Got a call from a consumer
today who is not a happy camper.
She was beating her head against the wall trying to coordinate a new
system installation with her alternative dial tone provider who had also
thrown a monkey wrench into her decision process.
The CLEC (Competitive Local Exchange Carrier) had strongly hinted that
she should choose their equipment offering. Reasons given for why she HAD to
choose the CLEC provided equipment were a bit shady at best. She was
completely confused and believed she was being fooled around with.
How seriously sad for our industry when customers are targeted,
manipulated and captured without hope of release from long term contracts
and other nefarious tactics beyond any test of reasonable-ness.
The customer, let us call her Jamey Head Hurts had just signed a 2 year
contract with the competitive local exchange carrier (CLEC). That
company had also just bellied up and had been bought out and re-structured.
So even though the playing field and sport had changed, the customer was
still tied and beholden to their contract.
Jamey the confused customer had already contacted and gotten pricing for
a new phone system. They were leaning toward Avaya. Then the
CLEC pours a pound of poop on her plans and insists that she MUST buy a
system from them. No specific provable threats but inclinations enough
to make customer believe that other phone system hardware would work quite
as good with their dial tone services.
Hooooweeeehorsehockey.
I think that is an exact quote.
A topic for another day is the abysmal performance by ALL Local Exchange
Carriers including whatever serves for the local former bell operating
company in your area. I am on a constant search for ONE, just ONE
example of a high speed, voice or data installation that went off on time
and within scheduled parameters. Just ONE.
Jamey Head Hurts is an ongoing example of the next chapter of customer
telecom issues to beware!
Continued HERE....
customerbeware 2.htm
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