| OPC Marketing |
| OPC Marketing Spitfire Dialers **False Advertising, sold me down the river, won't provide a refund** Addison, Texas |
| 6th of Dec, 2010 by User835676 |
Spitfire Software, or OPC Marketing, sells a hardware and software based automated dialer as well as predictive dialing software.
I have been using autodialer technology since 2004, to leave prerecorded messages on answering machines. I'd been using a web-based service where you pay by the minute. The fees were quite high, so I decided to look around for an alternative.
Let me preface all this by saying that the Spitfire products work, they just don't work very well, and certainly not nearly in the way that was initially described to me.
I found OPC/Spitfire via a web search and was contacted by Steve Brownrigg. He set up a demo for me with himself, the VP (Warren Henochowicz) and President (Michael Henochowicz). You just have to love nepotism.
During the demo, I noticed that the answering machine (AM) messages that were being left would take about 3.7 to 4+ seconds before the recording would begin. With my existing system it was about 1-2 seconds. I explained that this was unacceptable, however they promised me that their system was "fully configurable" and that it would be easy to fix. When they tried a different setting, the AM started right after the message was left, so this assured me they could configure it. (This proved to be false later, read on) Next I did a one on one demo with Warren Henochowicz, who showed me how to set up a campaign. Compared to my old system, this was incredibly difficult. It is a WinXP system, so you have to remote-in using GoToMyPC or LogMeIn. Next it uses SQL and is painfully slow. There are so many steps to set up a campaign, it added 5+ hours to my work week. Campaigns cannot be saved, so you have to start from scratch each time. So many other things make this entire process 100x more tedious than my current system. For example, you have to choose which phone lines on your server to use for each campaign. If you overlap, everything freezes and you have to remotely reboot your server (if COLO). Also, if you happen to schedule two jobs to start at the same time, none of your jobs start. Of course, they failed to tell me this during training so my first week was an absolute nightmare. At the end of the demo, I was crestfallen. I really wanted this system to work, as I was paying 6c per minute and they said they could get me 1c per minute (also turned out to be false). Warren was concerned that it would not work well because of my need for 30+ campaigns per week. Each campaign has to run in its own instance, and trying to manage 30+ instances of these in a WinXP environment - not so great. So I thanked him and told him I would continue my search for a dialer. During the next two weeks I got quite a few calls from Steve Brownrigg and Michael Henochowicz (former co-founder of Comp-USA, pretty snazzy no?). They were concerned they would lose my business to a competitor. I finally called them back and they explained that they had a solution. They would "sell" me two servers for the same price, and that way I could have 15 or so campaigns on each one making it more manageable.
I explained that the system wouldn't work for me anyway, due to all the factors I explained above. The president, Michael Henochowicz, pleaded with me, explaining that they would have the new enterprise version of the software in less than 2 months (also a lie, that was early Aug 10' and it's now 5 months later) and that it would "solve all my problems" and "do everything I want". What I wanted was a similar system to what I was using before, which is a web based system where the campaigns are static from week to week. All I had to do was upload the new list/datafile and hit "go". Their system was tedious and was taking me 20+ minutes per campaign.
Michael Henochowicz begged and pleaded, saying things like "you won't be sorry." and "you will receive the same level of service after the sale as before." Also "you will be 100% satisfied." Of course I'm not stupid. I realize that the CEO/President of the company is in sales and desperately wants my business. He's on commission only and will say anything to get the sale.
Still, I decided to forward with my order on August 13 2010 because:
1. I was told the system could be confi'd to leave AM messags properly.
2. I was told their system was "best in class" and would perform as good or better than my existing system.
3. They would split my order into two systems to allow me to better manage things.
4. The "enterprise" version of the software would come out in 2 months and solve all my issues.
5. I had confidence in their company.
6. They promised the server would be ready in "1 or 2 weeks"
Unfortunately, only one of the above turned out to be true - they did split my order into two servers for the same price.
It's hard to know exactly where to begin. The Spitfire X system they set up never worked properly from the day it was installed (a month to the day after I paid them, or 2 weeks late).
Here is a summary of the major problems:
1. The majority of phone calls had some degree of "garbling" or jitter.
2. The system is only capable of leaving a message about 60-70% of the time.
3. The AM detection was not configurable as promised, so when it DID leave a message there would always be a 4 second pause.
Jitter/Garbling of Messages Before the install, the possibility of messages being garbled due to jitter was not discussed. I had no concept that this might happen. I started getting calls from my clients saying that people were calling them back stating that they couldn't understand the message and had to call back via caller ID. When I asked support, they told me to run a speedtest.net on the colo server. It generally came back with 80-90mb down and 3mb-11mb upload. They said I needed at least 2.4mb (for 24 channels) per server. Long story short, they blamed it on Airespring which was the telecom provider. (BTW, the best they could do after the sale was 1.4 cents per minute, not 1 cent per minute).
