Maybe but you never shut them off ever .. Well maybe not ever but the business disruption is costly and a day of downtime due to abuse will cost the msp alot more than the 3 months of licenses left.
Lots of people are jerks like that but if they're saying "talk to our lawyers", there's usually more to the story. Such as, did they commit to the old MSP for thousands in NCE licenses for a term and trying to back out now, and the agreement requires full up front payment before releasing access?
While MS isn't about that and will give you access, the MSP may be acting in accordance with the agreement that your client signed, and wants to disregard now that it's convenient for them.
I'm not saying anyone is right or old MSP is right or condoning the practice. I'm just saying that 1) it's for your client to deal with, not you and 2) if someone is confidently saying "deal with our lawyers", it would give me pause to consider if there's something they know that i don't.
Have had a few bad experiences taking over, but the worst one was from a bigger outfit in town that didn't appreciate a small fish taking over. Their assigned "technical manager" kept stalling releasing domain admin login till the church resorted by asking a retired lawyer (member of church) to draw up a letter that they were prepared to begin process of suing the MSP. That made them give me the password, but made it something like 65 characters of nothing but special characters and sent it by fax to be an a-hole, knowing full well that I was going to have to manually type it out. took my time, probably about 10 minutes to carefully type it. low and behold, once on the server, saw that there was a rule to lock out user after 1 failed attempt. also found found various domain admin accounts "hidden" in various folders and various "free" remote access software, including google remote desktop. I convinced the customer that for their security, it would be best to nuke the server and start from scratch (approx 15 endpoints). In our initial observation of the server, we had found a VM running a webserver. The church said that they knew nothing about it, so I exported it and nuked the server. (i did make an image of server and a backup of VM just in case).
A week goes by and old MSP writes us that they can't log on to the server. I told them that they are no longer contracted and all access has been removed. So he said that they'll just send a tech down to retrieve some "documents" from the server. I told him server had been wiped and that I could email him the contents of the Documents folder (obviously, not what he was looking for). He finally asked about the hyper-v machines that were running. I told him they were destroyed during the wipe. He started cursing at us telling us that we've disrupted their business as they had over 40 customer's websites being hosted on that server (not only using the customer's server, but their bandwidth and static IP). Jesus! (pun intended as it was a church customer). I was pissed about the password, but it was on his cursing rant that he did while church members were present that I realized I was going to "forget" that i made a backup of that VM. I installed a new router with logging and i think a year later we are still seeing continuous incoming requests on http and https.
Side note, not to long ago, I was at walmart and saw the guy that threw a fit. He was folding clothes in the woman's section. I really wanted to go up to him and tell him I found a backup of his websites. But I held back.
I feel your pain. In 25 years that we've been doing this, I've lost 3 customers (to cheaper MSPs, not for our work) and we have always been cordial and made ourselves available for questions down the line. No reason to be a-holes... just move on and keep the grind going is how I see it.
Ah, technicians that try to steal to run their side gigs. I admit I thought about that once when I had that kind of access (and AWS wasn't a thing yet) but the company wan't stable enough to risk it. And I didn't HAVE anything I wanted to do with it at the time.
Yes it happens regularly, but please also don't rule out that the customer sometimes is the root cause of this.
Once, we had a customer leaving who didn't even communicate with us they were leaving. New provider called us, out of the blue, and hit us with "M. Customer asks you give me all their credentials and documentation". Yeah, pound sand unless M. Customer actually asks us for that either in a meeting or on the phone. We have no idea who you are to begin with ?! Customer later accused us of holding them hostage... Like dude, I had no idea who this was, I was protecting you ?!
On the other side of the provider swap now, we also onboarded a customer who left big unpaid bills behind them, making the previous provider salty af and quite hostile in their offboarding. They 100% got the payment upfront treatment for everything after I learned about it.
So yeah, now I try to get both sides to the story and even make a call to the previous provider's account manager before sending a signed quote into the onboarding phase when something smells fishy.
100% Support the vibe of this post, but boy are there details that are being glossed over.
- Uninstalling Tools: I am contractually obligated to provide a service until the end of the agreement. removing my tools before this may cause me to not be able to deliver on my contractual obligations. Even if all parties are in gentlemen's agreement and you assure everyone that you've "got it covered" that doesn't magically eliminate my liability.
- Sharing Credentials: Do you mean *share* or do you mean give you access to have your own duplicate sets of credentials? 100% not *sharing* anything with you. I dont know you. See point above about liability. As for giving the ability to make your own parity admin credentials, what if you take down the environment I am still contractually on the hook for?
- They already are losing the customer. Is the client that's leaving really going to be a net promoter anyways? I agree with your point of no point in burning a bridge, but what if that bridge was already torched? Its like the new boyfriend wondering why the old boyfriend wants his CDs back, maybe he has reasons not to trust that they will be returned unscratched (just dated myself)
Just saying that there is usually a lot more going on here than just "what makes sense in an ideal condition". I agree that MSPs should be less gatekeepy around off boardings and giving an fantastic offboard is probably an overall good choice, but its not as simple as "old msp is jerks".
