I am an IT professional who works with many Call/Contact Centers and happened to be helping a local political campaign do a small "get out and vote" announcement. The campaign manager was setup with NGP VAN/TargetSmartVAN.com to get voter information records which was a service for around $3,000-$4,000 which is not an unheard of cost for access to millions of voter phone records and sorting and filtering features. NGP also appeared to make it easy to setup a RoboDial campaign via Call Fire, and linked your list directly to Call Fire.
Everything sounds pretty good so far right? Making it easy to get voter phones, load into a campaign and schedule a call. But thats where it all falls apart. NGP has decided that they can bill you for "attempting a call", not the actual call. Apparently they think that if a phone is busy, disconnected, or even just rings but is not answered that they can charge you for a 1 minute call. Basically bleeding your account dry whenever you do not make a contact with the actual voter. I decided to contact Call Fire directly and they guaranteed me that they ONLY bill for connected calls, and ANY third party partnering with Call Fire is not being billed for attempted calls. Call Fire will ONLY bill the partner for completed calls and suggested we contact NGP VAN and make sure there wasn't some incorrect information or just a misunderstanding. They also mentioned never hearing of a company trying to bill for "attempted calls". They also suggested if NGP says they ARE billing for unused minutes that we inform Call Fire afterword as they were fairly interested to know if they had third parties doing this as they were not aware of any "partner" billing customers for minutes that Call Fire was not actually charging the parter for, but that it was possible.
I suggested that the campaign manager contact NGP VAN/TargetSmartVAN as it seemed very likely this was just a mistake in marketing materials or that the sales person didn't understand the question about attempting to make a call and actually making a call that connects. NGP confirmed they were billing for call attempts even when the line was busy, disconnected or just rings for 20 seconds and the customer will be billed the full minute rate without ever connecting with the called party. The campaign then requested a refund from their account, as there are a number of other providers who never bill for "attempting to call". NGP then informed the campaign that they charge a 5% refund fee and that since more then $200 was placed on the account via the credit card, that they would require to send a refund check instead of canceling/refunding the transaction directly to the credit card via the merchant service provider.
I will never ever suggest that someone use NGP VAN/TargetSmartVan.com for services when it comes to political campaigns, robocalls or surveys. There are a number of other providers out there you can get voter records and contact/call center services for a "get out and vote" campaign. I suggest that if you find this company and read this yelp review, you turn around and run, not walk, in the other direction. I cannot find a single good reason why anyone would not look around and find other companies who can provide them the same services at more reasonable rates. read more
