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Okay, I’ll admit it. I am a hands-on sort of IT guy. If I get a new device I like to jump right into it and play with it, usually before deploying it for use. As a result, I have always been a little skeptical of virtual services or cloud-based services. I figured that by going with a virtual pbx and voip system for my office, I was being both cost-wise and progressive. I figured there would be some problems in the beginning, but it would all smooth out and who could beat the price at 3 months free service, right?

It has been a year now that we have struggled nearly every day with our phones and our phone service provider. We have asked them more than a dozen times to resolve our issues with front door access and to this date, nothing at all has been done. We have submitted trouble ticket after trouble ticket and with no way to track them and no way to isolate systemic problems from circumstantial, it feels futile. It is so bad that now, my co-workers often have to leave mid-day because they can work better from home than trying to rely on the office phones.

We are stuck in a three year contract that we have been lied to, ignored, and treated worse than I can even express. Our phones don’t work, we have no backup (as promised by the provider) and we regret having made this decision. I would identify the provider and heartily suggest that any small business avoid them at all costs, but this isn’t about them specifically.

So, is this indicative of the kinds of service you can expect from cloud service providers in general? Because it really seems to me that cloud service providers are more apt to take an “outta sight, outta mind” approach. I mean, what am I gonna do, send an email? Tweet? I can’t call for support, the phones are down again (humor).

If I ever go with another cloud service provider for a mission critical utility like phone service, there are a number of requirements that I will have. The biggest being accountability. The second biggest is disaster recovery. From there the list goes on to include things like service level monitoring, some (any) communication from provider, reliability, and more. These are all things I can demand in person from someone that I am face to face with; a cloud service provider, not so much.

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I just went through a very similar situation. In the end I ended up getting out of the contract by calling and yelling sometimes upwards of twice per day, then moving further up to the sales reps and their bosses. It takes a lot of patience. As soon as we moved to another provider, our experience has been excellent with much better quality of service.

Be patient - and kick some ass :slight_smile:

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Read your contract, are they providing everything spelled out on it? If not you have grounds to terminate it. I think you should mention the company here, this forum is read by many decision makers and influences. You may even find that the company that is not delivering is also looking through this blog and will be willing to help resolve your issues.

going forward i always recommend to run pilot program, with cloud services its easy. Request a list of references and call few randomly, ask how long they had service and how company is likely to resolve the issues. Don’t sign 3 year contracts first time around, pay a little more but go with 1 yr. Stick with larger established company with good track record in customer service. Your heart is in the right place but execution might need improvement.

Good luck. (dealing with telecom for 15+ years)

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First, let me say THAT SUCKS!

Crap service is crap service regardless of industry/product, virtual or not. If you have a flaming disaster with any service there should be a way out in less than 3 years… Keep pushing. Accountability is the SLA and at some point I would think that they would let you walk to save their own reputations and the amount of hassle dealing with a “problem” customer that they just cant get right.

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Twitter is certainly a great tool. I see no reason to not publicly shame a company that continuously drops the ball. If you have your issues well documented they most likely won’t chase the money in court, BUT they might not release your phone numbers. Find out who’s running the company and call them.

Did you buy direct or through a partner?

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Important to note… it sounds like you are using a “hosted service”, not a cloud. Using “cloud” in this is a bit misleading. I can tell how you intend to use it, in the marketing not the IT way, but too many people can’t tell which is which and don’t know where the problems exist.

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Definately press to get out of the agreement if they are not holding up to their end of the bargain.

If they have an SLA in their docs and you can proove they have not met the SLA on several occasions that is a way to do so.

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SLA’s are usually good for little more than some trivial credit for not meeting it’s terms. This is why we try very hard to do two things when negotiating a long term contract like yours:

  1. Spell out in the SLA as many critical performance metrics as possible.
  2. Get a “three strikes” clause, sometimes known as a “serial failure to perform” clause. This says, in essence, “If customer suffers three or more creditable outages in any consecutive 90 day period, customer may terminate the contract without penalty.”

You won’t always get those things, but it’s worth every minute you spend negotiating them.

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tunearg01, thanks for your reply. I will keep that in mind as soon as I find a reasonable replacement. Sorry to hear you had similar problems. Wonder if it was the same company?

@alex49381 The problem is that I have mentioned the company here previously and like you suggested, I got a quick response. The problems still persist and hasn’t improved on any single front. I want to watch what I am saying as I am preparing to take them to court and don’t want there to be any possibility of mitigation due to claims of libel.

@swade, It does suck, thanks. And as soon as I find a replacement service that will do what I need, I will politely ask to be released from my end of the contract and if they allow it without hassle, I will not make a big public spectacle out of them and it will save me the hassle of filing suit.

@Scott Alan Miller, I see your point and will try to be more conscious of the issue. It is obnoxious, however, considering the service provider uses the word Cloud in their business name. I guess I never really considered the difference before. Thanks for your help.

@john_techn9, thanks for your reply. You are right. This company is all about Tweeting how great they are every day and when I have tweeted in the past, they have replied quickly if not ineffectively. I am about to launch a major Twitter offensive based on strictly the facts about our account. Every time anyone mentions anything about this service provider, I will reply until they let me ou7t of my contract. Originally,

@john_techn9, We went to their website and thought that we were dealing directly with the provider. There is absolutely no way to tell because their bills are absolutely the most convoluted mess you have ever seen. Not only that, but they lure you in with 3 months free, but neglect to explain how the three months works: you get coupons that you have to submit one every three months between certain dates to get the credit for the month. Two coupons per year. Absolute ripoff. If you lose the coupons, tough.

@George Badissi, thanks for your reply.My poor office mates are so beat down by the constantly poor service, the numerous outtages, the phones that don’t do what they claimed, the lack of front-door support, etc. that I am afraid it’s become a veritable hostage crisis. Though my office mates hate the existing system, they are so afraid to try something worse that they are willing to put up with it. Still, I am evaluating options and hope to find a service provider that will go the extra mile and help setup our system before we try to switch over and traumatize everyone again.

@john4865, thank you to for your advice. I will definitely keep that in mind as I negotiate new service. The funny thing is that this company has been down so many times that we just naturally expect a small credit every month for the time they are down. Trying to figure out which month to apply which credit to is futile, however. The three-strikes thing sounds like a good thing to fight for.

@spiceworkssupport, when are you going to have threaded replies? Or at least you could have facebook like identity completion with links that update members when they are mentioned by name.

Sorry for the long reply. Thanks for all the great input.

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You certainly have a hosted service that is not being handled well.

My company’s PBX is on a VM in a datacenter. Been like that for a year and only issues we have are due internet congestion caused by things we have no control over (yet).

I have a client with a PBX hosted by a provider using rackspace. Never had any problems with that one.