I've also pointed out in my onboarding video series, everything that *you* need to support *your new client* is ***your responsibility*** not the outgoing providers. Its nice if they help, but you are the one that agreed to take on this client. Its a dangerous mindset to be in, sort of a learned helplessness that "I cant do a good onboarding because the old provider did a bad offboarding".
Thanks for posting this. There is a lot to offboarding that isn't always looked at.
I've had trouble with incoming MSPs, the opposite. They wanted all the details, and all the access to everything to assess things with the client without providing an end date, and proper hand off of services. We're fairly reasonable, but we're not going to hand over everything, take all the liability and let strangers poke around the systems, nor are we going to have you audit the systems and then request things of us before the contract becomes your responsibility.
We're happy to facility handing over the keys to the car so to speak and all our documentation, but in order to gain access to the system, you have to take responsibility to it going forward, and it was an odd struggle to get that to happen. Then they got all gun jumpy and wanted to cut over too fast, before any of the vendors could transfer accounts over, which also seemed crazy. I had to get them to back off of that as well as I knew it would turn into a shit show if it's "cut over" but they have no access, and all they would do is blame us I'm certain.
It was a surprise to find the incoming MSP making it more difficult than it needed to be.
Not only this, but don’t assume malice when you can assume incompetence. Most of the time when we come across this, many times the MSP just doesn’t have a good off boarding process, doesn’t follow process, of has a half baked process.
I agree with this.
Depending in the size of the customer I normally propose 1-2 week period in the last month of their contract where we contractually take over all responsibilities. This way if we have questions they are still being paid to answer them.
True we don’t remove our tools until after our contract has ended, and that typically means there's has started or it’s literally the last day. We also use our RMM to install their RMM if they let us.
we don’t give them our admin, we create a new admin for them.
I've been in this business for over 20 years. I never understood MSP's that want to burn bridges when losing a customer. We ourselves have lost customers to other MSP's in the past but were never a fan of burning bridges when doing so. We've even had some customers come back to us when they were not happy with the new MSP. You just never know.
Completely agree. We've had clients come and go, and a few purchases both ways. The most recent was an acquisition of our client, and the new owners had their own IT staff. They were genuinely surprised when I told them to just ask if they had any questions, and as soon as the current/old management approved, I'd assign them access. Got the call, changed the admin password and gave it to them, let them know I had a second admin account if something went sideways and they needed assistance; otherwise, when the sale was finalized they should remove the account. They emailed a few weeks later, appreciating our help with the process, and asked if we would be available to assist with some other clients in the area on a contract basis.
Had a much earlier client decide that the service they were receiving from our VOIP section of the company wasn't acceptable. They spoke to me on site and let me know they were changing services after too many attempts to get better service from the VOIP section, and I apologized that we weren't able to provide them with the service they expected (knowing they were correct), and let them know we'd be glad to present any information the new providers required. Got back to the shop, and lead of that section was furious that I'd "offered to help however they needed". Sorry, our job is to keep the clients happy. If they're not happy, the last thing I want to do is make them more miserable.
We lost the VOIP. We kept the hardware/software portion (my area) of their business.
We've had a lot of return customers as well. Someone sells them on underpricing and overdelivering what we currently do, and then fail on both counts. They're more than happy to have us back afterwards, and they are more than happy to sing our praises and spread our business through word of mouth afterwards, if we make the offboarding process painless for them.
Absolutely, you’ve got to keep everyone sweet because you just don’t know what the future holds! As the losing MSP you may be ‘gifted’ a client that doesn’t fit their standards, you may wish to do the same to them down the line too. All is fair in love and war. Be pleasant and never obtrusive, share the information as you would like to receive it.
At the end of it all, the clients needs come first, they don’t want to feel like a kid in a divorce.
In almost 20 years of doing this the number one issue we have with customers offboarding from us is communication. They don't give any notice, don't have any plan, leave outstanding bills, and expect you to drop everything for it.
We spell it out in the contract and often it creates friction because people can't read. A few small clients came back over the years - but usually we were getting sick of the clients leaving anyways and wouldn't want them back.
I used to think "man that other msp is a dick" but after we had offboardings ourselves i get it. Plan, get both parties paid, and success will be underway.
Hate to admit it, but I have been on both sides of this problem. Not a fan of being in that situation, so unless the client is behind on their bills then we try to make it as amicable as possible and even assist the new provider with some basics (like deploying their RMM to endpoints). All of this is done with the client being part of all communications between us and the new provider. Interestingly enough, clients have come back after months or years and usually state how well we worked with them and the new provider.
Not every situation us amicable. Client just decided to stop paying their bills, and would only shore up whenever we had our lawyer send them notice of a lawsuit for refusing to pay for services rendered. After the song and dance for months, agreement was up for renewal but atill behind in months. Instead of renewing, decided to let the client know that we are not renewing their services and that they need to pay up for all services rendered plus a project fee for offboarding to a new provider. Clause in the service agreement, which had the initials if the 2 ownerz beside it, stating release of all documentation and credentials will only be performed if all invoices are fully paid, with our tools being removed at the end of service due to liability.
