Actinic cold calling - again

[philrothwell]

Hi All,

Apologies for being a bit late into the discussion, but this has only just come to my attention. Hopefully, I can bring some clarity.

Actinic and SellerDeck are two different organisations. Actinic sells and supports cloud-based ecommerce services and SellerDeck, ecommerce desktop applications.

Data Protection applies to all of your data and you can ask any company to either cease contacting you, or limit their contact in some way. If regular contact from Actinic or SellerDeck is becoming a problem, then you can contact either company at any time and ask it to stop.

I hope this clears up some of the points, please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions.

[Paul Bulpit]

Hi Phil,

We know that, much of this has been discussed on the Forum before & it's a hoary old chestnut. What springs to mind though, is

1) Why on earth did an established provider of a solid desktop solution give their Brand Name away to Oxatis, (to whom it meant nothing, at that stage) and

2) How did (Oxatis, now called) Actinic (flogging a cloud solution that desktop users don't want) get hold of our contact details in the first place.

Surely you're not going to suggest that 'new' Actinic is cold-calling ALL the names on an independent generic List that they've bought, regardless of whether the name uses ANY type of software solution.

Because it sure looks to us like they got our details from 'old' Actinic, now called Sellerdeck, and that's our beef.
______
Paul

[EdHarrison]

I have had three different angles of attack - two Today!

Actinic offering cloud based solution and highlighting how I would benefit from free upgrades and no bugs during upgrading versions

Sellerdeck offering me half price upgrade to Business / plus

Sellerdeck offering responsive design at huge cost

I would be happier if they were clearer as the Actinic offering comes accross like they are still the same supplier when infact reading between the lines they and Sellerdeck seem in direct competition!

I would personally like the marketing strategy from Actinic / Sellerdeck to be less aggressive and more transparent.

[Buzby]

No calls from Actinic but I get so many calls from Sellerdeck.

Sellerdeck, I do get your marketing emails, and if I am interested I will contact you please stop phoning.

[jont]

Yet another phone call from SellerDeck offering their half price upgrade deals. Yet another request to be removed from their tele-sales database.

As I have the multi-site / developer version not sure how much further I could upgrade to anyway.

Time to release Paul Bulpit from the leash

[guccij]

I had a call from them last week offering an upgrade to Enterprise... yes, we are* the new Tesco in waiting, Sellerdeck sales people.








* are not

[Mike Hughes]

I just had a call from Actinic oline. I'm pretty sure they called it an 'upgrade' offer to the new actinic offering but they denied this when questioned and claimed they'd just called it a 'migration' offer to the new actinic cloud offering.

The other thing they said, as I'd told them they shouldn't be phoning sellerdeck customers offering an 'upgrade' to Actinic online, was that Chris Barling got a 'Kickback' from each sale and they weren't just encouraged to call existing Sellerdeck customers but were told they 'had to'.

So, it would appear it's not just an agreement on sharing the customer base during the split but also Commission being paid (a much nicer word than kickback) for each sellerdeck customer they convert.

So Sellerdeck actually make money from disaffected customers that move to actinic online? I'm not sure that's something I approve of. I'd rather sellerdeck fight tooth and nail to fix problems and keep customer happy with the current software rather than be able to take the view of "Oh well, it doesn't really matter. If they leave to Actinic online we'll still make money out of them anyway."

Mike

[guccij]

Woah that's bang out of order. Am looking forward to seeing SD wriggle out of this one. I expect a full denial ...

[jont]

The other thing they said, as I'd told them they shouldn't be phoning sellerdeck customers offering an 'upgrade' to Actinic online, was that Chris Barling got a 'Kickback' from each sale and they weren't just encouraged to call existing Sellerdeck customers but were told they 'had to'.

I really hope that is the sales person at Actinic getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

[leehack]

I really hope that is the sales person at Actinic getting hold of the wrong end of the stick.

I hope that there is no stick at all.

[jont]

I hope that there is no stick at all.

There is always a stick - Golden or Shitty - but there is always a stick

I genuinely can't believe that would be true - it just doesn't sound like something SellerDeck would do. If users are going to leave that is one thing but it is non-sporting to get commission from the competitors they move off to.

[cbarling]

SellerDeck signed a series of agreements with Oxatis nearly three years ago and these agreements are quite complex. Part of them is that we can't make announcements about the agreement without running through the other party so I will talk in generalities.

The thinking behind the agreements was that some people wanted to move to cloud solutions. At the same time, SellerDeck was developing in a way that worked for larger companies, and it can be argued that cloud solutions are more appropriate for start up and entry level ecommerce companies.

At the same time, the Actinic brand name was strongly associated with entry level ecommerce. So it seemed to make sense to move the Actinic brand to be positioned with a cloud offering.

Different parts of the agreements run for between three and four years, and it's natural that some parts feel less comfortable now that more than half of the time that they run has passed. The agreements contain details of both payments and restrictions and share transfers and these cover a whole load of different things, and can happen in both directions.

Chris
Chairman, SellerDeck

[jont]

Part of them is that we can't make announcements about the agreement without running through the other party

Looks like Actinic broke that agreement - do you have legal on speed dial?

[Mike Hughes]

Thanks for replying Chris,

From a purely commercial perspective it doesn't seem unnatural that Sellerdeck would like to remove some financial compensation from Actinic when an existing customer moves to the other company as a result of sharing contact details for marketing purposes.

It certainly sounds like the kind of thing lawyers and accountants would try and include in contract negotiations in a bid to protect their clients interests.

From the customer relationship perspective, though, it's a bit like selling your customers details to a third party for marketing purposes (in fact it's exactly like this albeit in a limited, controlled manner). Not smart.

Mike

[jont]

Reading the EULA (as you do) in v9 which was very much prior to SellerDeck it says:

Your name, telephone numbers, address and email address and statistics concerning use of the software ("Your Data") will be put into the Actinic database .... You agree to the storage, use and disclosure of Your Data. Unless you notify Actinic otherwise you agree that Actinic may use and analyse Your Data to give you information about Actinic's services which may be of interest to you. If you do not wish to be contacted for marketing purposes by Actinic or by third parties please email Actinic as follows ....

I am guessing the provision for Actinic NewCo to contact us is covered by the above unless specifically opted out of.