Alexa I Encountered an Error When Trying Reach Salesforce Please Try Again Later

By Ben Goldstein and Cody Slingerland

It e'er pays to read the fine print—peculiarly when information technology comes to Salesforce contracts.

While Salesforce remains the most well-known proper name in CRM software, their billing practices, one-sided contracts, and minimal user support can make them a bad fit for modest businesses.

Many Salesforce customers have encountered substantial financial hardships and unbelievable frustration only considering they didn't know what they were getting themselves into. (We'll share some real-life horror stories throughout this article.) That'due south why it's so crucial to inspect their user agreements from every angle before committing to the deal.

To help you out, we took a shut expect at the Salesforce Master Subscription Understanding and found seven spots in a standard Salesforce contract that could land you in hot water. Nosotros'll also share some applied tips on what you can do to protect yourself should yous decide to sign with Salesforce.

Or check out the brand new video version! ☝

one. Your subscription price can significantly increase on renewal

Accept you lot ever been roped into a cable or internet package at a depression introductory charge per unit, only to become serious sticker shock when your contract renews? It's an extremely effective method for attracting new customers while guaranteeing hereafter business organisation growth, so information technology's no surprise to learn that some Salesforce customers have experienced similar situations.

Don't expect these prices to hold past the time your contract comes upwardly for renewal:

This is spelled out in Salesforce's understanding under section 11.2, "Term of Purchased Subscriptions":

"Except as expressly provided in the applicable Guild Form, renewal of promotional or one-time priced subscriptions will be at SFDC's applicable list price in effect at the fourth dimension of the applicative renewal."

Research published by Jo Liversidge and Alexa Bona at Gartner offers some advice in this regard:

• Do not presume the price will not increment without prior negotiation.
• Negotiate a maximum cyberspace price increase of 3% to v% for a renewal term.
• Define what your per-unit toll metrics are, and so negotiate to guarantee that those aforementioned metrics volition exist used for at to the lowest degree one renewal term.

In essence: negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. The expert news here is that Salesforce is willing to talk over some terms of the contract, upfront at least. Simply once you've signed, you're at the mercy of Salesforce's legal team.

"Salesforce wasn't nigh as expensive when we start signed as they ended upward existence during the last few agreements we had with them," says a former Salesforce user who spoke to Nutshell on condition of anonymity. "They were reasonable at first and just kept jacking up our rates."

Ane twenty-four hours, they hit me with an invoice in the neighborhood of $thirty,000-$twoscore,000 and said it was all due at one time. Nosotros immediately put it over to our attorney. We were trying to figure out if at that place was whatever loophole to get out of our contract, which I don't think in that location really is. Fifty-fifty when y'all search the internet, yous don't see a ton of people talking nigh how they got out of their Salesforce contracts.

"I retrieve we originally offered them $2,500, only by the time nosotros were done going back and forth with lawyers for 3 months, information technology toll us nearly $10,000. I don't want to tell yous the exact number because if you impress it, they'll probably be able to rails me down."

2. Salesforce can terminate your contract (and delete your information) with merely a few days' notice

Suppose y'all've been in negotiations with Salesforce for weeks or months, trying to sort out a disagreement over contract terms. If you're backside on payments, perhaps because y'all believe your agreement has been infringed in some manner, Salesforce tin can paw over a notice that terminates your contract—and all your data with it.

This is laid out in department 11.2, "Termination":

"A party may terminate this Agreement for crusade (i) upon xxx days written notice to the other party of a material breach if such breach remains uncured at the expiration of such menstruation…"

Unfortunately, Salesforce doesn't always stick to its own "thirty days notice" dominion. Several complaints filed with the Ameliorate Business Bureau mention abrupt terminations that became constructive in a matter of days, but perhaps about notable is this user'south story:

We received an electronic mail stating that we were responsible for paying the outstanding invoice of $twoscore,000 within 5 DAYS otherwise our system would be shut downwardly. Knowing FULL WELL that if our salesforce account went downwardly, nosotros'd be out of business, nosotros are now being manipulated into paying the full balance under threat of beingness close downward within 5 days. We negotiated for over five MONTHS without resolution, who could possibly believe nosotros'd achieve a resolution within 5 DAYS?

