Stop Customers From Signing "One Way" End-User
Agreements Not All Providers Trap Customers Into
Changeable Contracts
TA Endorses
PAETEC's Agreement for setting a fair "Two Way" Standard
by Dan
Baldwin, TA Founder & Executive Director
Most all telecom agents and channel partners both
know about and love the "evergreen clause" - the language in an agent
agreement that requires the provider to pay the agent commissions for as
long as the customer stays on service with the provider. Few agents would
consider signing an agent agreement that is missing the evergreen clause.
As
much as agents love the evergreen clause though they are starting to hate
the "one way clause" - the language in the agreement that their end-user
customers sign with the provider that states that the provider can change
the agreement during the term of the contract that the customer must
accept without the option of getting out of the agreement - one way
indeed!
Several months ago
my outbound call center customers were informed by two different carriers
that they would soon see new surcharges added to their monthly invoices -
surcharges that were clearly not part of the original contract they
signed. When I spoke with the carrier's executives and suggested
that these surcharges were not in the customer's contract and that the
carrier could not change the rules in the middle of the agreement the
executives said, "Actually, we can!"
The executives then proceeded to show me the clause in the signed contract
that incorporated additional service terms on the carrier's web site which
said, in effect, "We
can change these terms at any time".
When I suggested that this was unfair the carrier executive suggested that
"All carrier contracts are like this".
Total
Call International / OPEX: Great for
Switched LD, Toll Free 800 & Auto Order Entry
For 10 years OPEX provided outstanding service. Now part of Total Call
the tradition of being the best home for switched service continues.
Jeffrey Kapner,
Total Call International's Senior Vice President of Marketing, Sales
and Support discusses with TA's Dan Baldwin how Total Call / OPEX is still
embracing both outbound and toll free switched long distance orders.
"We do T1, DS3 & OC3 orders to," Kapner states, "but no one
brings the level of support to switched order that we do including a
customized order entry link for any agent. Call 877-577-7266 for
more information."
"We
were surprised by
the accuracy of TA's prospect list
service. The contact names & phone numbers were over
90% correct -
much better than other lists
we've tried." Brett
Stauffer,
Capital Bandwidth
Vegas Trade Show Videos
We had initially uploaded all these videos to TA's YouTube sites
here
or here but it seems that firewalls or other problems prevent our members
from viewing YouTube videos so We're rehosting all the videos to a new
server and presenting them here.
Devi
Jaspal,
Intelisys'
Senior Director of Operations
on their the Audex suite of
products which includes telecom expense and asset management ("TEM") and
customer relationship management ("CRM") tools for full end-to-end
lifecycle management capabilities.
Eugene Gutman,
CEO of
Vocal IP a
nationwide Internet telephony service provider ("ITSP") of hosted VoIP,
IP-PBX & SIP trunks on an overlaying MPLS network. Founded by engineers,
VocalIP specializes in design, on-site installation & training of business
VoIP solutions competing with XO, Qwest, Level(3) & Global Crossing.
Greg
Griffiths, New Edge
Networks'
Marketing VP on their private MPLS over DSL solution that offers
multilocation businesses the lowest possible costs for the best private
data network solutions blending both T1 and DSL circuits
Chuck Piazza,
Smoothstone IP
Communications'
Senior Vice-President on their managed IP communication solutions for 100+ users
in the enterprise space including hosted VoIP, SIP trunking and wide area
networks (WANs)
"Members
Choice" Award Winners With great fanfare and a 21-gun salute, TA announced the winners of TA's
4th annual "Members Choice" Awards. All 3,200 TA members were invited to
cast votes and 322 ballots were accepted and counted. What resulted from
over four months of nominating, voting and counting was the selection of
the Top 10 vendors in 20 fresh industry categories. Click the image below
to view a printable image of all the winners. As previously announced, for
the next year, TA's vendor directory will first list these award winners
in "vote count order" for the directory's 20 industry categories.
About This is Telecom Association's (TA) weekly email newsletter for Complimentary
Members. TA is a 14-year old membership organization. TA members
recommend and distribute telecom, data and technology solutions to
businesses. TA vendors provide many of the solutions TA members recommend.
Members get information about TA vendor solutions through TA vendor
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