They have an offer you can’t refuse

One of my favorite movies is the Godfather. One of the most important lines throughout The Godfather Collection (The Godfather/ The Godfather – Part II/ The Godfather – Part III) (amazon affiliate link) is the famous I have an offer you can’t refuse.

There are many personal and business lessons that can be learned from watching the Godfather which I might leave for a future post such as loyalty, internal communications, and strategy.

Apparently one of the companies which a few of my clients are dealing with took a Godfather approach but offering their clients offers they can’t refuse.

Axesa uses a similar Godfather approach by getting there clients into contracts which they are not able to get out of or in the first place like I have received via various sources online where not requested.

I have been attempting to make sure Axesa takes my clients off a contract they did not sign and don’t want. Instead of working along us they have decided to do the following:

• Insisting to speak via phone so there is no record of the conversation.
• Lame excuses of why they are on contract and trying to get us to renew
• No intention to fix the issue
• They call every few weeks and act like we don’t have an issue.
• Insulting the customer because they did not get their way.

I have been able to get them on record via email thinking they would choose words in a wiser manner but you really don’t want to see the insults that have been thrown my way. When calling them on there issues and how deceptive they are she decided to focus on:

• My misspellings via email
• Letting me know that I had too much time on my hand.
• Called me egocentric
• Questioned my knowledge and inteligence

The previous are only small pieces of our long email conversations but no resolution was offered.

Why I think Axesa.com is a risky provider?

• No real Measurement on effectiveness of ads. They provide internal number on referrals which don’t match up from people who have contacted my client or visited our website.
• Their pay up front model and self-renewing contracts work for them because once you realize they are not bringing more customers your way there is no way out.
• They provide internal website stats which are not from an independent source and seem tainted.
• They will not provide a pay-per click model because it won’t  make much money for them.
• There practices are so outdated that other companies impersonate them and have been known to affect Axesa clients.

The Con Artists use the same Methods as Axesa

I guess some  impersonators have studied them well and have replicated their practices of trying to take advantage of clients which does not raise a red flag on the clients side.

With one particular client the contract was supposedly signed in 2010 for services provided in 2009 it also got automatically renewed. So far I requested a cancellation and they mentioned that they might cancel sometime in the future.

How can it be Fixed?

Like Axesa there are many other companies using this business model to take advantage of vulnerable clients specifically small business owners.

Here are my recommendations on making sure it does not happen to others :

• Create Awareness of what is happening. By sharing this story with a friend and your contacts we can see who else is on the same boat as a few of my clients are.
• By uniting are voice we can make sure these companies change their business models to healthier practices.
• Measuring, You can never measure enough your efforts. By measuring every time you spend your money on advertising and seeing how much business that brings you closes the door for Axesa’s pay now and if it does not work will renew your contact later attitude.

How can we keep creating awareness of these companies who decide to act in such an unetichal way?

Do you know of any other people with the same issue?

picture credit by the_tahoe_guy