This is a sad story about some unscrupulous business tactics.
I will preface this by saying that we’ve spent tens of thousands of dollars with this company over the years, which made it especially hurtful when they pulled this stunt recently.
In larger, past-projects, we had used this company a lot, often buying large “blocks” of hours at a time (sometimes 30-40 hour blocks), and using them over the course of a few months. More recently though, the scope of our projects have been more in-house/self-contained, and we haven’t used them as much as we used to.
Recently, I reached out to them to help move a live streaming set up that we had in a wedding chapel, to a larger space upstairs from the former. I estimated the job would be 4-5 hours. They got back to me with a few options…
I could buy a 100 hour block, an 80 hour block, 60, a 40, or a 20 hour block.
I responded, letting them know that this was only a 4-5hr job, and suggested that pre-buying 20 hours as a minimum might not be the right approach for this particular job. They told me that it is their standard business model, and that nobody had ever complained about it before.
I then suggested that while I understood how it was in their best interest to sell me 20 hours for a five hour job, that it might not be in the best interest of the customer in this case. They got angry, and told me that my suggesting they weren’t acting in the best interest of the customer was “offensive“, and that it was a much bigger job than I thought it was.
I then suggested that we would try the move ourselves, but asked politely, that when we got done, could we call them in for maybe an hour or two to fix any lingering tech issues?
They told me that would be OK.
Well, we did the move ourselves, and it actually only took 3 hours and 40 minutes before we were up and running and live streaming again in the new space, validating my assertion that their minimum 20 hour block was indeed not the right tool for this particular job.
In any case, when we were finished, we decided that it would be beneficial to bring them in to adjust the color on the cameras, and some other fine-tuning stuff. So we called them back and asked if we could get them in for an hour, maybe two, to do these fine-tuning adjustments.
Despite preliminarily agreeing to do exactly that, they told me that in order to get them to come down for an hour, I still had to buy a block of hours, but this time they reduced it to 10 hours, at approximately $200 an hour, that I would have to pre-pay.
I suggested that again, I can see how this was in their best interest, to sell me A 10 hour block of time, when I only needed an hour, but they held their ground and said that that is their “policy”.
I suggested that perhaps in light of the fact that I’ve spent nearly $100,000 with them over the last eight years, but they might band policy a little, since I really only needed an hour. They told me no, that is their policy, but told me that I could use the hours for up to a year after purchasing them.
I tried a couple more times to get them to see that this tactic felt a little extortionate… As in, “we refuse to help you for one hour unless you pre-pay us for 10”, which really felt like I was being held over a barrel, but then they cut me off, and told me that they have decided to no longer do business with me. Apparently, if you have the audacity to not want to be taken advantage of, this company will simply move on to someone that doesn’t know any better.
All in all, they can charge whatever they want, so they haven’t committed any real crime here. But it really felt sleazy to me, after such a long history together to just flat out refuse to help me unless I paid for much more than I needed. That is not how you treat ANY customer, most especially a long-standing loyal one, but I digress.
So please beware, and heed my warning if you are thinking about doing business with this company, and you’ll see it coming during the first consultation, as they come on strong like used car salesmen.
The whole thing was really disheartening.
