(I did it again and inadvertently replied offlist, apologies for the duplicate, Steve)
On 2 September 2016 at 02:01, Stephen Wilcox <[email protected]> wrote: > > Ben, all my vendor contracts renew for either 1 or 12mo periods depending > on vendor and all have 30-90d notice periods, serving notice a week before > the anniversary (so ~80d after the notice cutoff) is a bit late. You were > pretty expletive from the outset, I don't use one liners saying my vendor > is "a bit c**tish", but our guys still offered you openness to swap service > if your needs had changed. To be fair you did threaten it would be "in our > better interest" to cancel the contract or you'd publicly out us - so you > are at least consistent. > > You seem to be addressing a complaint about the existence of a notice period in isolation when Ben's issue appears to be rooted in the slow manner in which the discussion around what the renewal ought to look like (during which the clock ran down), ultimately ending with Console turning around and saying they weren't interested in providing whatever Ben wanted. Most people (I hope) would then take a view that it's then better to part ways on good terms - particularly if there have been shortcomings or delays in negotiating a renewal - than to hold a customer to something they obviously indicated they didn't want/need or only offer the option of switching to other things they don't want/need as some sort of compromise. Very few businesses have the requisite (near/total) monopoly to aggrieve (ex)-customers this way. Taking Ben's version of events at their word (and certainly you have not actually addressed or even disputed the central plank of his complaint), and assuming Ben's requirements were reasonably well defined in advance of the notice cutoff, it is easy to see how this might result in his apparent opinion that the protracted negotiations were in bad faith. Of course it is entirely possible that Ben spent the ~90 days prevaricating, continually changing his requirements, failing to commit to an offer which met his requirements, all of which would be totally legitimate grounds to challenge his complaint on... but you made no such challenge, instead seeking to undermine him personally, rather than his complaint, by deflecting onto him using naughty words (*gasp*). (All that said, having long ago been party to an (inherited) service from a former operation of yours that had a contract term that demanded a most probably unlawful £500 (I think) early termination "charge" *on top* of 100% of the commit charges for the remainder of the term, I learned that the "letter of the contract" when it comes to cancellation/renewal appears to be particularly important to you personally.) The apparent lesson here is to cancel Console services first (as negotiations around the service are not a strong enough indicator that the customer does not want to keep the current terms), negotiate later. Added bonus that it might sharpen the focus of the salesperson in question who cannot rely on your old contract auto renewing, assuming some sort of performance related pay is at stake. Whether this is an approach customers *really* ought to have to take when trying to find common ground on which to continue to spend money with a supplier is a thought exercise left up to the reader.
