OK, in the spirit of Wikileaks, here is the full transcript (OK, text from the email) that I originally received from Excell Communications on 10th August 2010 in response to the original thread – My Technical Problems With Excell Communications and Orange Mobile.
06/08/201, Matt Young, Excell Communications (Shropshire) Ltd
“Hi Jon,
Thank you for getting back to me, didn’t mean to chase but it would be great if this could be added on before the weekend if possible. I’m actually Excells website manager and am actually a service provider to them and run my own web design company so I have taken it upon myself because hopefully I understand your viewpoint as a webmaster and can see thing in a fairly balanced way but think they are a great client and company.
We’ve now taken the time to read through all the comments on your post and are really concerned that there are a number of unfair, untrue and fairly slanderous comments on there. I have prepared a response that we would be very grateful if you could post after our original article and above the replies so that it is clearly visible and shown as ‘Response from Excell Communications‘ or along those lines.
Considering that your page is third in the Google results for ‘Excell Communications’ we feel that we have to ask that rather than emailing respondents to your post you actually remove those comments that are irrational, inaccurate, speculative or slanderous. Would you consider doing so? We can list to you the post numbers we feel fall into this category if need be. I must stress that our concern that your page could have a very bad effect on a company that is genuinely well intentioned, important in terms of employment to the local area and who, apart from the odd over-zealous sales agent or over-stressed customer service agent, do a pretty good job and have very good intentions.
I fully appreciate your position as someone with a reputation built on being honesty and that removing comments may be uncomfortable for you in terms of openness and neutrality. I wont lie, we would obviously love for the whole page to be removed but accept your constructive criticism in good faith – although we do feel the title is harsh and the line ‘At the moment, there are 2 British companies that have managed to break every rule regarding client services and seem to not care’ is also a bit harsh and eludes to us breaking rules which we work very very hard not to do.
Here is our response;”
What followed I posted under “Reponse from Excell Communications” on that page.
The next mail was concerning the comments on the site, all of which in my opinion were a fair expression of free speech. However, Excell suggested that some comments were made by ex-employees and rival companies. Received on 10th Aug 2010 from Matt Young:
Hi Jon,
I’ve gone through the rest point by point – you don’t have to read every comment I just felt happier explaining my point of view.
We still obviously (from an Excell point of view) think it would be best if the whole page was removed and so I should ask that you do as that would be ideal but I personally understand that you might not want to unless it’s now more hassle than it’s worth. I’ll probably also get asked why I haven’t asked for all negative comments to be removed but I’ve tried to be fair.
Here they are, once again my comments are for your benefit and they haven’t been run past anyone else so best not to publish them as Excells point of view.
Many thanks,
Matt
Page 2 Starting with yinka on July 15th
Remove 1. Exaggerated, maybe untrue and defamatory – we do have details of someone with yinka in their email and what they say doesn’t tie up to the customer services notes although this person did complain and may not be the person who posted.
2. Numbers are found from genuine business sources where we can be confident it is a business person we are calling.
7. Good response to spammer!
8. Sounds like something we would have resolved if she had answered our calls but fair enough comment otherwise – I hope we have resolved it for her.
9. It is a process that takes some admin work on the part of the customer, but it genuinely saves money so that is for the customer to weight up. We plan ahead and for the long-term and have a very good credit rating.
14. Anyone, at any time can have their number added to our do not call list and we will not call it again, we even have to unblock it to make a follow-up if the customer rings in. Maybe we should add a link in the response?
15. We don’t sell our database.
Remove 18. We do not contravene Data Protection, we are audited on this.
19, 20 the info is sometimes bought from suppliers who have certain contractual assurances to say it is valid business (not personal data) things such as getting everything from yellow pages and the like is an example of how data is found.
Remove 22. Pretty sure ‘james’ is a previous employee/competitor etc, please remove all of his comments, especially this one with Stuarts personal number, his 14 year old daughter has received abuse on this number which isn’t fair I would say – hassle customer services if need be, Stuart would also ring any customer with a genuine issue that he thought he could help with. Most customers don’t have the MDs private line to back up these assumptions.
