Intergr8 in liquidation

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Wannabe Geek

#1454943 22-Dec-2015 07:21

What does this mean for my contract with Intergr8?
It appears the guy has only bought the client list and none of the liabilities. Should we be able to leave Interg8 without any termination charges? They technically haven't provided us service since Thursday so I would imagine this is grounds to terminate?

What your thoughts? I spoke to Interg8 and they said termination charges are valid. ..

sbiddle

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#1454946 22-Dec-2015 07:52

Confusedtelco: What does this mean for my contract with Intergr8?
It appears the guy has only bought the client list and none of the liabilities. Should we be able to leave Interg8 without any termination charges? They technically haven't provided us service since Thursday so I would imagine this is grounds to terminate?

What your thoughts? I spoke to Interg8 and they said termination charges are valid. ..

You really need to discuss contract law and your contract with your lawyer.

Dynamic

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#1454956 22-Dec-2015 08:18

The company went into liquidation. Services halted. The company owner split back to Aussie according to the media.

Clients can argue (IMHO) they reasonably believed their services were not going to be reconnected and they were forced to change to another provider in a hurry, especially if they had no communication from Intagr8.

The finance company agreement will be a different kettle of fish and will no doubt have some teeth.

Note I've not laid eyes on one of these agreements.

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#1455716 22-Dec-2015 23:08

Confusedtelco: What does this mean for my contract with Intergr8?
It appears the guy has only bought the client list and none of the liabilities. Should we be able to leave Interg8 without any termination charges? They technically haven't provided us service since Thursday so I would imagine this is grounds to terminate?

What your thoughts? I spoke to Interg8 and they said termination charges are valid. ..

You signed two agreements - a lease agreement and a service agreement.

Your lease agreement is with a finance company (TRL, Advaro, EFL ect). This agreement stands even though Intagr8 (or perhaps it should be 'Liquid8' now) is gone.

Your service agreement is no longer valid. So what it means is you don't get those callng credits that you got for signing up to an equipment lease. So now you pay full price for your service while still paying the equipment lease.

What this guy has done is basically doubled 3000 business's telco costs. Its just despicable.

sbiddle

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#1455772 23-Dec-2015 07:34

I saw on the Voyager FB page last night that the new Integr8 owners have slammed at least one customer who had opted to stay with Voyager resulting in a loss of service.

This whole incident is a very messy one, and ultimately shows the problems that occur when a provider is merely a reseller, and in the case of Integr8 a reseller of both Vodafone and Voyager.

Mattmannz

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Ultimate Geek

#1455796 23-Dec-2015 08:21

The company has been sold and is now under new management apparently and looking to pick up where things were left.

The company I work for has done some work for their clients on their behalf and has money owing. We also directly support a number of clients who are/were with them. All have switched to a direct agreement with the service provider. Will be interesting to see how this unfolds.

sittingduckz

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#1455801 23-Dec-2015 08:29

This was sent by Voyager this morning:

###################################################
Dear New Voyager Customer:

There is a lot of confusion and mis-information circulating about the current situation of Intagr8. Voyager is sending you this letter to clarify the situation from Voyager’s perspective and provide some further information and facts about the situation.