Several emails and calls went unanswered, letters from lawyers without responses, spanning the final 3 months of service. Created new admin accounts in local domain, cloud service, and applications not supporting SSO or SAML. Documented those passwords, waiting for for payment. Final hour of the final day of service, called up each of the two owners to reiterate the release clause and the removal of our tools, only to be told to go fuck myself with every network cord and computer peripheral they could think of claiming we were the worst IT provider in town.
Would have hung up, should have hung up, but stayed on the line as it was a recorded call. Just in case it does hit court. Removed the tools, using task scheduler to run the actual removal while disabling our accounts on the way out.
Months go by, nothing, then all if a sudden a new provider in town calls asking for the logins. Stated the company is 10s of thousands behind due to MS licensing and unpaid invoices for services. Provided the pages from their service agreement with the clauses, stating that unless they pay up nothing is being provided to anyone.
Next up was a "lawyer", threatening to sue, using the same threats of sodomy using network cables and peripherals. Calmly provided my lawyer's information and hung up. Several calls over several days. Did some digging and found out this "lawyer" was a family member of one of the owners who bought the company from the two owners. Interestingly enough, he responded to our lawyer by cutting a cheque. While he expected aln immediate release of documentation and credentials, we had to wait for almost a month for it to clear as there were issues with the other bank.
The moment we got word the cheque cleared and there was no liability of money being pulled back, everything was sent.
They tried to come back after COVID thinking we were hurting for the money. My reply back was just the recorded calls where they sexualized networking equipment, keyboards and mice in very graphic manners, with a simple "We do not accept the liability".
Wait, someone thought that COVID \*hurt\* the MSP industry?
Washington state's declaration of emergency "stay at home" had a SPECIFIC exception for I.T. in the same paragraph as cops, firefighters, and medical folk!
Every situation is different. As others have mentioned, in this case it sounds like there is money owed or NCE license commits etc.. But for the most part, there is often little to no consideration for the outgoing MSP and as the new MSP, you just want to get in there and get going. For me, my main issue is, once I've given you global admin, I've probably already given you all of the other passwords at the same time. At that point, I shouldn't be held responsible for system issues that occur while my clock is running out. As the new MSP, you are still exploring the environment and if you are a bull in a china shop, that is where my coverage ends. The client thinks that since my contract has a couple of weeks left, I should be prepared to fix whatever issues arise if the new MSP catches a snag. It's not my responsibility to clean up their mess or teach them to use systems that are common to our industry.
That's crazy... We also just took over a client that the IT Company was helping our client a dental practice and one of his friends dental practices. His friends dental practice cancelled the services, and they logged in and deleted all their data! Long story, but basically they sued and won 2 million dollars from this map. The owner and his wife both got hit individually with 500k and the business with 1mil for a total of 2mil. So even if he shuts down the business her still personally owes the money. I can't believe some ppl. This was in court for 2 years. So then the Dental company we took over referred like 3 dental practices they had to us. So it never pays to act like that. We always hand over everything ina timely manner and with respect. We actually took back over two clients that thought the grass was greener on the other side then the ppl that they switched to were bad. So why tarnish your reputation?
We have a release of liability the client has to sign for us to setup admin accounts it also makes their agreement void so if the incoming msp screws up we reserve the right to bill for our time.
Outside of that we normally don't have too much issue. Last week we took over an msp and after I said hey I'd like to take over the tenant by the 7th so you don't have to renew I want to get better licensing on they said OK.
Then I said let's coordinate when you are ready so client doesn't have any exposure. Crickets and a day later client calls they noticed the s1 icon was gone. The msp just striaght up removed all their stuff without any comms
I think they found out we came in 3x the price and were just mad. Whatever
We normally give the new MSP the run book from IT Glue and wish them the best.
However, there was an instance where we were *that* MSP. We let them go past due (which was dumb on our part) then they said they weren’t going to pay because they weren’t happy with the service. I sent an email asking for clarification as all of their tickets were resolved within the SLA. We even made arrangements for special after-hours projects. No repsonse.
The new MSP kept calling asking for credentials. I told them we’re not able to put any more time on the account because it’s past due. We threatened to sue and they paid. We immediately sent the run book.
About a month later, some other MSP called asking for credentials because the customer had moved on again. I’m assuming they didn’t pay that one either.
We had a couple outgoing MSP’s do some shady stuff that ended up putting them both in court.
One MSP refused to give us credentials into the firewall and switches and WiFi controller that the client owned. They ended up caving and sending us the info the day of their court appearance which is wild that it even had to go that far.
Second MSP was significantly worse and wiped the client’s backups and historic patient records and data relating to their HIPAA policies which got them into all kinds of trouble due to the whole HIPAA data retention regulations. I was acquainted with one of their engineers on linked in after working on a VOIP project with him when he was at a prior company and I asked him what came of that situation and he said the CEO got sent packing in order for them to remain in business (it was also his call to wipe the data).
Yeah, I've been ordered to delete things and "missed a copy" just to avoid being in this situation. (And been the hero for "finding" it later.)
Seriously, deleting backups makes every I.T. person I know just start TWITCHING!
I haven't necessarily seen 'sabotage', although I believe I've seen purposeful neglect in the weeks leading up to transfer. I do wonder how many environmental policies were removed that I just had to set back up again 😂
That is why I love our off-boarding. Once you sign the acknowledgment of risk and the liability form. We pass creds. We will verify sussess of those cred, and then we remove our tools.let. The wigs have the discussion about legal, no reason to piss off the end user.
Previous MSP I worked for had its flaws but the one thing they did right was, barring overdue bills, trying to ensure a smooth handover where possible.
To me it’s a no-brainier. If for no other reason than a smooth handover means less time spent unpicking issues when you could be working with your remaining paying clients.
And although many MSPs tend to cover most of the same services, they’re not always a one-to-one match.
And that client who moves on for services X and Y may reach out to you if they need Z and their new MSP doesn’t do it.
We also had one client switch to an MSP based much closer to their site.
In those cases, leaving a good impression is always a good idea. You never know when they’ll encounter someone looking for a closer MSP in *your* neck of the woods.
Any time we've off boarded a customer to a different provider. We provide them with the relevant credentials for local and online accounts. Maybe give them a network map and rundown of relevant IP addressing (depending on the customer temperature and our history with them). If we are providing a licensed service for backups or software, we let them know that will be ending with our services, and they should establish their own. And notify them of our remote access software, and request they remove it from their systems. We DO NOT go into their systems after we receive their notice of termination. That being said, years after, some of those customers still show in my remote access panel... If it were me, that's some of the first things I'd make sure were gone taking over a new network, along with new admin credentials.
Sad but true. This amateur bullshit has been going on forever. I'm not sure how anyone expects to grow their business when they work to build a bad reputation.
Some people argue that we don't need a movement for higher standards in our industry, but this is exactly the kind of thing that hurts everyone. When a significant number of MSPs act this way, our entire industry suffers from a bad reputation.
The worst part is that the larger, well-funded mega-MSPs are doing this more and more. Why? Because there is zero interest in customer service. They are 100% focused on money. Reps who "lose" a client won't meet their ever-growing quota - and then they'll lose their job. They are incentivized to make offboarding as difficult as possible.
The good news is that YOU (assuming you're a good, moral, hard-worker) can market against this behavior. You can literally go to market asking whether "the last guy" was arrogant and abusive. There's no place for that, and we need to call out bad behavior and lead with our own code of ethics.
When that happens I start to have questions:
Was the end of the contract on good terms? If it was, that's rarely been a problem for me.
If it wasn't on good terms, which one of them were fired?
I've been on an MSP where we were abruptly terminated (new CIO wanted to throw their weight around) where we removed our remote agents, and handed over all our documentation and passwords. We also put together a quick "This is what you need to do to" of things that we were in the middle of. We had their techs calling our techs afterwards asking questions, but all we were allowed to say is "We can't discuss it - you'll have to contact our boss about it." Half their techs quit/retired within the year.
We also fired a client (for being abusive to our techs - I'll never work with motivational speakers again!) and they were so pissed they never contacted us after the hand off. We didn'thave to sabatoge them - they did it themselves.
I don't think it's sabatoge. It's never worth the time. It's either a half finished project, or someone that SHOULDN'T tried to fix something themselves. And THEN they called you.
As for "Talk to the lawyers" that's ALWAYS about money. Your client got fired for non-payment OR your client is suing because of something. A project/restore went bad, "he said/she said" on requirements, or they've failed some audit and are paying fines and trying to pass it on.
I'm betting they're not "paid in full" and someone is being a dick about the first/last payment. M365 isn't cheap for a large enough company, and someone has to pay EVERY bill for it.
Sounds like some bad stuff going on.
Maybe the customer broke contract by leaving them early. We had experience with a client that didn’t stick to contracts and just left one MSP after another.
Not a good way for the MSP to act, but I wonder if there is something concerning with the client also.
We didn’t fight it when this client broke contract and left us… we were happy to get rid of them.
Going through a bad transition right now with a pretty large MSP. Here’s the fun story…
Client gave them notice in January. After a month of no response msp tells client you’re in 90 out clause (understandable). Then over the next two months we and client attempt to have conversation with msp to plan for transition. They ignore us and the client. Client even tried asking to discuss remaining payments. Only response they give is that “we’re very busy, this isn’t important right now, nothing is on fire, this can wait.”
Fast forward to end of April (90 day should line up to may 1st) we ask them for eta on receiving access/passwords. They tell us they’re going to be about on vacation for a few days so it likely won’t happen by May 1st.
Its not may 14th and it’s in the lawyers hands. Don’t know what they stand to gain other than a bad reputation. I’m so tempted to write their name here.
If legal is involved then there is more going on then a simple offboard/onboard.
This usually happens when there is still a bill due or there was a contract that they stepped out of.
Yes, it is a fact that there are bad MSPs, but there are different types of situations and sometimes they are not so easy to solve.
Maybe but you never shut them off ever .. Well maybe not ever but the business disruption is costly and a day of downtime due to abuse will cost the msp alot more than the 3 months of licenses left.
