Karaoke Forums

I'm not sure where you got that from my answers.

A KJ who settles with us will almost certainly have a clause in the settlement agreement dealing with future use of the trademark, and that agreement will control how we deal with it. I would not expect that agreement to require a second audit for certification, but I don't review every settlement agreement (or even most of them), so it's possible in theory even if it's unlikely. I would encourage that KJ to review the agreement, and if there are questions, or if there is something the KJ was expecting that hasn't happened, he can contact Customer Care.

How about for all the KJ's that have paid for your audit, recieved the "provisional status" and have been left out twisting in the wind for 6 or more months? Can they request a refund since you've not done anything -- which they've paid for and they've been "expecting that hasn't happened?" Why should they have to "contact Customer Care" to spur your company into performing to the agreement you authored?

To wait over 6 months while you start several additional programs and purchase another trademark for the express purpose of continuing your lawsuits seems like once you have their money, you'll leave them "provisional" for life.

And, if they request a refund, what are the ramifications for doing so? Will you automatically and vindictively sue them? (Don't say you're not vindictive, I've seen that one up close.)

Will you attempt to hold them to the agreement they signed -- that you've agreed to and not acted on or just quote a technicality?

Inquiring minds want to know....
(not to mention a few KJ's that wonder why they paid and haven't been audited to date)

I'll be happy to answer any questions of these questions if they are directed to me, or to Customer Care, by someone who is actually in that situation.

I am not going to respond to hypothetical questions from someone who isn't affected by the situation you allege exists, whose sole purpose is to stir up (@$%&#!).

The sole purpose is not to stir up anything, and it's a legitimate question. Because of your knee-jerk reaction and your tendency to file a lawsuit at the drop of a hat, there are plenty of your own customers who are afraid to ask you about this because of the vindictive nature of your company. (a reputation that you carefully crafted over the years.)

These same customers realize that I won't betray their trust and so I am asking the question for them. If you would really like to know who all of these people are, I could tell you how to find them all, but I don't work for you remember? If it's longer than six months, you really should refund their money. Any legitimate business with a shred of integrity would have either provided the service for which they paid, or refunded their money and canceled any agreements they've signed for not doing so within the first 180 days.

Slapping a label of "provisional" on them and calling it a day while you direct your energies to a number of new endeavors and purchasing a trademark, is a pretty underhanded way to do business.

The customers that have paid you deserve to get what they paid for, or at least a refund and cancellation – not excuses and not lip service.

Your "Customer Care" doesn't appear to care much about your customers or after 6 months, it would have been done already.

From you, it's not a legitimate question.



Right. These "customers" you won't identify are more than happy to sign up for a program that has gotten them exactly what they needed--a certification that any venue will accept and can easily verify on our website, along with a covenant not to sue--and in the process provide us with information that allows us to identify them, where they live, and what discs they own, but they are supposedly too scared to ask when it will be their turn for the audit for fear that we'll turn around and single them out for some sort of mistreatment in violation of our own agreement? But they are willing to come to you to ask us on their behalf?

I'm going to say this is in the same category as your lie about how the tracks you produced are individually digitally watermarked.

The truth:

The major holdup in conducting audits is twofold.

First, we have a limited number of disc-marking kits. A kit is shipped to the applicant, who then uses it to mark each of the discs for which certification is sought. The marking process takes time to complete, especially if hundreds of discs are to be marked. Additionally, these kits are expensive to assemble and ship to our applicants. We have recently increased the number of kits available for this purpose, and kits are sent out in the order that applications were received. When one applicant finishes marking, the kit is returned, replenished, and sent out to the next person on the list.

Second, we have limited personnel to conduct audits. The audits themselves are time-consuming for our staff, and while they are assigned an appropriate level of priority for what they are, they do get set aside from time to time for more pressing matters.

We have identified several applicants who have been holding auditing kits for longer than necessary, and we are taking steps to recover those kits as soon as we can.

Any person who has applied for certification and would like to discuss the situation with someone at Phoenix should send me an email (jim@phxep.com). I will either respond personally or have someone else at the company respond, if appropriate. (Of course, they are also welcome to email or call Customer Care.) If any of our applicants believes they are being harmed in some way by being designated as provisionally certified, I would like to know about the circumstances, and if there is anything we can do to help, we will. Above all, I promise that no one will be punished for contacting me. Notwithstanding Mr. Staley's baseless contention to the contrary, we don't do that.

Let's see... It's only legitimate if it doesn't come from me? A little on the bitter side are you?....


On the contrary, it has NOT "gotten them exactly what they needed" because they paid for an audit and your "certification" and you haven't upheld your portion of the contract - in 6 months or more. They have nothing more than your label of "provisional" (which might as well say "on probation") so you can quit trying to play the nutshell game.

But cashing their check right away didn't seem to be a problem now was it? Didn't think so.

"Look over there!", Deflect, smoke, deflect, "Confederate Flag!", mirrors, deflect, deflect..... rinse and repeat.

Remember when I said your customers don't deserve a bunch of excuses and lip service?

EXCUSE #1:

EXCUSE #2:

EXCUSE #3:

EXCUSE #4:

EXCUSE #5:

Translation of the next paragraph:
"No, you won't get a refund for us failing to do anything for over 6 months and if you'd like for us to tell you that directly and remind you that you've already signed a contract, you can call us and whine all you want -- because we won't take the time to call you about it first.."
LIP SERVICE:

This has nothing to do with "being harmed" at all. It has to do with the integrity to do what your contract specifies in a reasonable manner and time frame. Your company has failed to even notify those that have already paid you of the excuses outlined above which demonstrates that you are reactive and certainly not proactive when it comes to taking care of the very customers that sent you money and expect you to uphold your end of your own contract. The customers haven't failed, your company has.... again.

