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Sunday, July 16, 2006 

Kiplinger's Personal Finance Article

Hi Everyone,

As some of you might know my family was featured in the August 2006 "My Story" column (p. 104) of Kiplinger's Personal Finance. I wanted to share with you a letter I recently wrote to their editor(s):

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Dear Editor,

My family was profiled in the "My Story" section of your August 2006 edition. While we were happy to have the opportunity to tell our story to your audience, we were disappointed that the article ignored the aspect of our story that we were led to believe would be the focus of the article. Namely that we started a website (Alex's Coupons) back in 2001, which not only helped to pay for our daughter's treatment for Leukemia, but today helps raise money for Cancer related charities. Every month Alex's Coupons donates $1000 or 10% of our profits (whichever is larger) to Cancer related charities that helped us when we were in need. This is the story that we wanted told, as we feel it shows how even in the worst of times, it's possible to turn a negative situation into a positive.

We are also upset with how Duke University Medical Center was portrayed in the article. While we had our problems with the Duke billing department, we have nothing but praise for the medical staff there, in particular Dr. Joanne Kurtzberg, who heads up the Pediatric Stem Cell Transplant Program. Over the years we have referred dozens of families to Duke for treatment and will continue to do so in the future.

Sincerely,

Todd & Andrea Martini
Alex's Coupons
http://www.alexscoupons.com

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I have one piece of advice for anyone who's asked by Kiplinger's Personal Finance to be a part of the "My Story" column. Make sure you ask to see the final version of the story before it goes to press! From what I've been told the Editorial Director decided at the last minute to change the focus of the story to our problems with the Duke Medical Center billing department without consulting his staff. It would be an understatement to say that we're very disappointed with this decision.

Hope everything is going great. Take care.

-- Todd

P.S. I'll post a link to the Kiplinger's story once they post it on the web. Right now they still have last month's issue on their website.

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About me

  • I'm Todd Martini
  • From Gig Harbor, Washington, United States
  • I own Alex's Coupons, which offers the latest deals and coupons to consumers, while educating them about Childhood Cancer. I started Alex's Coupons back in 2001 to help raise money for my daughter Alex's treatment for Leukemia. Alex was diagnosed at the age of 10 months and underwent 2 Cord Blood Transplants, multiple rounds of chemo, total body irradiation, experimental treatments, etc. Alex is now 3 1/2 years post 2nd Transplant and is doing quite well. Now that Alex is off treatment I've started donating part of the profits from Alex's Coupons to Cancer related charities. Click here to read more about Alex and the rest of our family or view our Evening Magazine story. that aired earlier this year. There was one major error in the story. We do not make $900k each month, as stated at the end of the story. We've generated up to $900k in sales in a single month (12/05), but we're only paid only a small percentage of that amount as commission.
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