As you've probably noticed from our other cautionary tales, we do not enjoy sharing stories about failures within the communications industry. But we do so in order to protect our customers and other businesses from the valuable lessons learned.
Such an instance occurred to one of our longtime clients a few weeks back. We served their communication needs with a premise-based PBX provider for several years, and recently that provider started a campaign to migrate segments of their clients to RingCentral.
The client in question worked with our account managers to facilitate a deep discovery, review demos, check feature parity, and more. RingCentral appeared to be an excellent fit, and contracts were signed. Our technical account managers also handled porting over numbers, programming IVRs, and other aspects of the implementation; these steps were completed without a hitch. The migration was highly successful, and our client was happy.
However, several months later, a bill arrived in their inbox to settle the final balance with their prior PBX provider. The tally was $21,570 for an equipment buyout fee, even though the equipment was given to them by that provider.
Our client had a contract in writing stating that the phones were indeed free, which may make this cautionary tale a little confusing. After all, they migrated to RingCentral at the advice of this provider and followed every requirement to the letter.
However, the previous PBX provider claimed that our client had a ten-day return window on their equipment, which they said had already expired months ago. The provider had back-dated the termination contract from late August to June 30th, then used that to enforce their final bill demand.
As for the shipping label to return the equipment, the provider didn't even mail it until 8/29/2022—just two days before they sent their demand letter for $21,570.
The provider is now robocalling clients with the exact same offer, with the same trap included within.
Thankfully, our team resolved this matter by engaging the PBX provider's senior leadership to stop collection efforts. While it did turn out to be a happy ending for everyone, we felt it important to share this cautionary tale since it has likely happened, or will happen, to several other new RingCentral accounts as well.
The moral here? It's our mutual job to make the vendors earn your business and trust while ensuring things are contractually sound. Work with a certified partner that has your best interest at heart and the ability to make things right through that vendor's senior leadership.
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