Results 1 to 6 of 6
  1. #1
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    Proud She-Geek
    Posts
    1,723

    What would you do?

    Not too long ago I posted about this one reseller of ours who had a customer who continually asked for support from us instead of their reseller. We just forwarded them to the reseller with our own request that they provide support for their customers.

    This morning I am checking my email and I receive this from our upstream provider:
    Is there a reason your customers are contacting us for support directly?
    Did a little digging on the domain requesting support and find out this user is a customer of this same reseller. Did even more searching and see that the two sites our reseller uses for offering hosting are both offline and/or empty.

    Needless to say, I am pretty . It's one thing to have them contact us, but when they bypass us and burden our provider, something has to give. This reseller is obviously not providing support to their customers.

    Not sure what to do about this...any thoughts?

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Dec 2003
    Location
    Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
    Posts
    550
    Hi P-nut,

    The best thing to do in this situation is to send an email to the reseller and state your objectives in regards to supporting your client. In this email state that this clients of his/her is ruining the relationship our company has with our service provider.

    If this situation can not be rectified within a reasonable time we will have to use other means possible to rectify the situation. Ie suspend the clients account or we will charge you a support fee.

  3. #3
    Join Date
    Nov 2001
    Location
    The South
    Posts
    5,408
    Send the reseller an invoice for the time you've spent supporting HIS client, that oughta get their attention
    Gary Harris - the artist formerly known as Dixiesys
    resident grumpy redneck

  4. #4
    Join Date
    Apr 2002
    Location
    North Kansas City, MO
    Posts
    2,694
    I had a customer who had a client like this also. We kept getting support requests from him. I know our customer provided support. I just told him that he would need to contact his provider for support and then stood firm. After about three more times he got the message.

    Aaron
    Aaron Wendel
    Wholesale Internet, Inc. - http://www.wholesaleinternet.net
    Kansas City Internet eXchange - http://www.kcix.net

  5. #5
    Join Date
    Jun 2000
    Location
    Orlando FL USA
    Posts
    1,315
    We had this problem a lot in the beginning.

    Though the problem is still not completely gone...e.g. reseller's clients contacting us for support...it has now been dwindled down to a much more manageable number.

    1st - Resellers agree to the requirements prior to obtaining their Reseller's ID# (required to work w/ our reseller's plan).
    One of the lists they need to agree to can be found by clicking here It may give you some ideas.

    When a Resold Client does contact us, we let them know the email address of whom they should be contacting and we send a copy of the request to the Reseller with additional information that informs them that they have 24 hours to a) contact their client and b) contact us letting us know that they have.

    If we are unable to make contact with the reseller (with a couple of more tries of course) we may remove their reseller's ID# and/or assist the client in becoming a direct client of our own... so far we've only had to do this once
    FutureQuest.net
    Quality Services & Professional Support Since 1998
    Click Here To Visit the Community

  6. #6
    Join Date
    Jun 2003
    Location
    Proud She-Geek
    Posts
    1,723
    @Dixiesys: That was actually the first thing that came to mind

    @Deb: That is a terrific idea! Thanks for the tip; we'll have to draft something of our own up. Hopefully it will help.
    <?php echo "Signature here"; ?>

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •