Suspicious BSG gets rid of Uunet

Uunet Pipex has been stripped of its BSG preferred ISP status oversuspicions about its direct policy

BSG has replaced Uunet Pipex with Psinet as its preferred Internet service provider (ISP), citing suspicions about Uunet Pipex' direct sales policy.

Roy Howitt, marketing director at BSG, said the reseller was unhappy with Uunet's refusal to supply commission for second-year renewal deals, and voiced his suspicions of the ISP's direct sales activities.

Technical issues were a factor, but Howitt said BSG signed Psinet mainly because it 'has a focused channel policy and we know it will not sell directly against us'.

Last year, BSG promoted the Internet to its corporate accounts through a joint seminar programme with Uunet Pipex, but according to Howitt, that did not win much business for BSG.

'Then we found out that Uunet had contracted one of our customers direct after we had taken it into the account. Uunet paid us an introductory commission after we complained. But I shouldn't have to go back to every singe seminar and find out whether information on attendees has been passed on to Uunet's direct sales team.'

Chris Chaney, head of sales and marketing at Uunet Pipex, claimed the company had always maintained clean channels, describing the BSG situation as unfortunate. 'As soon as we were aware of the conflict, we hand delivered a cheque to Roy - BSG did not lose out.'

He said the BSG case had arisen when Uunet Pipex was experimenting with selling through the channel. 'BSG was one of the few channel companies we worked with that understood the Internet at the time.'

Uunet Pipex is actively recruiting resellers again, as the market is only now ready, according to Chaney. 'We are building an accreditation and training programme to support the resellers,' he said.