An extra-ordinary example of BAD customer service

July has been a busy month for me in that I have been spending all my extra time working on the basement. So needless to say I haven't spent much time posting to the blog. Something happened today that made me want to tell the world (or at least my little world) about.

I spelled the word extraordinary with a hyphen because usually when you here that word you think it is something special or something great. This specific example is so horribly bad that it was extra-ordinarily BAD.

So, I work for a small Internet based company. What the company does specifically is unimportant. We were in need of moving our web servers to a hosted facility or co-location facility. This type of facility is a large building that has a lot of air-conditioning and a lot of power supply backups and generators and large men with guns.

After much searching we decided on a location in the Dallas area called Info Mart. This is a building that a lot of small companies use to host these types of hosting facilities. The particular company we chose was Premier Voice and their web site is http://www.premiervoice.net.

We were all set to move our servers into their facility and then we made a site visit a few days prior to the move. Our infrastructure manager had made several visits prior to the site visit we made a few days before the scheduled move.

When we arrived we noticed that we were in fact one of the the first tenants in this new location. The facility was so new that there was NO physical security. There was no card access installed. There was NO video surveillance cameras in place. Heck when we arrived there was one person in a back office and every single door in the location was wide open. We could have easily walked off with equipment and they would never have been able to tell who did it.

Not only that but in the short amount of time we had a router installed in the location the internet connection went down three times.

So we told them that we did not want to move our equipment into this facility. We asked them for an invoice for the time we spent in the location and then we wanted to terminate our relationship.

We received this email from them.

> According to our records you have signed a contract with Premier
> Voice to receive services for a term of 1 year. No more, no less.
> Remit payment for the amount invoiced or your account will be sent to
> collections, and you will risk possible legal action against your
> company. Please advise.
>
> Brian Haney
> Controller
> Premier Voice

We responded with this email.

> Brian,
>
> Give me a call this afternoon so we can discuss this.
>
> The invoices are way wrong, since we only ask for 2 cabinets, not 20.
>
> Second, I was told that there wasn't a term on our agreement, that it
> was month to month.
>
> Third, the facility was not ready when we were ready to move in.
>
> Our president was in town to help with the move and he was so
> distressed that he told me we would not use the facility.
>
> I discussed this with William when I came over to remove all of our
> equipment from the rack.
>
> We have agreed to pay the setup fee and first month, but expect all
> billing to cease as of the end of June.

Then they sent this email...

> We have a signed 1-year agreement. We do not offer month-to-month
> service, no one in this business does. And it is certainly not our
> fault your president was distressed, if the facility was not what your
> company needed you should have worked that out before signing the
> contract and moved in. You owe the full balance of the contract, and
> it needs to be paid immediately per the terms of the MSA, or it will
> be sent to collections.
>
> Mike Faulkner, President
> http://www.premiervoice.net
> Premier Voice - Better Business VoIP

Then we sent this email

> Boy, am I glad we didn't go with these guys.
>
> Their facility was not ready for any use on the date requested, our
> Internet connection was dropped twice, including on the day that I
> removed the equipment.
>
> They had no locks on the doors, or cameras. The room they provided was
> clearly still under construction a week after our scheduled move in
> date.
>
> Our first invoice included charges for 20 racks, when we asked for two
> and weren't using any.
>
> These guys were a real rip-off and I would not recommend them to
> anyone.

And now comes the email that really tipifies who this company is. Mind you this email is from the PRESIDENT of the company.

> Dumbass, the 20x is the monthly MRC per month, per 1x cabinet, for the
> length of the term…10 months, 2 cabinets, equals 20…If you guys had
> any clue what you were doing maybe you would have a better shot at
> finding the right provider. It is not our job to educate potential
> clients, either way, your contract is going to the attorneys for
> collections. Enjoy.
>
> Mike Faulkner, President
> Premier Voice - Better Business VoIP

.....I was speechless.....can you ever imagine the leader of a company talking to someone in this way?