On Thursday 17th December:
- Intagr8 Ltd was placed into liquidation owing creditors including Voyager and Vodafone NZ over $2million.
- Voyager provided the underlying broadband connections to about 1500 of Intagr8’s 2500 customers, as well as some SIP Voice and 0800 services, while Vodafone NZ provided a lot of the fixed line and ISDN telephone services.
- The previous director of Intagr8 Ltd, Murray Taylor is understood to have fled to Australia, abandoning the business.
On Friday 18th December:
- The liquidator of Intagr8 Ltd, Waterstone, hastily (and we believe unethically) sold some of the Intagr8 business assets to a new trading company headed up by Entrepreneur David Rowse.
- Note: Shares in the Ltd liability company “Intagr8 Ltd” were NOT sold, only customer contact lists and some other assets.
- It is important to understand that the “new Intagr8” is NOT the old Intagr8 Ltd business, it is simply someone with a list of customer contacts and some business assets.
- As the company “Intagr8 Ltd” now no longer exists, any contracts that customers had with Intagr8 Ltd we believe are null and void.
- As there is no such thing as legal ownership of a customer, you are free to choose whatever telecommunications provider you wish for services going forward.
- Voyager, and other creditors are unhappy with the way that the liquidation process was conducted, as Voyager and other creditors have received nothing from the sale, as should happen in a proper liquidation process.
On Saturday 19th December:
- The broadband connections that Voyager was providing to intagr8 Ltd are costing Voyager several thousand dollars a day to keep connected with Chorus (Chorus provides the underlying ADSL / VDSL / Fibre connections to Voyager, and Voyager provides the connection to the Internet).
- As Voyager had no relationship with you, the end customers of Intagr8 Ltd, we decided that rather than cutting off all the connections at the exchange (which would have meant perhaps a week of downtime for you the customers, and re-connection fees to another provider), we would implement a web-page blocking system, to inform Intagr8 customers what was going on, to collect your contact details so that we can communicate with you about your options, and to give you the opportunity to sign up as a retail customer of voyager, or choose another retail service provider.
- We apologize if some of you found this process inconvenient, but as Voyager was providing service to a company which no longer exists, and has gone bankrupt owing us money, we can not continue to provide Internet services to thousands of customers free, we need you to make a decision to choose Voyager as your ISP, or move to another provider.
Monday 21st December:
- The majority of Intagr8 ltd broadband customers contacted us, and connected with Voyager as your preferred retail service provider for Internet.
Tuesday 22nd December:
- Voyager became aware that the “New Intagra8” has started contacting customers, and saying that they have have a wholesale agreement with Voyager, and that they will bill you for Internet access. This is FALSE – the new Intagr8 has NO wholesale agreement with Voyager, and we have not offered to provide wholesale service to them unless we receive some or all of the money that intagr8 Ltd owed us before being placed into liquidation.
- In addition, we believe that the “new Intagr8” may be involved in what is known as “customer slamming”, which is where you as the customer have now signed up as a retail customer of Voyager, but then the “new Intagr8”, has churned your connection to a different wholesale provider again. If the “new Intagr8” company is customer slamming, then this may involve downtime on your Internet connection, changes of IP addresses and settings, and potentially a valid bill from Voyager, and then an additional invalid bill from intagr8.
- If you have signed up with Voyager in the last couple of days, and then you find out that your connection has been “slammed” without your consent, and you wish to stay with Voyager, please let us know, so that we can report this behavior to Chorus, and stop it from happening to other customers.
- Please note that the people who are now running “new Intagr8” are NOT the same people who used to own Intagr8 Ltd.
- If you have signed a retail contract with Voyager in the last couple of days, please bear in mind that if you then subsequently sign another contract, or agree to take service with “new Intagr8” or any other retail provider, we will have to charge you for this month of service, as well as potentially any early termination charges that are applicable, which may involve you being double billed by two companies.
- If you are having problems with your broadband connection, it may be that your connection is one of the 1,000 or so connections that were not wholesaled through Voyager. In any case, please contact us and we should be able to help.

By choosing Voyager as your provider for broadband, SIP and 0800 services, we can simply and easily continue to provide the same service that we were already providing to you as wholesaler to Intagr8. Choosing any other provider including “new Intagr8” will involve more downtime, hassle and potential issues down the track such as double billing, termination fees, downtime & litigation between parties. We recommend dealing with Vodafone directly for your fixed line business.

Contact details for Voyager:

