09-19-2007, 06:54 PM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 2
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4Smartphone's treatment of its customers with annual contracts
Just some friendly advice for anyone considering 4Smartphone: I'd strongly suggest that you avoid this company and instead choose almost any other provider. Here's why:
I have had 4Smartphone's hosted Exchange 2003 service for about a year and a half, and use it to keep my desktop, laptop, and Treo 700w in sync. I was a very happy customer, and even referred friends to them. The service worked fine, and I've never had any serious problems. As they offered only prepaid annual contracts, I'm on what was called the 'Mobile Pro' plan for $83.88/year, which works out to $6.99/month. My current agreement runs through the end of Feb. 2008.
4Smartphone recently added new servers running Exchange 2007, and new or renewing customers can now subscribe only to that service. At the same time, they more than doubled their prices -- the equivalent new 'Mobile Pro Plus' plan jumped from $6.99 to $15.95 per month (the "special launch price" is a mere $13.95/month)! They also switched exclusively to month-to-month agreements.
Those of us on prepaid annual contracts (ie, most current customers) assumed that 4Smartphone would at least continue to provide the services we paid for until our expiration date, at which point the new prices and terms would apply. Like many users, I was happy with Exchange 2003 but was willing to migrate to Exchange 2007 if that's what they wanted.
So imagine our surprise when we received emails stating that the Exchange 2003 servers would be shut down "in the very near future", and that we had to create new accounts under Exchange 2007 and migrate our mailboxes. No problem there, but here's the kicker: they also said "we will credit your balance toward the Exchange 2007 service that best suits your needs" -- with the new inflated prices starting immediately. In other words, they are simply ignoring all of their existing annual contracts and expect users to pay more than twice as much in order to receive the service they already paid for! In my case, it's like saying "you paid us for 12 months in advance, but we've decided to give you only 7 months -- oh, and if you want service for those remaining 5 months, you'll need to pay us twice as much."
Many customers (me included) have written angry emails demanding that 4Smartphone honor its contractual commitments with us, but they simply send form-letter emails refusing to do so. This is clearly an illegal breach of contract -- but more importantly, it's an incredibly unethical and cavalier way for any company to treat its loyal customers.
Since many of us first learned of 4Smartphone through recommendations on forums like this, I felt it was equally important that anyone considering them in the future know how the company treats its customers so they can decide accordingly. 4Smartphone obviously doesn't care about keeping its customers, and is betting that a majority will simply accept their actions without protest. But I also think they underestimate the power of the Internet as potential new customers research which service to choose.
There are a number of alternative hosted Exchange services with more competitive pricing. I hope mentioning this isn't against the rules, but if anyone's interested, there is a long and growing thread about this whole situation including a discussion of those alternatives over on the Howard Forums at http://www.howardforums.com/showthre...readid=1238374.
Rob
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09-19-2007, 08:44 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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I understand your frustration. I've been a big proponent of 4smartphone for quite a while now, but this whole Exchange 2007 thing has really tarnished them in the eyes of many, myself included. I had direct conversations with their CEO about how problematic this price increase was going to be, but I didn't realize it was even worse: forcing customers to migrate from Exchange 2003 to 2007 before their contract is up seems very unfair and not ethical. I'm frustrated by this, and honestly quite embarrassed that a company I've recommended so strongly to others has done this.
Ultimately if things get more expensive for 4smartphone and they need to pass that on to customers by raising their prices, that's fine - it's business, and people have the choice to go elsewhere. But this issue of them de-commissioning the Exchange 2003 servers before someone's hosting contract is up...that's just plain wrong.
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09-20-2007, 02:54 AM
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Neophyte
Join Date: Sep 2007
Posts: 2
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Jason Dunn
Ultimately if things get more expensive for 4smartphone and they need to pass that on to customers by raising their prices, that's fine - it's business, and people have the choice to go elsewhere. But this issue of them de-commissioning the Exchange 2003 servers before someone's hosting contract is up...that's just plain wrong.
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Jason, you've summarized the problem quite well. And in fact, I don't even have a problem with 4Smartphone's desire to turn off the Exchange 2003 servers so they only need to support one version of MS Exchange. In my several emails protesting what they're doing, I said that I was willing to go through the effort of migrating from Exchange 2003 to 2007 for the remainder of my contract if that was their preference. What I'm not willing to do is allow them to illegally increase my prices before the end of my prepaid contract.
4Smartphone's stated reasons for more than doubling their prices include blaming Microsoft for higher license fees, as well as increased costs for better servers and more storage. As you say, Jason, they're free to try to charge whatever they want after my contract expires -- but it's interesting to note that a number of their competitors have already managed to upgrade to Exchange 2007 without such massive price increases. These include SherWeb, IT Solutions Now, LiveOffice, and DSL Extreme -- all of whom charge less than $10/month for at least 1 gig of storage. And although 1&1 appears to still be running Exchange 2003, their price remains at the $6.99/month that 4Smartphone used to charge. Like many other customers (and former 4Smartphone supporters), I'll be taking my business to one of those competitors immediately, and will never again recommend 4Smartphone's service.
Rob
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09-20-2007, 02:13 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 10,981
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Quote:
Originally Posted by rvonder
4Smartphone's stated reasons for more than doubling their prices include blaming Microsoft for higher license fees, as well as increased costs for better servers and more storage.
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We all know that's a load of .....
As you go on to point out, others have managed to offer Exchange'07 for the same price, or less than 4Smartphone's Exchange 2003 pricing. It looks to me like 4Smartphone has mis-managed their finances and are now passing that along to the customer.
Since they're forcing you to upgrade and pay more, you should be able to cancel out early and get money back. Or is that not an option? I would just pack up and take my business someplace else.
__________________
"I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious" - Albert Einstein |
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09-20-2007, 06:39 PM
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Executive Editor
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 29,160
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Mike Temporale
Since they're forcing you to upgrade and pay more, you should be able to cancel out early and get money back.
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Yeah, I think they've started to offer pro-rated refunds (as in, you have 6 months left, so you'll get 50% of you money back). So that's decent, but it's ridiculous that they're forcing customers off their servers in the first place...
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09-28-2007, 06:24 PM
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Editor Emeritus
Join Date: Aug 2006
Posts: 2,432
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Back in May I moved from 4Smartphone to Mail2Web and so far the service has been awesome, especially for the $1.95/mo price tag. I usually delete emails that I do not need anymore and backup any important files that are in those emails so I never come close to using the 1GB storage limit that is offered with that account.
I really liked 4Smartphone when I was there, but after the initial price hike at the beginning of the year, I just could not justify the cost.
Also with 4Smartphone, since I was not notified of the price hike until it was time to renew, I was not allowed to backup all of my contacts and emails from their server unless I grabbed one of the new plans, which was something ridiculous like $80. The good news is, for some odd reason I backed all of that stuff up on my computer the week before so it wasn't lost entirely.
This isn't really 4Smartphone's fault, just a warning to never keep your eggs in one basket because you never know when something like this, or worse, will happen and you can lose all that data!
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