Former Manager
@verizon.net
| reply to Hazy Arc
He's an appropriate spokesman. Seinfeld could make a movie about how these people ran their company. Story was the company was started by 4 former cable execs, each put up $25 million. They were able to borrow un-godly amounts of money in '99/early 2000's. I worked with an ISP they acquired(1 of 12). All key people offered options for the large cap IPO about 2 years off.
The original plan in part was for us to help design and support the addition of Internet to their local cable operation. We were looking forward to this new alliance. The the ILEC's treated ISP's like the enemy at that time and we thought it a great opportunity to bypass the phone companies. The local cable operation didn't like the idea and treated us worse than the ILECS. Wouldn't even take or return our calls. They ran adds for our dial up service but wouldn't allow us to schedule or detail what ran. Just sent summary bills to St. Louis. Parent company didn't fix it and our relationship ended there.
They made offers on several other local ISP's and put in a conditional order for more capacity. Only 1 deal closed but they forgot to cancel that order and were left with crazy monthly cost. They would authorize $100,000+ logo redesign and printing one month and refuse a business card order for sales the next. The logo redesign was scrapped 6 months after that for another new look, then our ISP name sold a few month later for a fraction of what paid. Major radio/print ad buy one month, salesmen's company cells cut off the next. We offered Covad, NAC and Northpoint DSL when purchased. Corporate didn't let our other 11 ISP's sell DSL all summer 2000 until they signed a company wide deal. They rolled out a preferred deal with Northpoint about 2 months before their bankruptcy. They signed a long term lease for NOC space in Ohio at .com pricing, then discovered the floor couldn't support the weight. By 2002 they sold all 12 ISP's for less than 25% paid.
They would come in and brutally fire people but pay months severance. They forced a salesman out but forgot to take him off the payroll for about 5 months. Another exec discovered his family still had health coverage after 8 months(he had other coverage). They came in 1 Friday to fire a well qualified tech with an attitude. The only one left that really knew our NOC. I asked to let me find him another job for him in the next month and send someone in to learn his job. They refused, canned him that night and gave him 6 weeks severance. He had another job in a week at 40% more pay and our customer email was sporadic all month.
I was sure they wanted me out. I removed my personal stuff, cleaned my laptop and submitted my resignation. Turns out they wanted me to stay. I agreed if they could give me a formal plan defining a direction. I left 2 weeks later. I had to fight for my last check even though I had an email stating they would pay out my notice. They refused to pay commissions until I sued, then had a very friendly lawyer pay up in full after a drafting a long, expensive agreement where I acknowledged they did no wrong. Probably cost more than they paid me.
I could go on for hours but I think you get the picture. I know creditors are not responsible for operations, but I can't feel bad for anyone who lent them so much money. |
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