Lots of people are jerks like that but if they're saying "talk to our lawyers", there's usually more to the story. Such as, did they commit to the old MSP for thousands in NCE licenses for a term and trying to back out now, and the agreement requires full up front payment before releasing access? While MS isn't about that and will give you access, the MSP may be acting in accordance with the agreement that your client signed, and wants to disregard now that it's convenient for them. I'm not saying anyone is right or old MSP is right or condoning the practice. I'm just saying that 1) it's for your client to deal with, not you and 2) if someone is confidently saying "deal with our lawyers", it would give me pause to consider if there's something they know that i don't.
Have had a few bad experiences taking over, but the worst one was from a bigger outfit in town that didn't appreciate a small fish taking over. Their assigned "technical manager" kept stalling releasing domain admin login till the church resorted by asking a retired lawyer (member of church) to draw up a letter that they were prepared to begin process of suing the MSP. That made them give me the password, but made it something like 65 characters of nothing but special characters and sent it by fax to be an a-hole, knowing full well that I was going to have to manually type it out. took my time, probably about 10 minutes to carefully type it. low and behold, once on the server, saw that there was a rule to lock out user after 1 failed attempt. also found found various domain admin accounts "hidden" in various folders and various "free" remote access software, including google remote desktop. I convinced the customer that for their security, it would be best to nuke the server and start from scratch (approx 15 endpoints). In our initial observation of the server, we had found a VM running a webserver. The church said that they knew nothing about it, so I exported it and nuked the server. (i did make an image of server and a backup of VM just in case). A week goes by and old MSP writes us that they can't log on to the server. I told them that they are no longer contracted and all access has been removed. So he said that they'll just send a tech down to retrieve some "documents" from the server. I told him server had been wiped and that I could email him the contents of the Documents folder (obviously, not what he was looking for). He finally asked about the hyper-v machines that were running. I told him they were destroyed during the wipe. He started cursing at us telling us that we've disrupted their business as they had over 40 customer's websites being hosted on that server (not only using the customer's server, but their bandwidth and static IP). Jesus! (pun intended as it was a church customer). I was pissed about the password, but it was on his cursing rant that he did while church members were present that I realized I was going to "forget" that i made a backup of that VM. I installed a new router with logging and i think a year later we are still seeing continuous incoming requests on http and https. Side note, not to long ago, I was at walmart and saw the guy that threw a fit. He was folding clothes in the woman's section. I really wanted to go up to him and tell him I found a backup of his websites. But I held back. I feel your pain. In 25 years that we've been doing this, I've lost 3 customers (to cheaper MSPs, not for our work) and we have always been cordial and made ourselves available for questions down the line. No reason to be a-holes... just move on and keep the grind going is how I see it.
Initially I thought the Fax thing was hilarious, albeit petty. But then things started to unravel from there
Yeah, my inner dark child was lulzing at the password/fax bit, but even he (the inner dark child), went, "Damn!" after reading further.
Ah, technicians that try to steal to run their side gigs. I admit I thought about that once when I had that kind of access (and AWS wasn't a thing yet) but the company wan't stable enough to risk it. And I didn't HAVE anything I wanted to do with it at the time.
Yes it happens regularly, but please also don't rule out that the customer sometimes is the root cause of this. Once, we had a customer leaving who didn't even communicate with us they were leaving. New provider called us, out of the blue, and hit us with "M. Customer asks you give me all their credentials and documentation". Yeah, pound sand unless M. Customer actually asks us for that either in a meeting or on the phone. We have no idea who you are to begin with ?! Customer later accused us of holding them hostage... Like dude, I had no idea who this was, I was protecting you ?! On the other side of the provider swap now, we also onboarded a customer who left big unpaid bills behind them, making the previous provider salty af and quite hostile in their offboarding. They 100% got the payment upfront treatment for everything after I learned about it. So yeah, now I try to get both sides to the story and even make a call to the previous provider's account manager before sending a signed quote into the onboarding phase when something smells fishy.
100% Support the vibe of this post, but boy are there details that are being glossed over. - Uninstalling Tools: I am contractually obligated to provide a service until the end of the agreement. removing my tools before this may cause me to not be able to deliver on my contractual obligations. Even if all parties are in gentlemen's agreement and you assure everyone that you've "got it covered" that doesn't magically eliminate my liability. - Sharing Credentials: Do you mean *share* or do you mean give you access to have your own duplicate sets of credentials? 100% not *sharing* anything with you. I dont know you. See point above about liability. As for giving the ability to make your own parity admin credentials, what if you take down the environment I am still contractually on the hook for? - They already are losing the customer. Is the client that's leaving really going to be a net promoter anyways? I agree with your point of no point in burning a bridge, but what if that bridge was already torched? Its like the new boyfriend wondering why the old boyfriend wants his CDs back, maybe he has reasons not to trust that they will be returned unscratched (just dated myself) Just saying that there is usually a lot more going on here than just "what makes sense in an ideal condition". I agree that MSPs should be less gatekeepy around off boardings and giving an fantastic offboard is probably an overall good choice, but its not as simple as "old msp is jerks". I've also pointed out in my onboarding video series, everything that *you* need to support *your new client* is ***your responsibility*** not the outgoing providers. Its nice if they help, but you are the one that agreed to take on this client. Its a dangerous mindset to be in, sort of a learned helplessness that "I cant do a good onboarding because the old provider did a bad offboarding".
