Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Re: Schooley Mitchell (UNCLASSIFIED)

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED=20
Caveats: NONE

I know nothing about Schooley Mitchell and in no way want to suggest
that they would attempt anything unscrupulous or offer poor service.
However, I have dealt directly with a company that offered the same
service and marketed it in the same way and my experience was decidedly
negative. When parents ring a school and they are told the number is no
longer in service, at least one will immediately suspect that the school
has been picked up by a tornado and deposited in the mouth of a live
volcano surrounded by an ocean filled with sharks (with laser beams!!!).
They will come over "just to check", loiter in the door way of your
office, insinuate that you are wasting their tuition dollars, and ask
your head if they really conducted a background check when they hired
you. It pays to be cautious.

A number of years ago I had used a similar service. The company (now
defunct) promised similar services to my business manager and told him
there would be no equipment or other changes and it would be seamless.
Basically they sold it to him as a simple billing arrangement. I found
out after the initial contract had been signed. Suffice it to say,
there were "surprises" following their site survey due to the "age of
our switch" (which was less than 5 years old) and they did need to
provide new equipment which we were initially asked to lease and then
provided for free.

Initially the actual service was fine, but they kept pushing us to move
our cell phone and internet to them as well for even bigger savings.
After about a year we were negotiating internet with them and we began
to have service issues (intermittently, several hours each day, no one
could call in to the school). I discovered their support, which had
been excellent at implementation, was non-existent. They were basically
a shell reselling service from Cavalier Telephone and a number of other
second tier providers. They had a big transition team, and nothing
else. I ended up working with Cavalier and Verizon directly and that
was hard enough (2+ months to resolve). =20

We found out later that while they were negotiating new services with
us, they had been in bankruptcy (they owed a lot of money to Cavalier,
Verizon and others). Their pushy sales tactics and lack of support
caused me to look elsewhere and we signed up with a new company with a
90 day transition plan. A few days after contracting with the new
company we received a letter from Cavalier stating that a bankruptcy
court judge had authorized them to take over our account and we had 30
days to find a new provider or be stuck with Cavalier. We worked
things out with Cavalier to hold us over until we switched to the new
company but they made us pay with significantly higher costs.

What I would recommend is:
--Research their client list and ask who their oldest clients are.
Contact them directly for references. If they don't have any clients
that are more than 3 years old, be cautious.
--Be very cautious of companies that do not own any network resources.
They will always have to deal with the local phone company for line
issues but if they don't act as an ISP I would be wary. If they don't
own physical networks, then they are offering savings by buying services
from others in bulk and reselling them to you. That makes them more
accounting oriented than network oriented and my experience indicates
that those kinds of companies do not offer much in the way of technical
support when things go wrong.
--Review the detail in the contract rates very carefully. When we told
the company that we were not going to purchase new equipment they
resisted and then sent us a new contract with those charges removed.
However, they had increased the long-distance rates by half a cent.
When we pointed that out they said it was an error caused by multiple
drafts.
--Beware of the need for analog lines. Our company could not support
the transition of our dedicated, analog lines that are necessary for
fire and security systems. We still ended up with multiple telephone
bills and while they had been factored into our "anticipated" cost
savings we never saved that money.
--Do not sign a contract until after a complete site survey that
specifically addresses the need for additional equipment, especially
routers, CSU/DSU, and battery backup systems. Make sure the leasing
costs are realistic vs purchase. =20
--Make sure you clarify any termination and/or upgrade costs for leased
equipment. As I recall Cavalier originally had termination penalties in
their contract but took them out.
--Beware of companies that offer to do this by processing all your eRate
documents for you. There are a dozen or more of these companies being
prosecuted for fraud.


_J

___________________________________

Jason Johnson - Program Director
Web Services Branch - Walter Reed Army Medical Center Ingenium (ISO
9001:2000 certified)
Office: 202-782-1047
Cell: 202-262-0516
jason.johnson@ingenium.net
jason.p.johnson2@us.army.mil=20

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-----Original Message-----
From: A forum for independent school educators
[mailto:ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU] On Behalf Of Steve Taffee
Sent: Tuesday, May 13, 2008 12:55 PM
To: ISED-L@LISTSERV.SYR.EDU
Subject: Schooley Mitchell

Has anyone used Schooley Mitchell to help save money on their phone and
internet costs? Their firm - like others - claim that they can analyze
your phone and internet use and, using their database of providers and
rates, find you a less expensive
alternative. Their service is contingency based, and they will split the
savings with you.

We're not unhappy with our current telco and internet providers, but it
is difficult to be constantly checking all of the offerings out there.
And yes, I'm aware that cost is not the only factor to be weighed in
making such decisions.

Tks.

s

-----
Treat each piece of paper as precious and reduce waste - don't print
e-mail.
-----
Steve Taffee 650.470.7725 (office)
Director of Technology 415.613.6684 (mobile)
Castilleja School 650.326.8036 (fax)
1310 Bryant Street steve_taffee@castilleja.org =20
Palo Alto, CA 94301

www.castilleja.org
Women Learning, Women Leading
-------


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Classification: UNCLASSIFIED=20
Caveats: NONE

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