After some further reflection on this subject that incorporated the feedback I have received, I have concluded that this is actually not such a good idea as it may seem prima facie. There are various reasons for this, but the ones that seem to top the list for me are: 1) Legal issues: It was rightly pointed out that the exchange of such information - even in an informal / discussion / forum type context, without the accompanying quantitative metrics that would characterise some sort of "rating" entity - could be beginning for libel and defamation exposure by all participating. It was also rightly pointed out that at the very least, one would have to take deliberate care not to stray into "credit rating agency" territory, and that the rules for this differ from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. 2) Confidentiality and trade secrets: Whether you're a consultant selling professional services, a vendor selling finished software or hardware products of some description, or an ITSP selling minutes or PBXs, you face high customer acquisition costs characteristic of our industry. It takes time, money and energy to fight for every customer. It does not take a marketing genius to arrive at the conclusion that a list of other people's customers and payment histories - how generous of them to provide such an extensive list conveniently organised in one place! - is a valuable source of leads to trawl. One could try to design the interface in such a way that customers must be explicitly searched for by name rather than browsed, but there are useful ways around that. This is where the analogy to paymentpractices.net in the freelance translation world breaks down, despite its superficial appeal. A large body of individuals offering translation skills in a particular language pair (and even then, often only in one direction - A->B and B->A are very different skill sets) usually deal with a large number of translation "agencies" that re-bill their services to clients. Agencies somehow find translators and translators find agencies. The fact that an agency may contact other translators for other languages is obvious, and their finding additional translators in the same language pair you specialise in is not in itself a competitive threat; there's only so much work one person can handle, and plenty more than that to go around. The only differentiator of concern from an agency's perspective is price. There's not a lot of "poaching" going on, and the economic return on that kind of tactic is very limited. This is a very different dynamic than the one that operates in these rungs of the VoIP ladder. Our industry is both very competitive and generally involves relationships between customers and one vendor, or a few key vendors at most. I think in the grand scheme of things, any businesspeople of even a modicum of intelligence would be very reluctant to input their lists of customers for the world to probe. -- Alex Alex Balashov wrote:
Greetings,
I'm not sure if this is within the purview of the list or not, but I would like to get everyone's thoughts on the creation of something like a "credit bureau" specific to our industry. I don't think we currently have anything like that in the VoIP cottage industry, unless I am mistaken.
Simply put, we should have a way of anonymously rating customers' payment history and noting any especially egregious disputes. Access should be restricted only to verified companies legitimately engaged in VoIP-related trade.
My interest in this is from a consulting and professional services angle, since that's what Evariste Systems does. However, I do not see why this could not also accommodate payment information from the ITSP and small carrier world.
There are lots of potential problems, of course:
1) Some customers would consider disclosure of any transactional information a violation of standing NDAs;
2) The possibility of clutter from small/irrelevant transactions, like $5 prepayments for O/T or calling cards;
3) Some need for moderation and standards enforcement; there is a very real possibility of abuse by members by leveraging such a tool in frivolous business disputes, or business disputes in which their hands are not clean any more than the customer's; example: I could fail to deliver to a customer what I promised, and then report his refusal to pay as a financial misdeed;
4) Large deals and transactions often already go through credit checks with real credit bureaus and various ratings firms.
Nevertheless, I think there would be a lot of value as well. And while there is the possibility that the existence of such a tool could be used to intimidate/threaten customers in business disputes, the value of catching fraudsters who go around from VoIP company to VoIP company ripping each one off and disappearing into a hole might outweigh that.
My father does, among other things, some freelance translation. In that industry, there's a web site called:
http://www.paymentpractices.net/
It is upon seeing this that I wondered why we do not have something like that in our world.
Eager to hear your thoughts,
-- Alex
-- Alex Balashov - Principal Evariste Systems Web : http://www.evaristesys.com/ Tel : (+1) (678) 954-0670 Direct : (+1) (678) 954-0671