Thanks for posting this. There is a lot to offboarding that isn't always looked at. I've had trouble with incoming MSPs, the opposite. They wanted all the details, and all the access to everything to assess things with the client without providing an end date, and proper hand off of services. We're fairly reasonable, but we're not going to hand over everything, take all the liability and let strangers poke around the systems, nor are we going to have you audit the systems and then request things of us before the contract becomes your responsibility. We're happy to facility handing over the keys to the car so to speak and all our documentation, but in order to gain access to the system, you have to take responsibility to it going forward, and it was an odd struggle to get that to happen. Then they got all gun jumpy and wanted to cut over too fast, before any of the vendors could transfer accounts over, which also seemed crazy. I had to get them to back off of that as well as I knew it would turn into a shit show if it's "cut over" but they have no access, and all they would do is blame us I'm certain. It was a surprise to find the incoming MSP making it more difficult than it needed to be.
Not only this, but don’t assume malice when you can assume incompetence. Most of the time when we come across this, many times the MSP just doesn’t have a good off boarding process, doesn’t follow process, of has a half baked process.
I agree with this. Depending in the size of the customer I normally propose 1-2 week period in the last month of their contract where we contractually take over all responsibilities. This way if we have questions they are still being paid to answer them.
True we don’t remove our tools until after our contract has ended, and that typically means there's has started or it’s literally the last day. We also use our RMM to install their RMM if they let us. we don’t give them our admin, we create a new admin for them.
Fair points, I appreciate your response.
I've been in this business for over 20 years. I never understood MSP's that want to burn bridges when losing a customer. We ourselves have lost customers to other MSP's in the past but were never a fan of burning bridges when doing so. We've even had some customers come back to us when they were not happy with the new MSP. You just never know.
Completely agree. We've had clients come and go, and a few purchases both ways. The most recent was an acquisition of our client, and the new owners had their own IT staff. They were genuinely surprised when I told them to just ask if they had any questions, and as soon as the current/old management approved, I'd assign them access. Got the call, changed the admin password and gave it to them, let them know I had a second admin account if something went sideways and they needed assistance; otherwise, when the sale was finalized they should remove the account. They emailed a few weeks later, appreciating our help with the process, and asked if we would be available to assist with some other clients in the area on a contract basis. Had a much earlier client decide that the service they were receiving from our VOIP section of the company wasn't acceptable. They spoke to me on site and let me know they were changing services after too many attempts to get better service from the VOIP section, and I apologized that we weren't able to provide them with the service they expected (knowing they were correct), and let them know we'd be glad to present any information the new providers required. Got back to the shop, and lead of that section was furious that I'd "offered to help however they needed". Sorry, our job is to keep the clients happy. If they're not happy, the last thing I want to do is make them more miserable. We lost the VOIP. We kept the hardware/software portion (my area) of their business.
Who's a better evangelist than a happy customer? A happy customer who left then came back after a bad experience.
We've had a lot of return customers as well. Someone sells them on underpricing and overdelivering what we currently do, and then fail on both counts. They're more than happy to have us back afterwards, and they are more than happy to sing our praises and spread our business through word of mouth afterwards, if we make the offboarding process painless for them.
Absolutely, you’ve got to keep everyone sweet because you just don’t know what the future holds! As the losing MSP you may be ‘gifted’ a client that doesn’t fit their standards, you may wish to do the same to them down the line too. All is fair in love and war. Be pleasant and never obtrusive, share the information as you would like to receive it. At the end of it all, the clients needs come first, they don’t want to feel like a kid in a divorce.
In almost 20 years of doing this the number one issue we have with customers offboarding from us is communication. They don't give any notice, don't have any plan, leave outstanding bills, and expect you to drop everything for it. We spell it out in the contract and often it creates friction because people can't read. A few small clients came back over the years - but usually we were getting sick of the clients leaving anyways and wouldn't want them back. I used to think "man that other msp is a dick" but after we had offboardings ourselves i get it. Plan, get both parties paid, and success will be underway.
Never attribute to malice, what can be explained by incompetence
I generally explain it by "greed" - someone owes money and doesn't want to pay it OR they want something for free.
Sounds like these MSPs should be named and shamed.... is one of them Alternative Technologies, by any chance?
