OfficeEarth Arvostelua 6

Worst service ever.

Meant to be 24/7 service. Multiple mornings - always at the worst possible time had customers call in before office hours only to have them wait on hold for 15 minutes, 30 min an hour or more with no answer.

This ultimately lead to the loss of a client of many years and of a lucrative support contact all because Office Earth could not fulfill what their service said it could.

Do not be fooled. They are expensive for what they are. They will too let you down.

I contracted with OE for 3 months 2 years ago as a virtual receptionist. Pay was decent. Training was thorough. Schedule was flexible. Got to work from home although it is demanded you portray yourself as physically there in the office, which at times caused an embarrassing situation as many times I got "caught" in that deception. Those complaining about their calls being kept on constant hold is because they are under staffed because they can't keep help. They treat their receptionists like crap, are extremely unprofessional, unpaid training which consisted of memorizing over 20 videos (probably more now) on what is required for each client yet you get charged a 10% training fee out of your paycheck, and get paid once a month. Two months out of the three I worked for them I got paid 2 weeks late. Hence why I quit.

We have used them about a year as an overflow answering service for when we are busy or not able to answer calls ourselves.

When calls are answered the service is generally quite good, the problem is that 90% of calls get stuck in a hold loop and nobody answers. I am guessing that OE use home workers and when they don't have anyone available they just dump calls into a loop.

It makes us look pretty bad as a business and has the opposite effect from what we hired OE to do. We are better off just sending calls to voicemail, at least we have a way to know who called and the customer is not just stuck on hold without knowing it will never be answered.

We had our account terminated by Office Earth simply because they decided in their infinite wisdom, without notice of any kind, that they don’t handle adult services. Nothing in their policies, procedures or any other written medium nor on their website, indicated that they didn’t handle adult services – mind you, we hadn’t even told them we were an adult service company!

After challenging them about their decision, I was informed that ‘we can do whatever we want’. Nice and particularly unprofessional given that all they had to do was say ‘all our team members are engaged. May I take your name and number for a return call’ without even mentioning the company name at all.

I then asked my EA to investigate further and after her being on hold for a considerable amount of time, was told by Kimberley at Office Earth that she couldn’t answer that question and there was no-one available at the time who could. Seriously??? Why have front line staff if they can’t answer a simple question like that? Surely they should be up-to-date on company policy.

There have been other reports of people engaging the services of this company and when the call was answered, they didn’t even answer with the right business name!

Discriminating – YES!
Bad business practice – YES!

Will I deal with this company again – DEFINITELY NOT – and neither should you!!!

They have become quite notorious for ripping people off.

People join, they realise, they leave, and then a new batch joins to be ripped off for a bit.

How? They charge your credit card with fees for extra services, they make "mistakes" with billing, they double invoice you, they change their pricing (eg all $10 plans were recently bumped automatically to $59 plans - 500% increase.). They also change their billing terms and increase their call fees in the background.

The way this works for them is that they auto-charge your card. They then bank on very few people being bothered to go to small claims, or the telecommunications ombudsman - and so they can absorb these actions as they go.

Steven, the responder to these reviews, seems reasonable - but try to get in touch with him once you are a customer. He will actively refuse to respond to support requests, emails or phone calls put through from his own reception.

If you are unlucky enough to join, you will know that as soon as you are a customer, you will never be able to contact an account manager again. They do this to try and avoid refunding billing mistakes. Poor Erin, Kymberly and other receptionists get embarrassed making excuses as to why their employer will not respond to support requests, tickets, phone calls or emails.

If it isn't obvious to everyone, a number of these reviews have been manufactured by Office Earth as marketing.

The site lures you in, but stay strong, this is a classic honeytrap business. Buyer beware with Office Earth - there are actual professional alternatives that are much cheaper. And honest.

So far with Office Earth I've had more time and less stress, honestly. These guys have done everything they said they would have from the beginning. It's simple to use, and the staff are friendly and know what they're doing :)