Over the years, I've fielded thousands of inbound requests for Veeto to handle their case--many of those from people hoping to get out of a Regus contract.
One interesting thing I've learned is that people tend to overestimate their own culpability when a problem arises, and they tend to underestimate how common that kind of problem is among other people.
Why do people do this? A few reasons, probably. One is that many people don't like conflict, not necessarily because they are afraid of it, but because they know that conflict can sap productivity. So they avoid conflict by simply putting up with things they shouldn't have to put up with.
Another reason is that people wonder whether the bad thing happening to them is some sort of anomaly. This is an important question, because studies show that people are less likely to conclude that they are being treated unfairly when they do not have access to data showing that other people are also being treated the exact same way. So, for example, let's say that Regus continues to commit major billing errors each month on your account. it's bothersome, but you are less likely to take corrective action in the absence of data showing that the billing is not some isolated, honest mistake, but rather a widespread, systemic campaign by Regus to exploit the fact that people entrusted Regus with their credit card information. If you saw data showing that the same billing error that happened to you this month happened to twenty-five thousand other Regus customers, simultaneously, you are more likely to conclude that Regus has treated you unfairly, if not also fraudulently.
“Fairness seems a bit like air—its absence is a lot more noticeable than its presence.” —UCLA psychology professor Matthew Lieberman
One final reason is that, in a business setting, people generally want to be professional. And while complaining is sometimes necessary, it's the kind of activity that might simply feel undignified and therefore unprofessional. With regard to feelings about culpability, therefore, many people take the position that the professional thing to do is to accept at least part of the blame for the problem, regardless of what the facts show.
The consequence of all of this is that, in the absence of data revealing the experiences of thousands of other Regus customers, you won't have the right frame for thinking about the problems that have been bugging you.
Complaint data from past Regus cases answers important questions like...
- Which types of complaints do other people have?
- Do other people have the same type of complaints as me?
- How common is a given complaint type?
And there are different ways to segment the data that lead to key insights. For example, the chart above comes from Regus cases that Veeto actually accepted. It does not show, however, the distribution of complaint types from inbound requests in general--that's a different chart.
Deconstructing the complaint categories a little more...
74% of cases - We consider failure to provide core service to include any failure by Regus to do something major that the contract required: this includes billing errors, problems with the office itself, etc.
64% of cases - We consider misrepresentation to include all of the false claims Regus salespeople are apparently prone to make to get you sign the contract, and there is an almost comically vast variety of these.
34% of cases - We consider failure to provide ancillary service to include any failure by Regus to do something minor (but still material) the the contract required: this includes common add-on services such as phone answering, mail forwarding, conference room usage, etc.
23% of cases - Sneaky extra fees is a fun one: does anyone know, for example, what the hell "business continuity fee" means? Or more importantly, does anyone in the entire history of the world actually remember agreeing to it when they signed the Regus contract? There are a handful of these: coffee amenities, kitchen amenities, printer usage, and the front desk staff at Regus used to charge $20 to sign a document as a witness to its execution.
17% of cases - The final category, inadvertent auto-renewal, is easily the most expensive problem to have, because it saddles you with another, full contract term you were not expecting to pay for--and that you therefore did not plan to use. Regus makes a ton of money off the auto-renewal trick.
I could keep drilling into this data to recount in detail all of the crazy ways Regus tries to bilk its customers, but that would make this article way too long. So that's for another day.
Instead I will leave you with one final data point which shows that Regus complaints tend to travel in pairs. The average number of Regus complaint categories featured in a given Veeto case is between 2 and 3. That's just the category. In each category, there can be multiple complaints. So whether you look at the data from a micro or macro perspective, Regus problems are seldom anomalous.
The end.
Can we be honest for a second?
We don’t know why people continue to do tedious, time-sucking account management tasks--fixing billing errors, submitting maintenance requests, etc.--just to make sure that Regus is doing what they're supposed to be doing.
…when they could instead book a 10-minute call with Veeto to break-up with Regus altogether.
ZERO billable hours required! Average ROI when you hire Veeto is 30x! Of course we have the data, and that's why hiring Veeto is, for many of our customers, the single highest ROI purchase they'll ever make.
But back to Regus...
👉 Number of office providers better than Regus--whew...that's a long list.
👉 Time you'll save post-Regus--mind boggling.
Click this button today to talk about breaking up with Regus.
(Regus hopes you don't.)