I created this blog with the intention of letting you the consumer see the truth about what you’re paying for. I’ve realized that I’m not being true to myself or my intentions by cowering before legal pressures impending for my actions. I’ve taken extra steps to insure my identity remain secret and will continue with my original plan. First though lets look at why AMS/Vertafore has spent the time and money on silencing me. It’s not like I stand to gain anything, it’s not a lawsuit from me, revenge, posh the idea. What would I gain from this? The satisfaction of telling you the consumer the truth as I always did as a tech when I supported their products. Let’s look closer though.
Is AMS a profitable company? The answer is yes, they make money hand over fist. Quite a few of you are paying 78k dollars a year or more in support fees.
Why change support? The answer is simple, in 2005 and 2006 AMS did not meet the very lofty profit goals it had set. This is because of either poor management or the goals were not realistic. As a result for those 2 years the board of directors and Euan Menzies CEO of Vertafore did not get a yearly bonus, and so the decision was made to outsource support in the name of more profit. That’s the short definition of greed, one of the 7 deadly for those that believe in that.
Why pay retainer fees for an attorney? Well that’s simple, by telling you the truth there is the risk that some of you will take your business elsewhere. I wouldn’t blame you if you did. However, I would encourage all of you, yet again, get loud and noisy with this company first. Make them believe that you’ll do just that thing if they don’t carry a support that you deserve for those monthly fees they’re happy to charge you for. Make them hire that 880 years of experience back that they laid off in Texas alone. Don’t let them use outsourcing that doesn’t know how to properly support the product.
A quick word on outsourcing. I worked for an outsourcing company. I’ve known other people that have worked for outsourcing companies and the stories are all the same. There are no high standards of training held to. If Ed believes that he’s naïve and I’ll summarize on that later. The average rate of pay is between 8 and 9 dollars an hour, so even if the call center adequately trains these people do you really believe that the outsourced tech is going to care whether he does a good job or not versus the AMS employees that were making twice that who have been laid off or will be laid off? That’s an easy question to answer. Typically when an outsourcing center gets a contract to support a product they have standards to meet such as call time which is how much time is spent on the call. How many tickets to close each day. Customer satisfaction is low on this list as it is not a money maker in the eyes of these people. All of this falls under an SLA which is Service Level Agreement. As long as the outsourcing company is meeting its SLA’s what do they care if you’re satisfied or not. The answer is simple they don’t. Now about the people running AMS. They are Sycophants. What is a sycophant you say, let me define it for you here.
Sycophant: The term has come to mean one who seeks to please people in positions of authority or influence in order to gain power themselves, usually at the cost of pride, principles, and peer respect.
I think this is a perfect description for the powers at AMS taking your money each month. They may have pride or integrity, or even morals and values at home, but they do not have it in their business dealings. Please view the comments section as I will post company emails with commentary there.