Airespring needed an exact time and phone number to test things. It took me few weeks to figure out the best testing method (since Spitfire was completely non responsive in this). I created a 20 second tone in my voice and then used my system to call my own phone number over and over. I could hear the static/garbling live when I picked up and I have many recordings of the garbled voicemails. I tested this over 3 weeks, yet neither Airespring nor Spitfire would own up to any problems.
Finally I was told that I needed a PRI dedicated circuit to avoid garbling, which would cost an additional $600 per month and would need to be quoted new per minute rates.
Why didn't Spitfire tell me about this possibility with the SIP technology? I'm stupid when it comes to telephony stuff. I'm pissed because I wasted 3 weeks of my life testing this, found the proof, had the recordings, etc, and Warren still refused to believe I was hearing any garbling. "None of our other clients have ever complained." Another patent fabrication.
"You are used to an analog system." was Warren Henochowicz answer. I told him I had no idea that SIP would be any different, or that I was even on an analog system - just that they told me I would be 100% satisfied. and I asked "Can I have an analog system?" Evidently they don't sell them.
POOR Answering Machine (AM) Detection
This is really the main problem with this product/company. I didn't notice it at first, but as time went on I got more and more complaints from my clients. Each time I tried to find the source of the problem, however there were so many problems I couldn't pinpoint them. Some clients said "garbling" and others said things like "people are saying they didn't get a message" and "people say they only got half the message".
This kind of thing NEVER happened before using my old system. NOT ONCE. After losing 7 clients, I decided to move my business back to the old system. I set up some extensive trials of AM detection using Spitfire X by leaving messages on about 20 or so of my friends' cell phones. They were all instructed to NOT answer the phone. I watched in real time as 4 or 5 of them were given the script for a voice answer and NOT the AM script. I confirmed with each of them that they didn't answer live.
After weeks and weeks of supposed "tweaking" the system AM detection settings, Warren Henochowicz FINALLY admitted to me that their system was only 80% effective at leaving a message on an AM. This is now late November 2010. In addition, he admitted that the SIP system I was using was NOT able to configure the AM settings. So basically this entire time I was trying to change settings - none of it was doing anything.
At the end of it, I lost a total of 9 clients because of their system, which represents approximately $80K in lost profits per year. I should have switched them back over to the old system sooner, however I was assured that the "settings" were incorrect, or that I had some bad sound files in my system (also incorrect).
THE PROBLEM: Their system does not wait for the "beep" as my old system does. My old system is 100% effective at leaving messages because it waits for BEEEEP. Their system waits for a period of silence, greater than X (1 or 2 seconds). The issue is that there are so many different types of answering machines and ways that people leave messages - it's only 60-70% (based on MY tests) effective. That might be acceptable for some, but my clients saw it as unprofessional with people hearing only half of a message. The reason for the half-messages is that the Spitfire X system waits for a long period of silence when people answer. "Hello? *pause*" then it plays the LIVE recording. So when there is a pause in an AM, it starts playing the live script (incorrectly and early) so the person only hears 1/2 or so of the message (meant for a live person) on their AM. REALLY BAD.
The reason I'm writing this is that the company refuses to give me my money back, even though their system hasn't worked properly since it was installed. Even though they have destroyed my reputation with my clients. Even though they lied about how their product performed.
The company is very small (5 or 6 people) yet has a very impressive web site. Technical support is very slow and unresponsive, yet "no one else is having any issues."
Please do not be fooled by their impressive website, or the presidents' credentials "Co-Founder of Comp-USA". Remember that it is owned by two brothers (nepotism) and that they won't give you your money back no matter how hard you take it in the caboose.
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| Would like to talk to you and more people who have systems from OPC. I bought technology for both, phone and dialer, have same issue as above and it seems as though the tel. system keeps getting hacked in to. By now I have gotten 7K in fraugelent tel. charges thank to poor firewall protection within the system. I conted on them with their expertise and it seems like I did not get too far in getting help and suppoet I counted on... |
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I too have had similar problems. This company has the worst customer service I've ever experienced.
Their system doesn't know how to detect an answering machine at all. Total waste of money. |
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| I have all kind of problems with this company. I'm going insane. something needs to be done about this scamming company. One problem wrong with the company is they refuse to listen to their customers when their customers are trying to help them fix their dialer. They think their product is much better than it really is. Customer service is an absolute joke...Their tech support will help but the 4 top members of the company will take your money and screw you hard. |
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I am Currently having major major issues with this company they are holding my system hostage with licensing renewals while providing me with an incomplete system from the one I purchased. I filed BBB Complaint against them with the addison BBB tonight and plan on preparing our Corporation Attorney to file suit against them in the next 15 days of they do not get these issues resolved immediately. I can be reached at [email protected].
Enough Is enough |
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| If anyone would like to prepare a class-action lawsuit against this company, please contact me at [email protected]. |
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