Modern business is complex.  Firms depend on other firms for a portion of the goods or services they sell.  Over the years I’ve seen several very powerful examples of firms harming their brand/reputation with the firms partner with.  Penny wise and pound foolish doesn’t begin to describe self inflicting damage.  I urge you to read these stories and think about what decisions you are making and how they impact your customers.

The first experience was when our neighbors carpeted a room in their home.  They leveraged a big box retailer in Rohnert Park.  This firm hired unvetted subcontractors that it didn’t kept tabs on.  The crew was short about 8 square feet of padding – or a strip 4 feet wide and 2 feet deep.  They said nothing, merely finished putting the carpet in place, cleaned up and left.

Of course my friend Chris noticed right away when he went to move the furniture back in.  This lead to hours on the phone with that big box store.  It took months to get the carpet installer back to complete the job.  Needless to say we used a local small firm when we re-carpeted our home.  I’ll now never use the firm my neighbor used for services like this.

If you are unfortunate enough to end up injured enough to depend on a wheelchair when leaving the hospital you might have have had that experienced worsened by dealing with Apria Healthcare.  When I was injured I spent a few months in a wheelchair.  Once I was allowed to transitioned to crutches we returned the wheelchair rental to Apria.  They lost the paperwork and it took multiple phone calls on hold for 45 to 60 minutes each time.  If you read their reviews on Yelp, many have the person complaining about Kaiser or Cigna.  These insurance companies have chosen to depend on Apria, and now their customers blame them for forcing the abysmal experience.

I’ve frequently purchased computer parts from Newegg.  For one of those purchases the seller working through  Newegg had a misleading link for the warranty.  It turns out that there was no warranty.  And you guessed it – most of the reviews railed on Newegg.  New customers saying they’d never use the firm again.  All of this because of not properly monitoring experiences with their partners.

The worst has been my experience with The Rawlings Group.  They call themselves “A Trusted Business Partner to the Healthcare Industry”.  Note how their reviews attack Kaiser and Anthem.  My experiences were bad enough that I honestly signed up for therapy.  It was so painful that I get still get very angry when I see anything on LinkedIn about Blue Shield “caring” about “mental health” or “the disabled”.  To my core I don’t believe this.

I was a passenger in a serious automotive accident.  Six passengers, one fatality.  A loss of life is always tragic.  In this situation there was not enough insurance to cover the other losses as well.  The “analyst” assigned my “incident” called and in a very chipper mood told me how she had good news.  Having just spoken with one of the insurance adjusters she gleefully proclaimed that “there was plenty of coverage!”  Mind you, I have permanent injuries and daily pain.  When I walk out my front door I look across the street at the home where my best friend used to live.  His widow still lives there.  She, their 3 children and 3 grandchildren, all lost Chris way too soon.

There is “plenty of coverage” for Rawlings/Blue Shield to extort their pound of flesh.  There could never be enough coverage for the loss of my best friend.  The pain of losing him, being unemployed for 18 months and my daily pain is easily now associated with Blue Shield.

I . . . see red when I hear of Blue Shield.

The irony here is that Rawlings Group is Blue Shield’s partner, and Cigna is now paying for those therapy appointments.  And moral here is to take a serious look at the reviews you are getting on social media.  How many of those were influenced by poor choices on subcontractors or partners?  Was the savings or the blood money extorted worth the damage to your brand?

Now you can see why I buy my carpet from Rugworks, am cautious on Newegg, avoid Apria, and see red when I hear of Blue Shield.