I work for a small family owned brokerage. We move freight all over the United States and Canada. We post our loads for carriers to view on a dispatch board called "internettruckstop.com". They introduced an organized invoicing system a little while back called "itsdispatch.com". This program allows you to easily maintain your invoicing, billing, and record keeping for all the loads you have moved and shippers,carriers,receivers,and customers you have done business with.
Yesterday I got called in for a webinar. It was hosted by "Internet Truckstop" from internettruckstop.com and itsdispatch.com. The webinar was entitled "how to get more shippers, something like that, it ran from 4pm-5pm eastern time.
We all sit down to partake in this event, and it started off rather informative. The host was giving the viewers/listeners some good pointers on keeping a good relationship with the customer and first time impressions. It went on like that for the first 15 minutes, then the real point of the webinar became painfully evident.
They began to show off new features of their "finally finished" software, called shippermate.com. The remainder of the webinar was based around selling their new product. About 10 minutes into their showcase i realized that it was awfully convenient that shippermate was able to tell you what trucks move from what location during what time of year, also it was able to give an average rate for certain lanes. Most importantly, "shippermate" was able to provide an extensive list of customers,receivers,shippers,and carriers. When i say detailed I mean numbers,locations,contact names,what trailers the more commonly use,what lanes they use, what time of year they are most prominent, the list goes on.
My Mother is the owner and we looked at each other at the same time and i felt the color run from my face as i seen it do on hers. I felt sick to my stomach. I called "internettruckstop" imminently. We were sure that the information on this "shippermate.com they were advertising was all the information us and other companies alike have been putting into "itsdispatch"
Think about it, we've been giving them all the info through our invoices (which by the way, were supposed to be confidential in agreement to sign up with "itsdispatch.com" which is not free btw, membership is 1k a year for "shippermate" and 1k a year for "itsdispatch") we, and other companies like us, have been giving them everything they needed to compile a list that would show average rate for a lane, shipper,customer,receiver, and carrier info(like contact names you cannot find even with some leg work that took people years of ass kissing to get) what companies use what trailers and what companies are more prominent during such a time of year.
So i called mid webinar and talked to a csr she began telling me that everyone does that(uses that information to compile data and get averages and such, I said about them selling it back to us so all our footwork of getting and building these customer relationships over the years could be disclosed to anyone who pays 1k a year causing the industry to be even more dog eat dog then it already is. then(I'm not kidding) the phone started to act up on her end really badly like people were picking up the line a lot. All of a sudden her whole song and dance changed and she tells me that they did no such thing and all their information was legitimately obtained through the Secretary of State. Then she got really rude to me and said "I'm going to tell you this 3 times, we would not do that, we would not do that , we would not do that (literally told me 3 times) then she hung up.
At this point I was livid, it is clear that is exactly what they did. They let us, and other companies alike, pay them to give them all the information we worked so hard to get, and then after compiling all the data sold it back to us to sneakily profit from years of other peoples hard work without them knowing about it.
This is so wrong and it will introduce an enhanced level of cutthroat to the business.
My mother is terrified to take any legal action in fear they will shut down or redirect her account so that no carriers see our posted loads, but I think we should file an injunction against them. I think we should act NOW.
Does anyone that was patient enough to read this crap have any insight?
I have one idea I think its a really good one actually, but I'm worried to write it down seeing as it may be the only way I can prove they are stealing the information and if they cover that then we'd be screwed.
Yesterday I got called in for a webinar. It was hosted by "Internet Truckstop" from internettruckstop.com and itsdispatch.com. The webinar was entitled "how to get more shippers, something like that, it ran from 4pm-5pm eastern time.
We all sit down to partake in this event, and it started off rather informative. The host was giving the viewers/listeners some good pointers on keeping a good relationship with the customer and first time impressions. It went on like that for the first 15 minutes, then the real point of the webinar became painfully evident.
They began to show off new features of their "finally finished" software, called shippermate.com. The remainder of the webinar was based around selling their new product. About 10 minutes into their showcase i realized that it was awfully convenient that shippermate was able to tell you what trucks move from what location during what time of year, also it was able to give an average rate for certain lanes. Most importantly, "shippermate" was able to provide an extensive list of customers,receivers,shippers,and carriers. When i say detailed I mean numbers,locations,contact names,what trailers the more commonly use,what lanes they use, what time of year they are most prominent, the list goes on.
My Mother is the owner and we looked at each other at the same time and i felt the color run from my face as i seen it do on hers. I felt sick to my stomach. I called "internettruckstop" imminently. We were sure that the information on this "shippermate.com they were advertising was all the information us and other companies alike have been putting into "itsdispatch"
Think about it, we've been giving them all the info through our invoices (which by the way, were supposed to be confidential in agreement to sign up with "itsdispatch.com" which is not free btw, membership is 1k a year for "shippermate" and 1k a year for "itsdispatch") we, and other companies like us, have been giving them everything they needed to compile a list that would show average rate for a lane, shipper,customer,receiver, and carrier info(like contact names you cannot find even with some leg work that took people years of ass kissing to get) what companies use what trailers and what companies are more prominent during such a time of year.
So i called mid webinar and talked to a csr she began telling me that everyone does that(uses that information to compile data and get averages and such, I said about them selling it back to us so all our footwork of getting and building these customer relationships over the years could be disclosed to anyone who pays 1k a year causing the industry to be even more dog eat dog then it already is. then(I'm not kidding) the phone started to act up on her end really badly like people were picking up the line a lot. All of a sudden her whole song and dance changed and she tells me that they did no such thing and all their information was legitimately obtained through the Secretary of State. Then she got really rude to me and said "I'm going to tell you this 3 times, we would not do that, we would not do that , we would not do that (literally told me 3 times) then she hung up.
At this point I was livid, it is clear that is exactly what they did. They let us, and other companies alike, pay them to give them all the information we worked so hard to get, and then after compiling all the data sold it back to us to sneakily profit from years of other peoples hard work without them knowing about it.
This is so wrong and it will introduce an enhanced level of cutthroat to the business.
My mother is terrified to take any legal action in fear they will shut down or redirect her account so that no carriers see our posted loads, but I think we should file an injunction against them. I think we should act NOW.
Does anyone that was patient enough to read this crap have any insight?
I have one idea I think its a really good one actually, but I'm worried to write it down seeing as it may be the only way I can prove they are stealing the information and if they cover that then we'd be screwed.
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