MoveOn Suckered Into Paying Full Price for Their NY Times Ad

MoveOn.org got a great deal on their "Betray Us" ad as confirmed by the Public Editor of the paper, but now they're panicking at their good fortune and coughing up the extra money:

WASHINGTON, Sept. 23 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- In the Public Editor
column of today's New York Times, the Times' vice president admits that,
without the knowledge or consent of MoveOn.org Political Action, the Times
"made a mistake" in charging MoveOn its standby rate of $65,000 for the
advertisement run on Monday September 10. According to the Public Editor,
the Times' vice president admitted that the company's advertising
representative "failed to make it clear that for that rate the Times could
not guarantee the Monday placement but left MoveOn.org with the
understanding that the ad would run then." According to the Public Editor,
"the group should have paid $142,083."

Now that the Times has revealed this mistake for the first time, and
while we believe that the $142,083 figure is above the market rate paid by
most organizations, out of an abundance of caution we have decided to pay
that rate for this ad. We will therefore wire the $77,083 difference to the
Times tomorrow (Monday, September 24, 2007).

We call on Mayor Giuliani, who received exactly the same ad deal for
the same price, to pay the corrected fee also.

If I were Rudy I'd tell them to go pound sand. Rudy paid the price that was asked, and if the Times screwed up, tough luck. Send the bill to MoveOn.