I'm sure you share our sceptical thoughts on free services: "I'll be paying for it somewhere", or “no such thing as free”. But we're increasingly surprised by the number of companies that do offer something for free just to win your business, despite the mass scepticism of such offers. And quite often these companies will end up charging for every little thing thereafter resulting in you paying more than you would have with a company that was transparently charging you for the product.
It’s well worth reminding ourselves that the problem with a free service is that the provider will try to operate it as cheaply as possible. I saw the best example of this when I watched Mark on Channel 4's The Hotel last week. They ran a marketing exercise in which a couple ended up with a free wedding. "Why are we serving duck? It's free! Give them the cheapest thing on the menu!" was the immediate outcry.
So when someone offers ’Free online backup‘ for example, you need to ask yourself a few questions: is my data being securely stored in a UK datacentre or is it going to a USB hard drive in the service provider's office? If something goes wrong with the backup, how will they react?. As you weren’t paying for it anyway you can hardly ask for your money back or any financial compensation seeing as this is usually limited to a maximum of the amount you have paid. And ultimately, as your data is your most important business asset and took years to create, the question you need to ask yourself is: if all of my data was suddenly gone could my business survive?
’Free on-site support‘ is another offer we see regularly. With remote support, the cost is kept low because each engineer can work on multiple things at once. If a company has to send an engineer out to you then they are then dedicated to you; there are still wages to pay and in addition to this there are now travelling expenses. So who is covering this cost? It's either a suicidal business strategy so you have to wonder how long your provider will be around, or they're betting on you not using it. The first questions you need to ask about this kind of offer are: what are the conditions? Is the support restricted to 30 miles from your location? Do they use trusted engineers located around the country? If so, who is paying for them? IT is unpredictable so you might not need someone out all year, but you might need someone out every month, week, or day - who knows - will they still provide this service for free? You also need to know how it is decided if someone should come out, it's unlikely that you'll just be able to ask that someone attends. When something does go wrong, you will need someone out to help straight away, will you be a priority if you aren’t paying?
The point we're trying to make here is, would you rather do it ’on the cheap‘, i.e. free, or would you rather do it right, in a way that is actually going to help you and not cause you anxiety and stress? There are certain areas where you really shouldn't cut corners and for the sake of saving a few pounds a month, which is often the case with online backup, is it worth taking the risk? And, with on-site support you need to know if they have a good track record of actually delivering on what they promise - action speaks louder than words. You need to ask some practical questions to get to the bottom of the real offer: how many engineers do they have near you to cover demand? What happens if there's only one engineer and they're already out?
We recently had a company contact us who had their IT support with a competitor. The service we were offering was like-for-like but their current provider was cheaper. When we asked them if their current provider provided what they said they would, we were told, "We can never get hold of them!". This is a prime example of someone paying (or not) for a service they aren't getting! Wouldn’t it be much better to pay a realistic price for a service they can get? This customer is now with Cultrix and they can't believe how much their previous provider wasn't doing for them. And the reverse situation is also true unfortunately; we've also had customers who are completely happy with our service but leave us to save a few pounds. They usually come back.
Over-promising and under-delivering: it’s an industry pitfall the world over. Our approach is simple: to just deliver what we say we will deliver, and at a realistic price.
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