I'm totally irritated. My client/boss hired this PR firm to help do media relations for this project we launched. I'm the lead on the project. Totally excited to have this PR firm working for us EXCEPT they are rude to me, don't respond to my messages, get offended when I very politely and simply ask for the status of a variety of tasks they agreed to do, or when I ask about things they said they'd do or tasks they said they'd complete by a certain day/time and it's now overdue. They refuse to tell us at all what exactly they are doing, and so far, a week in, they have garnered no results. I know that's not very long, but I do not think they have even sent any pitches out.

Then when they do respond to our emails, they tell us things that were wrong, I think in an attempt to excuse themselves from responsibility, but instead my question is, well, if you knew that was an issue then why didn't you raise that issue before we went live? Literally that's your job. And you said nothing.

And today they said in so many words that basically other clients are more important than us right now. And I made a request of one of them to do some research on something and make a recommendation, and she basically told me that it would be a low priority because of the other things she is doing for us, except we don't know what those "other things" are because they won't update us or tell us what exactly they are doing.

I am a consultant, and I would never respond to a client, even if I'm busy, with anything that made me think they weren't important to me as a client. Especially if I cancel meetings at the last minute, miss meetings I agreed to, come late and leave early to meetings I agreed to, and don't respond to emails, text messages, or phone calls.

My client is sort of like, well just let them sink or swim. If they get us some press then great, they can continue to work how they do, if not, we won't work with them anymore. And that would be fine except that she (my client/boss) keeps asking me to assign work to them or ask them to assist us and I CANNOT do that since they will not complete work or respond to requests.

If my boss/client brings it up again, I'm going to flat out tell her that I cannot make requests of them because they do not respond or argue with me when I make a request, and that they have been rude, not just to me, but to other staff members, a number of times. I do not think she should continue to waste money on them. I don't think they are doing anything. They haven't given us enough information to believe they are doing anything. And they are not acting like people of integrity. If you can't make meetings with your ****ing client then how can I count on you to do the work?

I've looked up a number of articles on working with PR firms, and, no surprise, all the articles say this is a sign to ditch the PR firm. And it makes sense. If I treated my clients this way, the relationship would be over. I think we're paying them like $20,000 total for like 4-5 months of work. Seems like if they aren't doing anything we could just save that money.

I think a few ground rules need to be laid down or they can take a hike. But I don't write the check, so my client/boss has to get behind this. I was so excited to have PR firm on board, but I'm very soured on it now, since these two are just such flakes and frauds.

Unfortunately I wasn't involved in the hiring of this firm because it happened while I was moving. I don't think this firm has any real experience in our industry so they are really not the right firm for us. Ug...and now I will have to deal with this for such at least 12 weeks.

Seesaw