On August 21st 2018 we were emailed by Ashley for a job at a local Walmart. We responded with the following:
Hi Ashley-
Upon further review of this ticket; if cabling is needed we no longer run cabling. Please advise if you want us to schedule to solely activate an existing jack. Our one hour minimum would apply with further hours being billed in half hour increments. Our trip charge is $xx.00 and hourly rate is $xx.00.
Thank you-
Rebecca
Later that afternoon: Ashley called about two tickets for tomorrow I confirmed rates with her for these as well and she verified no wiring will need to be run for the Walmart job.
Our tech weas scheduled for the following afternoon & upon arrival on site & calling to check in with Crosscom he called our office because he was stressed because they were saying we need to run cabling. Our office advised to double check but sign out explaining we can't do it if that is what we need to do but, that we were assured there would be no cabling needed when we scheduled the work.
Our tech was onsite for just under 1 hour & following are the notes regarding his work:
Arrived onsite and customer was unaware of my coming today. They expected me tomorrow. I was told only that the work was to be done before Friday. So this caused some confusion on the part of the manager at the store. I checked in with the IVR and started talking to Tech support. They stated that I was supposed to be running cable and even drilling through the freezer unit and installing conduit. I stated we don't normally do that and I didn't have the equipment.
I clarified that our office staff had spoken with Crosscom and made it clear that we don't run cable any more. Our office was told that the cable was already there I just needed to terminate it for network connectivity. I worked with the assistant store manager Marlene and we searched the area that the new Access Points were to go but we found no cables. I called Crosscom and let them know that there was clearly some miss communication and that we would not be able to complete the work because cabling was required. I let our office know and clocked out with the IVR.
Ashley then refused to pay our one hour minimum. She claims another company was sent out the following day, located the existing cable above the freezer in the hallway & made the required connections. At no time was our technician told that the cable was already there & above the freezer. The assistant manager was not aware of that nor was anyone our tech spoke to at Crosscom. This was a Walmart store so finding it was a needle in a haystack situation and this isn't the first time Crosscom has burned us on something like this.
As a result, we are done working for them.
My advice to anyone who still does work for them is to NEVER accept project work, only take service orders that start with an S so they won't flat rate you. The work they give as projects almost always takes significantly longer than they quote & getting paid for any additional will be one of the most frustrating things you go through dealing with them. It's as though they are bonused on how much they can screw their subs out of.