[REQUEST] Partner with RSG Inc?

[ynotech]

This morning I recieved an e-mail from RSG asking me to become a business partner with them. I'm wondering if any of you have advice or experience either with this company or other similar situations.

The e-mail was as follows:

Hi Tony
RSG are looking for a tech company to provide hardware swap
services in your area, Site surveys, and Technology upgrades

Retail Services Group specializes on providing IT support services
for National Retail Company's, with 24 hour help desk services and service techs
across Canada.

We would like to have our selected parter to store parts

1-2 computer systems as parts
Be available for service calls as required , same day or next day
swap equipment if system fails
do troubleshooting are required


Let me know if you interested in some additional work for the next 5 years
with a monthly retainer fee of 100 per month , prepayment for service completed
Partners bill us between 55-65 per hour based on volume.
We pay for travel and tech time onsite.
Travel time is based on google maps listing

Regards

This is tempting for me as I'm trying to build volume for my business and the rate is above what I currently charge (although not as high I'd like to eventually be charging). Does anyone have thoughts on this type of thing?

 

[dgoglio]

They are terrible. Stay far away. I have heard many stories about the taking forever to pay or not paying at all.

 

[Markverhyden]

Never dealt with them. But they have been running calls through OnForce in my area. Places like Aldo's and Garage Clothing. Their pricing is typically flat rate, say 65-90 per call, from what I have seen. They do have a good rating on OnForce but they are also required to put the work order monies up front. So stiffing a tech is not trivial



I've only been stiffed by one national company, PrismPointe Technologies, around $400. I happened to sign up with them when one of their major customers, MPD, started going down the tubes. PPT was left with some $750k in receivables which almost buried them. So the lesson is do not allow any customer to get into you too much.

Like most in the business world expect payment cycles to be in the 30 day range. I'm fine with that and that's my billing cycle with my customers. At the end of the day it's risk management and you need to manage it, not the other way around.

Almost forgot, make sure to get a detailed description of what they want. Other places have suddenly dropped time consuming things like weekly inventories on the techs with out additional $.

 

[GTP]

Stay far away IMO! I got burned by a company that does the same thing. Example: They tell you they have a client with an "Email" issue. They give you/will only pay one hour to do the job (inc travel time) and when you get there you soon discover it's more than an email problem! They have no internet, a horrific malware infection, corrupt Windows partition and so!
If you stay and fix it all the client will not pay because they are paying the company. The company will not pay more because they were told it was an email issue etc.
You are the one that loses!

 

[AndrewFergus]

We are four hours away from the major city (Auckland) and have nine large IT companies outsource work to us. As long as you can charge for the time you were onsite and travel you are golden. We do HP (Desktop, Laptop & Print), OKI, Konica, Lexmark & retailers like Supermarket chains & McDonalds, enough for one tech to be full time on the road servicing these customers. We had to stop working with Brother Printers as they had a fixed rate of one hour for all jobs and no travel, after doing the numbers we saw we were losing up to $30 job.

 

[Archon Prime]

I stay away from these people. I have some "something star" here in Ontario, or at least they seem to have an Ontario address. I get these sketchy emails from several different "agents", which my system flags their email as spam. So 2 red flags. The information in the emails is so basic I don't even bother wasting time getting back to them. I've heard of someone else in my area doing a job for them and they were paying him less than 50% of what he normally charges and didn't pay for travel which was over an hour away from his location.