General Consultant Discussion

Anyone else's client care rep getting snarky with them? I sent a note to TJ stating that he could collect the CC from an end user. This is what I get in return. Jeff, for future reference, if there is a company that you know will be renewing direct and that I need to call, please tell me in advance because if they are going to mail a check to us, I need to explain to them that it will take 7-10 business days for us to receive. It is already the 19th and I don't even know if they have an invoice etc. Please give me enough time to make sure that all account are accounted for so that I am not scrambling at the end of the month. Thanks. This is how I responded. Sure, if you promise to send me correct invoice amounts the first time. I find it hard to imagine that customers aren't sent two or three notices already (even more surprised if they were correct). Many of my clients complain about the excessive interaction from Sage (which some say border on harassment). And wow, 7 10 business days to process a check. So much for the mighty Atlas.. Sorry to get snarky with you, but Atlas has made MY life a HELL of a lot worse also. I still can't lookup basic information on the partner portal!!!! Who do I get complain to? And what is the thanks I get? Less tier commission and doubling of partner renewal fees!!!!!!!! I'll work closer with in the future now that I know what issues you face, but you just don't get any sympathy from me.

Shot out of a cannon. I like it!

I talked with my rep this morning and here's a brief recap: I told him a client is not happy with the increased maintenance and may not renew so he says, ""What's the customer number?"" ""Um, let me look it up on the portal. Give me 20 minutes."" (Brief ha ha from him.) He says, ""I'll see if I can find them."" I had other questions so while he is waiting for his screen to come up, we chat.... ""Still waiting, sorry."" ""Hey, I hear ya, Steve!"" ""Still waiting.... Maybe I'll try an old system..."" And so it goes....

I guess we all have war stories.. been on the phone with one of my clients who is trying to figure out why her maint went up so much... after many calls with Sage rep and emails - CC me of course- she still does not have a logical answer. They are charging her for 3 SMI Report Manager Lic and we don't remember her ever getting extra users for FRX. With that said, I went to good old Atlas and of course can't get past the first product screen to see past history... That would just be just too easy. I don't have a bill to her for extra FRX users... So we wait to get an answer. And who has time to sell !!!!!!

Sell? Oh yeah, we are supposed to be doing that, aren't we...

TJ, Sent a nice response. Thanks.

My rep called right after I posted my first response. He said he called my customer and offered a renewal at Bronze, which is 20% instead of 21%. It is a savings of $201.10 for them. It is one time only offering, BTW. One of my other issues was that a customer said she put it on their credit card but Atlas shows them as expired. He said he checked on that too. It appears their card WAS charged but it didn't go to their maintenance. He has a tech ticket open now.....

LOL a big 1% is all 5 calls are worth!!!! My client told me this too and I said it was suppose to be more than 1%...

How can something jump when it is not offered????

Apparently Bronze went from 18% to 20%.

It is if you push hard enough!!!

So why bother to stay at bronze when for an extra 1% of flesh, you can have FIVE support cases?

I have customers who switched to Premium (SQL) while the switch was free. Maintenance bills came out almost double, and Sage gave random reductions to the first two. On the third one I decided this was ridiculous and someone at Sage needed to come up with a reasonable policy. I mean, the switch was free, and if they bought it new now there wouldn't be a price difference, so what is with the gouging? Started with Erika since I had several good conversations with her at Summit. She sent me to Kim Lamothe, who said ""I'm new at this"" and passed it DOWN to a Glenn Fedor at the 3rd party company in Nashville that does the renewals. After a couple of calls/emails with him, he sent it back to Sage on 8/28, where Sophie Lguillette is supposedly ""working on it"". Have not heard anything back yet, and the renewal is due 9/28. FUCUS!!!!!

Don't let this one slip away. Can't wait to hear who the decider is!!!

@JeffSchwenk - you really think there will be a decision? Other than the one the customer makes on 9/27 when the client care rep calls and says how generous Sage is being by capping the year over year increase at 25%, but if you don't pay by tomorrow there will be penalties...which means they can look forward to another 25% hike next year...

Last week I tried to get info on an off-plan client on Atlas. In the past you could see product list and latest version shipped. Thanks to someone here I had downloaded client info from the old website, but wanted to double check most recent version. None of this is available on Atlas. The list below is portal support email responses. 1. I must not have been the one who originally sold the product (I was) - first email. 2. Their clientcare has been expired too long (he did not know how long too long was) - second email. 3. To get their unlocking keys, I would need to contact sales rep (I had keys, just wanted ship version)-third email. 4. He finally said I cannot have that information on Atlas. I finally got it from sales rep - fourth email. I told him I spent an hour on something that used to take 5 minutes and that I do not understand why that would be secret information. About a half hour later I received a survey to complete on my portal support experience........... I have received two reminders to complete the survey....just had already spent enough time.

Well, if Sage doesn't want us to know what the last version the customer is entitled to, then I'm not going to worry about enforcing it...

Our rep is just clueless. I feel sorry for him. He had to ask me for the customer's email address, even though the contact (and email) was in Atlas TWICE. And they have no knowlege of how the maintenance is calculated. They cannot generate the basis SRP on which the maintenance is calculated. Our guy is really little more than a telesale rep.