Is Cisco cheating a reseller?
By Cisco Subnet on Tue, 06/17/08 - 12:26pm.
A California reseller will get its day in court to state its case against Cisco, which is alleged to have snatched a $5 million opportunity away from the reseller and turning it over
to AT&T. According to the reseller, Infra-Comm of San Juan Capistrano, an Orange County judge has denied Cisco's motion for summary judgment on a lawsuit filed against it by Infra-Comm. The lawsuit charges Cisco with breach of an exclusivity promise and improperly taking an IP telephony deal from Infra-Comm to reseller AT&T.
The lawsuit was filed January 2007. In it, Infra-Comm said that Cisco breached contracts related to Cisco's Opportunity Incentive Program deal registration, including its Indirect Channel Partner Agreement.
Infra-Comm alleges that in January 2006, after working for years with the reseller to develop a large IP telephony sale, Cisco invited AT&T to take Infra-Comm's place as reseller on the opportunity, including disclosing the reseller's work and extending the same pricing to AT&T. The lawsuit says that Cisco authorized AT&T's alternative sale to the customer during the period that Infra-Comm held a valid deal registration. It further alleges that Cisco then ignored its own promise to renew Infra-Comm's registration and now sells virtually all Cisco products and services to the same customer through AT&T.
After filing the lawsuit, Infra-Comm says Cisco terminated the company's status as an authorized reseller and Silver Partner and with it, Infra-Comm's ability to resell Cisco products and related services to 40 active clients. As a result, Infra-Comm lost 90% of its revenue, closed its two offices, and had to lay off most of its employees, according to the reseller.
Cisco says it is company policy not to comment on pending court cases. Nontheless, the compnay says it is "defending the allegations in Infra-Comm's complaint vigorously.
"With more than 80% of our annual product and services revenue being sold by our channel partners, we are committed to their success and are proud of our award-winning channel programs," a company spokesman replied in an e-mail.
Infra-Comm had been a Cisco indirect channel partner since 2000.
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This is a huge case!
If the reseller wins get ready for a huge increase in the Lawsuits against Cisco. This happens with ever increasing regularity. The only reason it has not been pressed before is that the partners are in fear of losing their Cisco given right to sell the products.
Cisco has done this to us
Cisco has done this to us with few big clients. We have complained but still happening.
Chambers denies channel misconduct
I recommend you to watch Chambers' response on our blog (uberpulse.com) when we raise the "channel" issue to him during a question and answer session at the week's Cisco Live in Orlando. http://www.uberpulse.com/us/2008/06/cisco_live_08_ceo_denies_channel_misconduct_points_to_highest_industry_satisfaction_video.php
Lol!
This is exactly why my company has refused to become a cisco dealer. Cisco IOS is constanly being patched, they are overpriced and cisco pulls crap like this on it's dealers. There is better stuff out there anyway. Here are just a couple: Adtran for Routers, Sonic wall firewall, HP Procurve Switches, Mitel for VoIP and Trapeze Networks for wireless.
That just about covers it. Plus, no spendy Smartnet!!!