ctavakoli wrote:Hi ksl,
I'm a little confused with the partner who supplied the numbers in the first place to the VO, was he a VO partner or was it an outsourced party renting the numbers out to VO clients. Whichever method used the VO is accountable, they are the ones advertising the dedicated number service, and mention no 3rd party on their website for numbers that i can see.
I agree - I think it's their responsibility too - they seem to think it's not. The GM at VO forwarded me this communication from someone - she didn't state where they're from and it's a gmail address. Funnily he references their vendors - you've gotta wonder how many times it's being re-sold here.
Hi <REMOVED>,
It is an unexpected decision of our vendor who has decided to terminate the services and focus on their other core businesses. It is a business decision of another entity which is not within our control.
We could understand the level of inconvenient and frustration the changes brought to us and our customers. Under this circumstance, we could not hold on to the decision of another entity. However, we have immediately qualified another equivalent vendor to bridge the service. The change would be the telephone number. We have tried to request to transfer the original number but were not successful because they were tied to the infrastructure which is owned by our previous vendor.
Most of our customers who using the similar services would inform their customers of the change of telephone numbers through email or fax. So far, we did not encounter anything major problem. If the numbers were printed on paper materials, it is not within our capacity to compensate the losses.
We apologize for this experience our customers encountered. We are at the upper stream and we suffer much more than our customers. I hope our customers could understand our burden and move on with us and we will continue to provide our utmost support.
Thank you.
Regards,
<REMOVED>
I mean I'm struggling to comprehend why VO would allow their service provider to not pick up this number set. I have written to the guy above and told him that Starhub has told me that they can take over the number set.
ct
Yes It appears they are trying to fob everyone off! I would suggest you take some legal action against the VO company if they refuse to take over the numbers, it is clearly their responsibility when they are selling a package with a dedicated phone number.
This shouldn't cost an arm and a leg, in the small claims court, and I believe it is a clear cut case...The VO should make everyone aware of the vendor involvement and have had a disclaimer in the contract making everyone aware that the telephone numbers are not theirs. they are selling a product and probably getting commission too on how many clients they provide to the number vendor, They are completely in breech of their responsibilities. I would attempt to trace others in the same position, but take them to the small claims on your own.
1. They make compensate you, before a court case
2. If too many take them to court, they will not have money to compensate everyone, so some will probably not get anything.
3. They give in a pay for the block numbers.
4. I have no idea if the VO is a limited Company or not, if not then the owner of the VO will be panicking, to avoid any claims and would never admit liability, this can only be sorted out under arbitration of the small claims court.
You need to make them aware, that your company have no alternative, but to recover costs of published materials, through the small claims court procedure, when it is a clear trading breach of responsibility on the VO, not to make all clients aware of the Vendor, secondly it is not a virtual Office, without telephone numbers.
The VO service provider should be starhub or another telecommunications provider and not another 3rd party, this is the obvious breach in a Virtual Office setup, they have attempted to cut costs by using a 3rd party involvement, because it is not easy for a startup VO to sell off 200 numbers, until business is well established with a client base.
This is the VO mistake of not informing all clients that the numbers are not theirs. I would go as far to say, they have planned a deception of not informing clients, because it is clear, they would have difficulty to provide a VO service, without telephone number availability.
Due to lack of funds, when starting the business, and/or a planned strategy to deceive clients, so they could sell, their VO packages. it is obvious to an idiot, that no one would rent a VO, because of the risk of changing telephone numbers through a 3rd party.
It's called good old common sense and the small claims court would agree, without doubt.
You can cut and paste what i have wrote to them if you like, but one thing for sure, is they are not going to admit liability, so it must be a court case. to recoup your costs, if you do nothing, then they the VO have decieved many clients by not informing them before sign up.
Best I can come up with! Good luck!
