What some competitors do....

[DRS 2006 - Mark]

Here is a little story I just got to tell you.

In summer this year a bigger german Radio Streamer client contacted me. He asked for better pricing since he found a streaming provider which is a few $ cheaper than we are. I explained to him that we can't offer lower pricing and that there are many black sheep out there which oversell their bandwidth pretty much and that I think that he will have problems sooner or later because the pricing was even under market price.

Anyway the client seemed to stick with us and even raised the amounts he ordered.

Today I got a ticket from this client during my support shift in our help desk. The guy says in english that he wants to cancel his subscriptions with us. I reply in german that I am sorry that he leaves. I also told him that he can cancel his subscriptions in his paypal account. He now also responds in german that he is currently not able to get into his paypal account because he is using a PDA. I say that I can also cancel the account for him if he wants. He says ok, that would be nice. So I cancel his subscriptions. Then he writes again in german that I can also stop the servers because he already moved to a cheaper provider and he hopes to deal with us some day again. I say ok, but I can't refund. He says no problem.

I begin to wonder because his german is good but not really perfect, altough he is a german, so I ask him if this keyboard is broken. He writes back in german that he is sorry and that this is because of his PDA. He also asks some stuff about dedicated servers etc. So we talk about a few things in the Help Desk.

So nothing unusual up to this point.

In the meantime I check my personal emails and I get an email from just this guy asking me why his accounts were cancelled. Same email address...Very strange.

So I call the client and ask him what's going on. I tell him that I am communicating with him since hours. He says, with me? no!

I immediately switch his servers back on.

Obviously the posts in the help desk were not from him altough it was the right email etc. So we look up the IPs and find out that the emails came from england using a fake email address. I then trace all information we have to find this person.

In the meantime the guy from the help desk asks me why I put the servers back online. We can just turn them off.

Afer a few further minutes we found him. It was a competitor. So I tell this guy that we found out about him and our lawyer will take care of this matter. I also tell him that we meanwhile know his name and for which company he is working. I really tell him what we have.

Quess what the answer was?
"all i wanted to do was get my old client back "

This is internet. You never know who you are dealing with. And some people are really strange and really try to rip you off. I have learned that in many years now.

I mean this guy is the owner of a real company which looks like ours. If you have a provider in england, feel free to contact me. I can tell you which one it was, so you will not have any problems with your radio station.

Always be careful......

[FlagRadio.Com]

During my research for an article on webcasting I have found a lot of stories like this.

Beware the sharks in the pool!!

Just because it's cheaper doesn't make it better, and don't be fooled by a flashy website.

I use Radio Streamer for one of my streams and it has never failed, unlike some of the others I have had to used.