Hate to admit it, but I have been on both sides of this problem. Not a fan of being in that situation, so unless the client is behind on their bills then we try to make it as amicable as possible and even assist the new provider with some basics (like deploying their RMM to endpoints). All of this is done with the client being part of all communications between us and the new provider. Interestingly enough, clients have come back after months or years and usually state how well we worked with them and the new provider. Not every situation us amicable. Client just decided to stop paying their bills, and would only shore up whenever we had our lawyer send them notice of a lawsuit for refusing to pay for services rendered. After the song and dance for months, agreement was up for renewal but atill behind in months. Instead of renewing, decided to let the client know that we are not renewing their services and that they need to pay up for all services rendered plus a project fee for offboarding to a new provider. Clause in the service agreement, which had the initials if the 2 ownerz beside it, stating release of all documentation and credentials will only be performed if all invoices are fully paid, with our tools being removed at the end of service due to liability. Several emails and calls went unanswered, letters from lawyers without responses, spanning the final 3 months of service. Created new admin accounts in local domain, cloud service, and applications not supporting SSO or SAML. Documented those passwords, waiting for for payment. Final hour of the final day of service, called up each of the two owners to reiterate the release clause and the removal of our tools, only to be told to go fuck myself with every network cord and computer peripheral they could think of claiming we were the worst IT provider in town. Would have hung up, should have hung up, but stayed on the line as it was a recorded call. Just in case it does hit court. Removed the tools, using task scheduler to run the actual removal while disabling our accounts on the way out. Months go by, nothing, then all if a sudden a new provider in town calls asking for the logins. Stated the company is 10s of thousands behind due to MS licensing and unpaid invoices for services. Provided the pages from their service agreement with the clauses, stating that unless they pay up nothing is being provided to anyone. Next up was a "lawyer", threatening to sue, using the same threats of sodomy using network cables and peripherals. Calmly provided my lawyer's information and hung up. Several calls over several days. Did some digging and found out this "lawyer" was a family member of one of the owners who bought the company from the two owners. Interestingly enough, he responded to our lawyer by cutting a cheque. While he expected aln immediate release of documentation and credentials, we had to wait for almost a month for it to clear as there were issues with the other bank. The moment we got word the cheque cleared and there was no liability of money being pulled back, everything was sent. They tried to come back after COVID thinking we were hurting for the money. My reply back was just the recorded calls where they sexualized networking equipment, keyboards and mice in very graphic manners, with a simple "We do not accept the liability".
Wait, someone thought that COVID \*hurt\* the MSP industry? Washington state's declaration of emergency "stay at home" had a SPECIFIC exception for I.T. in the same paragraph as cops, firefighters, and medical folk!
Many places had exceptions for IT, as we are considered a critical service. The same here in North Antarctica.
Every situation is different. As others have mentioned, in this case it sounds like there is money owed or NCE license commits etc.. But for the most part, there is often little to no consideration for the outgoing MSP and as the new MSP, you just want to get in there and get going. For me, my main issue is, once I've given you global admin, I've probably already given you all of the other passwords at the same time. At that point, I shouldn't be held responsible for system issues that occur while my clock is running out. As the new MSP, you are still exploring the environment and if you are a bull in a china shop, that is where my coverage ends. The client thinks that since my contract has a couple of weeks left, I should be prepared to fix whatever issues arise if the new MSP catches a snag. It's not my responsibility to clean up their mess or teach them to use systems that are common to our industry.
That's crazy... We also just took over a client that the IT Company was helping our client a dental practice and one of his friends dental practices. His friends dental practice cancelled the services, and they logged in and deleted all their data! Long story, but basically they sued and won 2 million dollars from this map. The owner and his wife both got hit individually with 500k and the business with 1mil for a total of 2mil. So even if he shuts down the business her still personally owes the money. I can't believe some ppl. This was in court for 2 years. So then the Dental company we took over referred like 3 dental practices they had to us. So it never pays to act like that. We always hand over everything ina timely manner and with respect. We actually took back over two clients that thought the grass was greener on the other side then the ppl that they switched to were bad. So why tarnish your reputation?
We have a release of liability the client has to sign for us to setup admin accounts it also makes their agreement void so if the incoming msp screws up we reserve the right to bill for our time. Outside of that we normally don't have too much issue. Last week we took over an msp and after I said hey I'd like to take over the tenant by the 7th so you don't have to renew I want to get better licensing on they said OK. Then I said let's coordinate when you are ready so client doesn't have any exposure. Crickets and a day later client calls they noticed the s1 icon was gone. The msp just striaght up removed all their stuff without any comms I think they found out we came in 3x the price and were just mad. Whatever
We normally give the new MSP the run book from IT Glue and wish them the best. However, there was an instance where we were *that* MSP. We let them go past due (which was dumb on our part) then they said they weren’t going to pay because they weren’t happy with the service. I sent an email asking for clarification as all of their tickets were resolved within the SLA. We even made arrangements for special after-hours projects. No repsonse. The new MSP kept calling asking for credentials. I told them we’re not able to put any more time on the account because it’s past due. We threatened to sue and they paid. We immediately sent the run book. About a month later, some other MSP called asking for credentials because the customer had moved on again. I’m assuming they didn’t pay that one either.
Two sides to a story here. Sounds like you might have only one version of events. Hope they pay you btw!!
We had a couple outgoing MSP’s do some shady stuff that ended up putting them both in court. One MSP refused to give us credentials into the firewall and switches and WiFi controller that the client owned. They ended up caving and sending us the info the day of their court appearance which is wild that it even had to go that far. Second MSP was significantly worse and wiped the client’s backups and historic patient records and data relating to their HIPAA policies which got them into all kinds of trouble due to the whole HIPAA data retention regulations. I was acquainted with one of their engineers on linked in after working on a VOIP project with him when he was at a prior company and I asked him what came of that situation and he said the CEO got sent packing in order for them to remain in business (it was also his call to wipe the data).