Support@voyager.nz
0800 4SPEED

Warm Regards

The Team at Voyager
###################################################

Shortly after, This was sent by Intagr8

###################################################
Welcome Relief for Intagr8 clients. The Intagr8 team are now back up and running. First and foremost our team are working extremely hard at minimising any disruption to your services, as quickly as possible. Directed by Dave Rouse under the new parent company, RS COMMS Ltd, trading as Intagr8. New billing details will be distributed shortly. If you have already moved services and wish to stay there, please advise us but we remind you that you will still be billed for your equipment separately meaning you will almost certainly pay more. If you stay with us, we are putting a plan in place that will honour at least some of the credits you were accustomed to under the old company immediately, with a commitment to have all credits honoured (or an equivalent situation) in as little as 2 months, with no increases to billing rates. If you need temporary emergency cover of internet while these connections are being loaded across to our new wholesale provider, please get in touch. We are aware some clients, like us had their internet cut off without notice. This was by Intagr8’s previous wholesale providers, who directed them to a landing page offering them to sign up to new fixed term contracts. Given the businesses needed internet to function, some quickly signed up to these services. For those affected clients, we will work with you to ensure a) you have connectivity, b) If there are any break fees incurred from signing these external supplier contracts, we will discuss with you the option to either reverse the move to our new Wholesale supplier or to help you with the break fees. We are running in emergency mode for our clients due to brown out periods and the fact that we have had a huge call volume of clients desperate to reconnect their internet asap. We apologize if we have made any mistakes or moved anyone that would like to stay with their newly signed up contracts, and we will rectify any of these mistakes rapidly. Our next mission is to enter the best long term supply contract for telephone services. We have a very good one on the table which if we agree to shortly, will mean no downtime or disruption for you, the client. Shortly we will assess and verify the number of loyal clients who still want to stay with us. We will then be announcing how many of the team we are able to offer permanent positions to in the new year. So far we are hopeful that we will be able to offer jobs back to most of the team here with us, which will be welcome news before Xmas. We really appreciate your support through this Xmas crisis.

###################################################

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Dynamic

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#1455804 23-Dec-2015 08:36

Thank you for posting those emails.

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#1455806 23-Dec-2015 08:44

That's a great email from Voyager.

As with everything Intagr8 related it seems nothing has been done legitimately and this 'new intagr8' will be no exception. Customers should just cut their losses and get on board with Voyager.

old3eyes

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#1455809 23-Dec-2015 09:00

sbiddle: I saw on the Voyager FB page last night that the new Integr8 owners have slammed at least one customer who had opted to stay with Voyager resulting in a loss of service.

This whole incident is a very messy one, and ultimately shows the problems that occur when a provider is merely a reseller, and in the case of Integr8 a reseller of both Vodafone and Voyager.

I had a tech ring up yesterday at a very unhappy Voyager customer's site. Voyager cut off outgoing service on their SIP trunks but allowed incoming. But the rub is that they would not allow the customer to keep the old account and had to setup a new one. Understandable I guess if the old account belonged to Intagr8 but the thing that really pissed of the customer that they they were told that they could not keep their old business numbers and had to have new ones. No mention of any form of smart linking. I suspect if it hadn't been so close to Xmas they would have walked somewhere else and had their numbers ported..

Regards,

Old3eyes

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#1455814 23-Dec-2015 09:14

sbiddle: I saw on the Voyager FB page last night that the new Integr8 owners have slammed at least one customer who had opted to stay with Voyager resulting in a loss of service.

This whole incident is a very messy one, and ultimately shows the problems that occur when a provider is merely a reseller, and in the case of Integr8 a reseller of both Vodafone and Voyager.

This has happened to one customer of ours already, they have their own mail server so not getting mail.
Our customer closed for Christmas yesterday and now I have to track him down to see what he wants to do.
What a right Royal PITA

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#1456680 24-Dec-2015 18:18

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11565944

JamesL

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#1456802 24-Dec-2015 21:27

What a freaking mess -_-

Love how this new intagr8 uses fear mongering then questions loyalty to keep making an easy $ out of these customers

sbiddle

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#1456804 24-Dec-2015 21:42

The whole satiation poses lots of interesting questions, particularly around what Voyager have done.

What they did over the weekend was incredibly smart (and cunning). By putting up the captive portal and signing up many Integr8 customers on contracts they've effectively made the customer base that was purchased worthless - which raises all sorts of questions about the liquidation process. It does rely on some big assumption (which I assume Voyager would have had legal advice on) and that's the status of contracts those people had with Integr8 previously. If those contracts are not deemed null and void by the company going into liquidation then the buyer of the customer base will certainly have issues with what Voyager have done.

There are lots of questions that come out of it - but without a good understanding of contract law and liquidations it's going to be well beyond most of us. At the end of the day it does show the issues that can arise if your services are only being rebilled by a middleman.

old3eyes

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#1456805 24-Dec-2015 21:46

quickymart: http://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/news/article.cfm?c_id=3&objectid=11565944

Looks like the links dead..

Regards,

Old3eyes

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