[Asterisk-biz] group buy!

[alex at pilosoft.com]

On Fri, 8 Apr 2005, Rusty Shackleford wrote:

> I would echo Alex's comments, for the most part. Actually, my experience
> in buying IP connectivity from them has been pretty solid as well, but
> that was back before they tanked. They had some VERY good engineers (in
> our area, at least) who could and did make things work very well. Their
> sales departments however, were a model of disorganization. From our
> point of view, there was too much top-down, "you must get approval of
> everything", style management going on there. Kind of like buying a car;
> "You're KILLING me here, but I'll take it to the sales manager and...."
That, and also the commission model XO used, encouraged dishonesty in 
sales reps. For a while, reps were paid commish based on value of contract 
signed, *not* based on service delivery or revenues. That, predictably, 
caused reps to sell you things that XO can't deliver, or won't deliver 
(reps fudging contracts and putting in unapproved pricing, but still 
collecting commission). I've been told that this has changed. 

Nevertheless, I now have a decent local XO rep, and he knows how to get
things done in XO. I reserve judgement on their wholesale termination rep, 
until they turn up my circuits ;)

-alex