on the phone so that I may introduce myself and elaborate on a few things concerning my history in this business and to include my 14 at Premiere Marketing. In this correspondence, I will stick to the bottom-line facts.
I did not own Premiere Marketing. It was purchased in 2006 by a Kansas City couple who had a depth in real estate sales experience. I was proactively recruited to operate the company given my tenure in this business for a competitor of Premiere at that time. I ran the company with integrity and performed for literally thousands of Builders throughout the country and in southern Canada. In 2019, the owners purchased a vacation home in Phoenix Arizona and were only living in Kansas City half of the year. They had very little, if any involvement in the day to day and served more as the accounting arm of the company. At the end of that same year, I was denied pay increase requests for a for a few tenured employees that were deserving of at the very least, 6% increases in compensation. I also noticed that the monies budgeted for our monthly print allocation were cut by a concerning percentage. When I voiced concern about the retention of these employees, as well as the satisfaction of our Builder clients, I was met with no response. My only guess was they were getting ready to possibly sell the company. I gathered a small investment group and made a formal offer to purchase Premiere. It was ignored. Two months later I called a mandatory meeting with the owners and again, communicated my concerns for these issues. I also made a second offer for roughly half a million less than the prior offer, to attempt to get their attention. It was communicated to me that they were working with a group of wealthy investors made up of physicians and litigators. The same group of investors that I had gathered to offer to purchase Premiere, agreed to finance my desire to start my own publishing company. At this juncture I sought out one of Kansas City’s best employment attorneys to seek consultation on possibly starting my own firm. I needed to know what the ramifications of some of the top performers at Premiere joining me in my new endeavor.
I was given confidence that I could move forward with my intent to start my own business as KC is a “right to work state”. I submitted my resignation and offered to stay on board for a two-week period. Ironically, within a month of my departure the owners of Premiere closed their doors and terminated all employees due to Covid-19. This made it far less of a concern of securing the employ of some of the past employees.
Premiere let the phone ring off the hook and shut down their website making absolutely no effort to explain the circumstances to their Builder Clients nor the subsequent Sponsors who supported their projects.
Our instinct at Partner Media (my firm since 2020) was to immediately take action and attempt to perform for all of the clients that were abandon by Premiere. Partner Media managed to take all but a handful of these clients to press and funded the production and printing costs associated with the demise of Premiere. The very few builders that were nonresponsive or did not want our assistance were at least informed of our desire to help. Our actions removed what could have been a black eye on our industry. The posts that you see from what should read “4 years”, not “3 years ago are from Sponsors of those handful of projects that were not completed. I can attest that at least two of the posts were fabricated by one of our competitors. I am listed as President as I should be, but also listed wrongfully as an Officer within the state of Kansas under Premiere Marketing. This is why the posts bear my name. I spent quite a bit of time and finance trying to get Google to understand how all of this transpired, but to no avail. Eventually Google under litigation was forced to take down several of the damning reviews that were obviously malicious attempts to taint my reputation, but “Trustburn.com” picked them up and lists them proudly, but wrongfully.
I can offer you the contact information of several of the clients that we performed for out of the spirit of good business that fell subject to all of this for your reference. I also appreciate you acknowledging that our Better Business Rating is an A+, as we were in conversation and under their magnifying glass for a couple of years to gain said rating. We also have a 5.0 rating on Google.
Thank you for allowing me the opportunity to explain this situation as you can see, I am very passionate about our firms integrity.
Sincerely,
Jeff
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Jeff Taubin
913-481-5082