This user had been attempting to communicate and negotiate with Salesforce employees for months, only to have their concerns shuffled from one section to the next without meaningful, sustained advice from a knowledgeable representative. They also felt that some communication they received was misleading, filling them with the simulated hope that a resolution would be achieved before the ultimatum brutal into their lap.

In this instance, rigid terms combined with erratic customer service can exit a user especially vulnerable. To prevent such a situation from happening, Liversidge and Bona advise negotiating a 60-day term to retrieve your data in the event of termination.

Related: five reasons people don't exit Salesforce—even when they desire to

3. Salesforce won't let you change your seat-count during a term

Salesforce has a complex pricing organisation that changes based on the functions made available and the number of users accessing the software, which gives their sales reps enough of leverage to upsell you. But what happens if you lot find you're paying for something you don't demand?

Section 5.1 of the Salesforce Master Subscription Understanding, titled "Fees", states:

"Customer will pay all fees specified in Order Forms. Except equally otherwise specified herein or in an Order Grade, (i) fees are based on Services and Content subscriptions purchased and not actual usage, (ii) payment obligations are non- cancelable and fees paid are non-refundable, and (iii) quantities purchased cannot be decreased during the relevant subscription term."

In other words, if you get locked into an agreement and find that you need fewer features or users than were originally sold to you, y'all're stuck paying for them anyway.

"If you lot're a new Salesforce customer, make sure you're not overbuying at the kickoff," says Dan Kelly, President of SF Negotiator, a contract negotiation team specializing in Salesforce.com. "Adoption is ever slower than you anticipate when introducing any new CRM platform, and it's all too common for Salesforce's sales team to overweight your beginning-twelvemonth understanding as they're solely focused on capturing as much revenue as possible from your business relationship."

The former Salesforce user nosotros quoted before in this article (who asked to remain anonymous out of fear of reprisal from Salesforce's legal squad) talked about their experience with this very issue, stating:

"Nosotros were originally using Salesforce in a minimal mode for email marketing automation, and they convinced united states of america to upgrade to Pardot, which is their marketing platform. Naively we signed a three-year agreement on Pardot for a lump sum fee of well-nigh $12,000 a year.

"The problem was, nosotros had to sign on for actress user agreements too. And that's where they really get you in the whole procedure because now you're locked into these seats. Our concern is somewhat seasonal, so while we demand an extra 5 or ten users during the summer months, we don't need much during the other months.

We tried to arrange the contract, but they always tried to twist information technology to their favor. It was always like, 'Okay, you want to drop two users, we're willing to exercise that. But nosotros need to sign a new bond for another ii-year understanding for the four users that you're keeping.'

"I remember that the salespeople are only incentivized to get more users locked into agreements. That's all it is from their perspective."

4. Your integrations could exist canceled at any time

For some teams, software integrations are invaluable. Information technology may fifty-fifty be the example that a business chooses Salesforce over a competitor considering of how Salesforce integrates with sure third-party tools that are essential to the operation of their business.

( Source )

Before signing on the dotted line with Salesforce, know that those integrations could be discontinued at any fourth dimension co-ordinate to section 4.ii of Salesforce's user understanding. The section, titled "Integration with Not-SFDC Applications," states:

"The Services may comprise features designed to interoperate with Not-SFDC Applications. SFDC cannot guarantee the connected availability of such Service features, and may cease providing them without entitling Customer to any refund, credit, or other compensation, if for example and without limitation, the provider of a Non- SFDC Awarding ceases to make the Not-SFDC Awarding available for interoperation with the respective Service features in a manner acceptable to SFDC."

This scenario would leave the customer up a creek and yet paying out to Salesforce if the tertiary party app initiates the discontinuation of integration, or if Salesforce initiated the discontinuation considering the integration was no longer "acceptable" by their standards.

Annotation that this has already happened a couple of times, such as in the case of Eventbrite. Users who nevertheless demand to employ that app in tandem with Salesforce were forced to manually shuffle data around or apply a tool similar Zapier to bridge the gap.

Salesforce contract horror story: "I simply found out when I got the neb"

"When my company first signed up with Salesforce we were on quarterly billing, and and then of a sudden they inverse information technology to annual upfront billing out of nowhere," says a current Nutshell customer who as well asked to remain anonymous. (We'll refer to him as "Ryan," which is not his real proper noun.)

