Their errors cost us $100,000

Late 2006 we signed up for business service with 20 seats in three locations. I was very careful in reviewing every detail of the service, securing documentation and promsies and putting it in writing. So we began the switch over and sawe chinks in their armor. First, the sales person went on vacation for 3 months (which turned into 4 months). It was impossible to get customer service to answer calls or call back. It was impossible to get a response on an on-line customer service ticket or to our emails.

The second or third week in, their backbone provider turned off their service and everone in their system was without service for a few days. This devasted our inbound phone calls which is how we make our money.

Eventually we learned that the sales person had simply promised service they could not deliver. There were database constrictions and organizatio nproblems that forced them to try to forward from one mac address to another and then another in an attempt to provide the group fucntions and other features they promised.

Then they started altering the setup in their online portal even though they were saying other things. For example: After a very long phone call they said they were going to make a repair which they may have done, but then another technitiain took it upon himself to change it back and we were out of business for another day or two.

Eventually I find a technitian who said he was embarassed to work at a company and gave me his personal mobile phone. He tried and tried to fix things but said their software was all screwed up and he recommended we get out as soon as we could. So we had to re-bid the entire project, and then start a swithc, we had to por tnumbers and, in short, were forced to put up with this unimaginabely terrible service for many weeks.

I was also able to reach certain officers on the phone who were terse and cearly under pressure to produce sales without much concern for whether the product actually did what they said it would.

Let me point out that I never lose my temper or make the kind of rude or beligerent comments some consumers do. I am used to working with vendors to get the best out of them. But Aptela is simply not capable of delivering and will do anything to get your order and then screw it up so bad it could put your company out of business.

We're now at a new firm which is better but still not great. Goodness we used to make fun of Verizon and Qwest but in the old days generally they knew what they could do and not do and would tell you before you bought the service - rather than cause your company to lose huge amounts of money with a service that simply does not work.