Poor business practice from Bloxx?

[pshuttle]

Hey everyone,

 

It has been an age since I posted on this forum. Anyway, I thought I would post this on here to see what other people's reactions/opinions are to the following situation. Personally I think it is poor business practice. Certainly. it causes a headache for me!

 

For the last few years we have used Bloxx as our internet filtering service, with a local Bloxx web filter hosted internally. We have actually been very happy with the service, and have had only a handful of minor problems in this time. Our three year contract finishes at the end of August, and I was hoping to renew for at least another twelve months.

 

However, I have just had a telephone call from Bloxx informing me that they have been acquired by Akamai. This means that we will not be able to continue with the product after the end date of our contract. At present they have no filtering solution to offer until the introduction of a Cloud based service sometime this coming winter. What is REALLY annoying though is that apparently, organisations have been offered the chance to extend their contract for another twelve months to cover the gap between contract end and the new service coming to market. The catch? This opportunity ended in January, but was further extended to April 16th. The first I heard about it from Bloxx? April 25th! So we have missed this chance without ever knowing it existed. Pretty annoying to say the least.

 

I obviously asked the Bloxx representative if anything could be done as 1) We had been happy customers, 2) We were contacted too late to make use of the offer of extending our existing contract and 3) It is going to be a headache to change over to a competitor - the answer was that nothing could be done. Then, the pure cheek of it is the rep wanted to hand my details over to a Capita rep to sell me some other product.

 

I feel pretty poorly treated here and certainly can no longer recommend Bloxx/Akamai if this is how their customers are treated. Am I being unreasonable here?

 

Pete

Edited April 29, 2016 by pshuttle

[elsiegee40]

We became aware of this on here at the end of last year

Bloxx - What is happening..allegedly | Edugeek.net

 

Unfortunately there are quite a few who have been caught out by it.

[pshuttle]

Makes me wish I checked the forums more regularly Elsie. However, surely I should have been contacted by Bloxx themselves!

 

Don't get me wrong, it does leave me the summer to implement a new solution, but I was hoping to have at least ONE summer without a major change to our network/service.

 

Pete

[George_j]

We received an email from Bloxx when the acquisition was done and letting us know. You should receive that email. As far as i am aware it was sent out to all Bloxx customers and Partners. I didn't pay any attention to it but was contacted by our reseller.

[pshuttle]

I have been through my e-mail and unless I have accidentally deleted it, I don't have that email. We purchased direct from Bloxx themselves rather than a reseller. The rep I spoke to on the phone hinted that they had not had the time to contact everyone before the deadline.

[George_j]

Peter the email was from [email protected] with the below text

I hope that this helps you

Dear Bloxx Partner,

We are happy to share with you

the exciting news that Bloxx is now part of Akamai Technologies, the global

leader in Content Delivery Network (CDN) services. Akamai makes the

Internet fast, reliable and secure for its customers.As part of the Akamai family,

Bloxx remains fully committed to serving our partners and customers to ensure

that you continue to receive the highest level of technical support and

customer service. All existing customer contracts will be fully honoured

until the expiration of their current term.However, the current Bloxx

product set will no longer be available for sale or refresh. In addition,

as a result of Bloxx now becoming a part of the Akamai family, renewals will

only be offered until January 31, 2016. We understand you may have a

number of questions relating to this change in ownership and we are fully

committed to ensuring we provide timely and comprehensive answers. In the

meantime you can find some useful FAQ’s here.For any technical issues, please

continue to use the existing Bloxx technical support and customer service

ticket, email and phone options. If you would like to schedule a time

for a more detailed discussion, please submit a request by emailing [email protected]

and we will reply as soon as possible.Thank you again for your patience

as we transition into this new and exciting chapter in our company’s history.Regards,

Charles SweeneyCEO, Bloxx

[Zoom7000]

Moving to Smoothwall from Bloxx was the best move I ever made for our web filtering. I especially didn't like the 6 months notice to cancel contract! That was utterly ridiculous!

[Opendium_Steve]

Seems pretty poor all round - I would have expected Bloxx to proactively inform all their customers (how hard is it to send round an email?), but I do remember a lot of their resellers complaining at the time that they hadn't been informed and were caught completely off guard by the announcement.

[plexer]

Lol

 

"We are happy to share with you the exciting news that Bloxx is now part of Akamai Technologies"

 

Ben