Ryan had used Salesforce for several years while working at a leading credit menu company, and took the platform along with him when he launched a biotech startup. Salesforce'due south unexpected decision to change his new company's billing structure meant that Ryan's company was charged over $20,000 at one fourth dimension.

"They didn't even tell me information technology was happening—I only found out when I got the pecker," Ryan said. "I reached out to Salesforce and asked if they could reverse the transaction and accuse me quarterly, as had been happening the whole previous year, and I was told no, they wouldn't, simply after some other full year, they would put me back on quarterly billing. That'due south when I decided that I was going to wait at other options.

"When I was using Salesforce at a large corporation, we had tremendous amounts of resources," Ryan continued. "Now, I'm leading a smaller visitor, and though we aspire to exist a very large company anytime, I can't spend the amount of money that Salesforce requires. And it's just not worth information technology. There were a lot of things there that we weren't even using."

What bothered Ryan the virtually virtually his Salesforce experience was their consummate lack of explanation or justification for their determination to change his contract:

I think that it was more than or less, 'Nosotros're a large company, and you lot're a small customer of ours, so we don't actually care,'" Ryan said. "I never felt as though we had a point person at Salesforce, or any personal communication with whatsoever private whatsoever. Which is a shame, because that'southward so easy to do. Information technology doesn't have a lot of effort to talk to your customers.

five. Your subscription toll doesn't include the cost for developers

It'due south common to customize a Salesforce product into the exact solution your business needs to execute sure tasks. Salesforce typically farms out this customization process to third-party developers, which tin can quickly overtake your budget.

This was another challenge encountered by the former Salesforce user that we quoted earlier in this article. Here's what they told Nutshell about the experience of working with a developer to tailor Pardot to fit their marketing needs:

They had talked to us nigh how they had a lot of preferred vendors to help y'all do the implementation, build your first campaigns, make information technology super piece of cake for you. So we started downwardly that route, got the first entrada in place, and so realized they had washed everything and we didn't know what we were doing afterwards.

It was bad enough that the customer was dependent upon third-party developers to help them understand and make use of the production, simply as he constitute out, the situation also created a monetary nightmare:

"Every time you turned around it was thousands of dollars for evolution and that was just painful for us. I mean, we're a small business. Salesforce sells you on the glitz and glamour of these huge Fortune 500 companies that are using their software. What yous don't know is that those companies have their own Salesforce developers in-house that are doing that stuff. Unless you've got a $100,000 Salesforce developer on staff, I only don't know how you can keep up with it."

6. Salesforce uptime guarantees are below market standards

Cloud software has opened the business world to seemingly limitless possibilities as to what they can accomplish. Having software hosted off-site, however, comes with ane obvious con: reanimation.

While no company can offer 100% uptime, most customers expect that they'll exist able to access their software and their data at least 99% of the time.

Denis Zhinko from ScienceSoft ran the numbers: 99.9% of guaranteed uptime means only eight hours and 42 minutes of downtime a year, while a guaranteed uptime of 99% means the average downtime would be 87 hours and 40 minutes. That's 3.6 days that customers can't admission vital tools.

So what's Salesforce's guaranteed uptime? Liversidge and Bona from Gartner allege that Salesforce'south uptime rate is only 98%—well beneath market standards. Given that a 99% uptime still means almost four days of downtime a year, 98% uptime could be crippling for a business, as it would put your team out of commission for more than than a full week.

Unfortunately, Salesforce's contract language makes no promises on this front end. Section 2.ane, "Provision of Purchased Services" states that the company will "use commercially reasonable efforts to make the online Purchased Services available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.''

That'southward little condolement to the countless Salesforce users who were afflicted by the platform's near-apocalyptic solar day-long outage in May 2019, when Salesforce accidentally granted all of its users admin access and had to take their service offline while they rolled dorsum the changes. If your business relied on Salesforce to operate, absolutely nothing got done that day—except for some skillful twitter memes, of course.

7. If a sales rep sells you the wrong Salesforce product, there's no warranty guaranteeing you can break the contract without paying out

Salesforce seems to have a solution to almost every business need, from sales and marketing to finance. Such a huge line of products is a lot for any sales representative to know inside and out, though you certainly hope they do. Being sold the right solution at the right size for your business is the very least of what a customer should expect from a company.