The only other excuse would be total incompetence.

The crickets in here are deafening aren't they?

No, there are lots of other people from whom these questions wouldn't be legitimate.

But coming from you, they are definitely not legitimate, because your purpose is to feed your agenda of hatred toward us. I have no interest in responding to your substantively. Any comments I make on threads you participate in are purely for purposes of correcting the record for the people you're trying to lie to in service of that agenda. I couldn't possibly care less what you think of me, Kurt, or Phoenix.

I'm sure that includes every single KJ that has signed and paid you for a certification that hasn't happened. So I guess your excuses and lip service will have to suffice.
Oh BOO-HOO!... get a tissue. Let's add that your refusal to respond also includes the KJ's from whom you've taken money, done exactly nothing substantial for --- including not even bothering to extend them the courtesy of an update -- once you have their money and their "nonrefundable" application fee.

Oh, I understand your answer to them and I've read your one-sided audit agreement which leaves them exactly with no recourse if you fail to perform to the obligations of the contract other than slapping the icon of "provisional" on your website in a list. Real contracts work for both parties and cover a reasonable range and scope, not only yours.

I simply can't fathom why you would be so sloppy in taking care of the customers that;

• Actually purchased product and,
• are willing to PROVE that to you and,
• PAID you in advance for work you've not (to date,) even bothered to schedule.

Your treatment of your own customers with this kind of arrogance in defense of your company's incompetence is absurd. Where did you learn this "marketing technique?" Or is this simply a method to glean information and a list of who you'd be wasting money on to sue?... Seems like it to me.


"Correcting the record" in this case is to remind the KJ's that paid you that they signed an open-ended contract with you that permits you to do absolutely nothing substantial other than cash their check with the veiled threat of "adverse legal consequences."

And of course you care what I think of you, Kurt and Phoenix. If you didn't, you wouldn't be jumping up and down with excuses like a duck on a hot plate when your one-side contract is put under scrutiny. I think we're safe to name this the "HDS" for "Harrington Derangement Syndrome."

But the real takeaway from all this verbal regurgitation from you is that you're arrogantly defending your company's inaction (or inability) to provide a service for which you've been paid over 6 months ago because of a contract that leaves those same customers with no recourse. Why don't you just come out and admit it in a shorter fashion?

Here's a suggestion if you at a loss for succinct wording:

If you'd actually read the agreement, you would know that the provisional certification also includes a covenant not to sue them for trademark infringement unless and until we determine, through the audit process, that they are not compliant with our policies. That is the primary purpose of certification, so, since we haven't sued any of the provisionally certified operators, the contract is being fulfilled even if it takes us considerable time to complete the audit.

For the record, I am one of those people who are still provisionally certified. As far as I am concerned, I don't care if my actual audit is completed or not. I didn't do it for the threat of a lawsuit, I did it because I wanted to follow the rules, despite the fact that I don't personally agree with them. Despite that, PEP has been extremely reasonable toward me in the fact that my main stream of income is extremely limited. They have always worked quite hard to accomodate my unique needs and try to come up with flexible forms of payments when required.

What i was told by Brian is that he didn't want to send one of the ink kits acrosss the border until he was reasonably sure that it would clear customs, and that there wouldn't be any duty fees that would ultimately fall to the end user to pay for. Seems like a pretty good reason to me.

I will continue to do what i agreed to, which was notify them of any SC purchases since I submitted the original form, and to keep a 1:1 corrispondance of Soundchoice material.

If PEP ever happens to sue me for anything, you people will be the first to know, but I am not holding my breath.

There seems to be a line in the sand there..... I believe they call it a border

c. staley wrote:
The sole purpose is not to stir up anything, and it's a legitimate question.

Now that's the best laugh I had in a while.

_________________
You can be strange but not a stranger

bout time for a Timberlea drive by

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Paradigm Karaoke, The New Standard.......Shift Happens

EXCUSE #6+ MORE LIP SERVICE:
I did "actually read the agreement" and I see that you've finally admitted that the "primary purpose of certification" is not to get sued.... when countless times before your claim was that it was needed because a KJ simply "needs permission to media shift." And that was your explanation/excuse of why you continued your suits against technical infringers and venues.

Changed your spots did you?
You're not selling "permission" at all, you're selling "protection."

What's truly interesting is that all these years you've managed to skirt a court's interpretation of the law by settling out --one way or another -- with defendants and you've been able to keep scaring the rest of the KJ's with the threat of a lawsuit. And now the seventh district has put a hammer down on you by declaring that media shifting is in fact, NOT trademark infringement.

Looks like your meal ticket just took a lunch break.

Oh, good grief.

A "covenant not to sue" constitutes permission for the use of the marks under specific conditions. They are different ways of saying exactly the same thing.

Could you maybe audit a class on contract law before you make any more pronouncements about contract law? Please. You're embarrassing yourself.

You're suing the customers that purchased your product and supported the company for years, and now you're screwing over the few remaining supporters you have left by not even giving them the audit they paid for, and you think I'm the one that should be embarrassed?

Really?

No, we're suing the pirates that stole our product. Of course, you neither understand nor care about the difference, so there's that.

No, you're suing customers that purchased the product and you call them "technical infringers." You invented a classification in order to sue these KJ customers. And for good measure, you sue their venues to maximize your income and a vindictive punishment.

There are no altruistic motives on your part and you're certainly not a victim here by any measure.

The experience of the last 7 years has shown that the number of actual "technical infringers" we've sued is extremely small in comparison to the number of actual pirates (as in well under 1%).

But, then again, you never let facts get in the way of an argument.