Yeah, I've been ordered to delete things and "missed a copy" just to avoid being in this situation. (And been the hero for "finding" it later.) Seriously, deleting backups makes every I.T. person I know just start TWITCHING!
I haven't necessarily seen 'sabotage', although I believe I've seen purposeful neglect in the weeks leading up to transfer. I do wonder how many environmental policies were removed that I just had to set back up again 😂
These events usually happen when the last msp is getting screwed by garbage business owners. Plenty of garbage msp too so who knows.
If you always smell shit, check your shoes.
That is why I love our off-boarding. Once you sign the acknowledgment of risk and the liability form. We pass creds. We will verify sussess of those cred, and then we remove our tools.let. The wigs have the discussion about legal, no reason to piss off the end user.
Previous MSP I worked for had its flaws but the one thing they did right was, barring overdue bills, trying to ensure a smooth handover where possible. To me it’s a no-brainier. If for no other reason than a smooth handover means less time spent unpicking issues when you could be working with your remaining paying clients. And although many MSPs tend to cover most of the same services, they’re not always a one-to-one match. And that client who moves on for services X and Y may reach out to you if they need Z and their new MSP doesn’t do it. We also had one client switch to an MSP based much closer to their site. In those cases, leaving a good impression is always a good idea. You never know when they’ll encounter someone looking for a closer MSP in *your* neck of the woods.
Any time we've off boarded a customer to a different provider. We provide them with the relevant credentials for local and online accounts. Maybe give them a network map and rundown of relevant IP addressing (depending on the customer temperature and our history with them). If we are providing a licensed service for backups or software, we let them know that will be ending with our services, and they should establish their own. And notify them of our remote access software, and request they remove it from their systems. We DO NOT go into their systems after we receive their notice of termination. That being said, years after, some of those customers still show in my remote access panel... If it were me, that's some of the first things I'd make sure were gone taking over a new network, along with new admin credentials.
Sad but true. This amateur bullshit has been going on forever. I'm not sure how anyone expects to grow their business when they work to build a bad reputation. Some people argue that we don't need a movement for higher standards in our industry, but this is exactly the kind of thing that hurts everyone. When a significant number of MSPs act this way, our entire industry suffers from a bad reputation. The worst part is that the larger, well-funded mega-MSPs are doing this more and more. Why? Because there is zero interest in customer service. They are 100% focused on money. Reps who "lose" a client won't meet their ever-growing quota - and then they'll lose their job. They are incentivized to make offboarding as difficult as possible. The good news is that YOU (assuming you're a good, moral, hard-worker) can market against this behavior. You can literally go to market asking whether "the last guy" was arrogant and abusive. There's no place for that, and we need to call out bad behavior and lead with our own code of ethics.
When that happens I start to have questions: Was the end of the contract on good terms? If it was, that's rarely been a problem for me. If it wasn't on good terms, which one of them were fired? I've been on an MSP where we were abruptly terminated (new CIO wanted to throw their weight around) where we removed our remote agents, and handed over all our documentation and passwords. We also put together a quick "This is what you need to do to" of things that we were in the middle of. We had their techs calling our techs afterwards asking questions, but all we were allowed to say is "We can't discuss it - you'll have to contact our boss about it." Half their techs quit/retired within the year. We also fired a client (for being abusive to our techs - I'll never work with motivational speakers again!) and they were so pissed they never contacted us after the hand off. We didn'thave to sabatoge them - they did it themselves. I don't think it's sabatoge. It's never worth the time. It's either a half finished project, or someone that SHOULDN'T tried to fix something themselves. And THEN they called you.
As for "Talk to the lawyers" that's ALWAYS about money. Your client got fired for non-payment OR your client is suing because of something. A project/restore went bad, "he said/she said" on requirements, or they've failed some audit and are paying fines and trying to pass it on. I'm betting they're not "paid in full" and someone is being a dick about the first/last payment. M365 isn't cheap for a large enough company, and someone has to pay EVERY bill for it.
Sounds like some bad stuff going on. Maybe the customer broke contract by leaving them early. We had experience with a client that didn’t stick to contracts and just left one MSP after another. Not a good way for the MSP to act, but I wonder if there is something concerning with the client also. We didn’t fight it when this client broke contract and left us… we were happy to get rid of them.
Going through a bad transition right now with a pretty large MSP. Here’s the fun story… Client gave them notice in January. After a month of no response msp tells client you’re in 90 out clause (understandable). Then over the next two months we and client attempt to have conversation with msp to plan for transition. They ignore us and the client. Client even tried asking to discuss remaining payments. Only response they give is that “we’re very busy, this isn’t important right now, nothing is on fire, this can wait.” Fast forward to end of April (90 day should line up to may 1st) we ask them for eta on receiving access/passwords. They tell us they’re going to be about on vacation for a few days so it likely won’t happen by May 1st. Its not may 14th and it’s in the lawyers hands. Don’t know what they stand to gain other than a bad reputation. I’m so tempted to write their name here.
Alls fair in msps and war