Unfortunately, several complaints filed with the Better Business concern Agency indicate that Salesforce reps have, on more than 1 occasion, accidentally sold a client the incorrect product for their needs. The client is then left paying for something that they can't employ, equally in the case of this complaint filer:

When we initiated our discussions with Salesforce near our needs as a business organisation, I had made it very articulate what we needed and what we were looking for. The sales representative reassured me endless times that their system would satisfy our needs and that they would be available for any questions to help us get our account gear up. Immediately afterwards I finally agreed to initiate the business relationship, I ran into problems…Finally I got our sales rep on the phone, almost a month after our account started, only to find out that the services that were promised to us were not available.

The user'due south feel ends with Salesforce sending their account to collections.

The reality is that Salesforce has a disclaimer in section 8.iii of their contract to protect the auction, no affair what the sales rep said:

"CONTENT AND BETA SERVICES ARE PROVIDED "Equally IS," AND As AVAILABLE Sectional OF Whatever WARRANTY WHATSOEVER."

At that place are no warranties—express, implied, or otherwise.

Salesforce contract horror story: "salt in a wound"

"Endeavour calling Salesforce if y'all want to end up with a hole in your head," says SCM Consultants President Steve Meitzen, a current Nutshell customer who used Salesforce at two previous companies. Afterwards leaving a business firm where he had worked as a sales consultant, Meitzen tried to stop his Salesforce subscription and was stonewalled by the CRM giant'southward accounts squad."They kept maxim they were going to charge my credit bill of fare on renewal, and I kept trying to tell them I was no longer there," Meitzen told Nutshell. "They made it actually difficult to become them on the telephone in the first identify. The impression I got was, 'Salesforce is big and wonderful, and you lot're very blessed that you use this.' I actually still go promotional emails from them. It's like putting common salt in a wound."

Beyond the billing problems, Meitzen struggled to get other members of his team to learn the product. "I remember i phone call I had with a product manager who didn't know the production, and just getting him logged on was a trial and tribulation. Salesforce has all the advertizement and the pretty cartoons, but if you're not extensively familiar with how they practice things, you'll run into some real difficulties."

What's a Salesforce user to do?

If Salesforce is the software your team needs to perform at their best, then there are a few steps you can accept to protect yourself:

• Inspect the product. Don't rely on the sales rep to know what's best for you. Do your inquiry to ensure you're being sold the best solution for your needs.
• Dissect the contract. Go over the agreement with a fine-toothed rummage, consult your legal squad, and do whatever it takes to know their terms inside and out.
• Negotiate! There are entire consulting firms devoted to negotiating contract terms with Salesforce, proving that negotiation is possible.

Alternatively, you could consider a CRM that doesn't lock you into a contract you can't go out of, and gives businesses of all sizes personal back up and attending. Start a free 14-day trial of Nutshell and encounter what our sneaky powerful CRM and sales automation platform tin can practise for you.

Salesforce contract horror story: "This is why people hate Salesforce"

The following was posted on r/sysadmin on August 2nd, 2020, and has been slightly edited for clarity. You tin read the original here .

F*ck Salesforce, or, How I migrated away from SF in thirty days and lived to tell the tale

We're a smallish eating disorder and chemical dependency healthcare provider. When the company was founded 5 years ago, a lot of impaired choices were made, expensive impaired choices. One bad decision was to embed Salesforce deeply into our patient acquisition/intake/follow-upwardly processes from 24-hour interval one.

Groundwork

One thing about COVID-xix is that people having to social distance fabricated some people realize how bad they or their family members were, with respect to their disorder. No distracting events/activities outside the home permit people see their own behaviors, or their family members, upwards close. Nosotros exercise about half in-patient work, and half IOP/PHP programs.

Our admissions stayed steady when the shutdowns started, and take stayed strong throughout the pandemic. When you're talking about patients who are literally near expiry because of substance abuse or eating disorders, information technology'southward not an exaggeration to say we're essential healthcare. Our patients' disorders tin can definitely crusade them to be immune compromised, so nosotros stayed open and took massive precautions. We oasis't had a unmarried patient in our facilities who was positive yet, fingers crossed.