23. We did have a supply chain issue with the HTC Desire, we were at fault in not making this clear and does sound like we have handled RM badly, if you could email him our direct contact details we follow up and try to help but can’t see who he is.
Remove 31. Again, email copied in, not harmful but prefer this as a personal communication to be removed.
32.We are transparent, one issue of VAT has been raised and we are hopefully giving our staff better understanding that not all businesses claim VAT back.
33. We have been given the wording ‘Unlimited’ by networks but we are slowly (maybe too slowly) understanding that this can apply to calls but rarely to data and that it is wiser not to use it. Also your point about adding charges for excess was a good one and we are looking at the best way to do this – probably an update to our website with all additional info about contracts we can provide if not in the letter.
Remove 35. Have looked into this one, there actually a number of customers who could be Peter N from May and one kind of matches but sounds as though he was very unresponsive to all options opened to him including extending his discount, exchange etc. Hopefully his issue is resolved with Orange but I think his wording missrepresents the balance of the way things happened yet don’t want to post a personal reply and start a slanging match.
Remove 36. unsubstantiated negative
Remove 37. Is this for Excell, maybe but again unsubstantiated.
Remove 38. Same again, unsubstantiated and possibly competitor.
Remove 39. Not that bad but it is these comments that I think unfairly put people off when the person may have read previous unfair comments (What are your thoughts on removing these comments?)
Remove 40. We have had to remove our facebook page because someone who was not a customer was just abusing it.
42. The 7 day we offer as standard is an exchange period, not a cancellation period. In certain extremes we can cancel but are not obliged to.
44. shows that although we have agreed a deal this customer will cost us money and himself hassle by trying to cancel when he is not entitled to do so, so maybe best to remove as it is always best to ring us.
Remove 45. nothing incorrect just endorsing that the blog posts are correct and Excell aren’t legit when it’s not the case.
Remove 46. No-one of this name as a recent customer, I doubt they were totally mislead, maybe misunderstood but a bit defamatory.
47. Example of how to handle things, we do want to sell deals but are reasonable.
Remove 48. I think this will confuse people, sounds honest enough, you could email emily our details and we might be able to help.
Remove 49. Defamatory, not a scam, he could add his number to the do not call list rather than hang up.
Page 3 From Employee on August 1st
Remove 1. If this is an Orange representative, which it may or may not be, we are not an irritation for them, they wrok very hard to ensure we spend time on their deals as we are both effective and compliant.
Remove 3. This is the person who left the comments on Facebook, not a customer, almost certainly has other motives, please remove all comments from ‘Simon’
5 & 6. would ask to remove 5 but thank you for your response.
Remove 12. Excell have a good credit rating and sound structure, it is a valid concern as the model does require excell to continue trading but with a long history (relative in terms of mobile industry) and good management and relationships with the networks I think this comment is unfair and hence scaremongering rather than helpful.
14 We recently moved to new premises and our fixed line number changed, the new number is shown within our response. I have asked Becky to call Ru Wang. I’m not sure if joanne is connected to someone at Excell but she is certainly fighting our corner either way, we did get 2 emails, a call and a letter last week of thanks, which I bet most call centre based companies don’t, so hopefully it remains a fair reflection if she is biased, hopefully just a happy customer.
As such I think the rest flows more fairly.
Thanks again,
Matt Young
Website Manager.
The purpose of this page is just to fully highlight Excell’s response to our initial page. They were very much on the defensive, especially regarding their financial position and business plans – “We plan ahead and for the long-term and have a very good credit rating.”
Long term planning failed within 4 months. They pretty much admit that they gather business telephone numbers from a popular business directory and cold called, not even really knowing that some contracts were about to expire. Like Wikileaks though, I have not published this with the purpose of dissecting it, but just to show exactly what Excell thought of the various comments that were left on the blog originally. It is nice that Excell agree that I have always been factual, and that they understand that the nature of a blog, essentially a social media platform, means that people speak their mind in comments, and are free to do so too.
