Still? Jesus.
So let me get this straight...
Copeac owes publisher ~20k; 10k for leads to the bum advertiser and ~10k for totally unrelated leads.
Publisher is on weeklies.
Since Copeac hasn't received payment for leads from bum advertiser, they refuse to pay publisher the entire ~$20k until publisher went public with all of this. Then they finally paid the unrelated ~$10k. 3 or 4 weeks after it was due.
Now Copeac has promised time and again that they will pay out when they receive wire...a wire that's been promised for nearly a month or so?
If that's not totally correct, unless I'm terribly mistaken it's damn close.
I think the initial lack of communication from the network would steam me more than anything else...ESPECIALLY concerning the ~10k or so that was totally unrelated to this fiasco.
But hey, there are three sides to every story however with the severe lack of communication, the stonewalling by AMs, and everything else, this thing has gotten nasty.
I think at the end of the day it all boils down to everything Jon said in his post: greed by everyone all around. And since shit rolls down hill, its the publishers that suffer the most. I have a feeling this will only get worse as networks and publishers continue to scramble to turn up something...anything...as lucrative as the rebills had been...and continue to (mostly) come up short.
Edit: I want to make sure that I point out that I'm not attacking anyone and I definitely believe that Copeac deserves the reputation they have enjoyed, but I do believe that all this definitely could have been handled much better with more communication.