Just while patients were nonetheless coming in, insurers take been sloooow to pay. Collections are tight. Charges are being accepted, but insurers are just taking their sweet time paying the accepted charges.

The Main Outcome

Our Salesforce renewal came upward, and we knew it was going to be a problem. We engaged with Salesforce about creating a payment schedule, because coming up with most $160k in one lump sum by the due date wasn't going to happen. Nosotros had 75 licenses for all our various departments.

Salesforce absolutely refused to piece of work out a payment plan for u.s. on the contract, which was separated into three production invoices, $12k, $32k, and $123k, simply all due on the same date. They literally refused, I got one email response that was just "No." Weeks of emails back and forth seemed to exist going nowhere.

I thought we got somewhere when they finally set up a conference phone call to talk over it, but and so the finance guy for Salesforce basically said "just pay all three invoices past the due date and so nosotros'll be fine." I said, "While technically, aye, that is a payment plan, but I assumed you understood that the request was to break this upwards across several months. With COVID-19, our patient count is stable but insurers are paying very slowly right at present. We merely tin't afford that as a lump sum." The finance guy literally said nothing.

Afterward 20 or so seconds our Salesforce account managing director stepped in and mentioned a couple programs they're introducing for new customers to make payments easier during the COVID crunch. I asked if we were applicable to utilize them, he said, "Oh, well, no, I estimate not, they're merely for new customers." I said, "So y'all'll help new people but not existing customers." he replied, "Well, that'southward why we're on the phone call today." I said, "yes, it is, but I'm not hearing annihilation from Finance."

Salesforce absolutely refused to work out a payment program for us on the contract...They literally refused. I got one email response that was just "No."

The finance guy piped upwardly, "Like I said, all I can do is suggest y'all pay the 3 private invoices one at a time, and every bit long as they're paid by the due date, then we'll exist all caught up."

I said, "And so this call has basically been just then you tin can say you lot had the meeting and made an offering, isn't it? You never had any intention of actually working with u.s.a., merely at present yous can, on newspaper, say you lot tried. Look, if we don't work out a bargain, I take to move us to another product. Y'all tin can have the money over a 6 month menstruation, or you can shut usa off, and lose u.s. permanently."

He said, "We'll see."

I said, "This is why people hate Salesforce. You have us over the barrel, and you're going to make sure yous f*ck u.s.a.. Thanks." I hung up.

I researched other CRMs to see what would fit our company, and luckily plant one. They had all the features we need, in i fashion or another, they were honest about what their production did and didn't practise, and they had a team that was eager to aid us import our data and piece of work out the procedure workflows. We went into overdrive.

30 days later, Salesforce sent the states a letter that we hadn't paid, and asked when they could await payment. I said, "I have been telling you for months we can't brand the full payment at once. I wasn't kidding, exaggerating, or bluffing. I told yous $160k wasn't going to appear in our banking company accounts on the due date." They sent an email warning us that we'd exist cutting off in 7 days. I didn't reply. They sent another e-mail a mean solar day before the shut off, I didn't reply. They sent a final electronic mail the twenty-four hours they close us off. I ignored information technology.

Hammerfall

11am, Salesforce shut the states off. Nosotros were already on the new product, had all of Intake trained, had our processes fairly well worked out, and had begun training after-care people. We had managed to cut the seat count down to 40 people past simply non letting people have accounts "simply in case."

The adjacent week, Intake had the most admissions in visitor history. Not by a huge margin, but a record is a record. It wasn't due to the new CRM, nosotros just had a lot of people willing to jump in, simply our intake squad HANDLED IT with the *brand new* CRM system they had but started using. I can't accept credit for that, our intake people are fantastic.

Aftermath

It'south been over ii months. People like the new arrangement more, we've ironed out the bugs, people are used to it. CEO is thrilled we pay $1,900 per calendar month rather than the equivalent of $13k/month. Intake has a smarter organization, 1 nosotros designed for what nosotros NEED rather than what nosotros might want.

Addendum: I didn't proper noun the new CRM because I didn't desire this to sound like an ad for them. They're peachy, I like them, they're a pocket-sized company in mid-Michigan that's been effectually for a decade or and so, and they're good honest folks, so far. Spoiler: They're Nutshell and we're happy with them, but this is non an ad.

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Source: https://www.nutshell.com/blog/salesforce-contracts-explained/

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