The IT Nerd

It seems that there’s a new twist to the netTALK versus Iristel dispute every time I turn around. In the last hour, my Twitter client brought this Tweet to my attention:

@CBC @seanbridge @cbcmarketplace @ReinhartG @netTALK BestBuy has informed me that they're not selling it as of now

— Camille K. Parent (@CamilleParent1) January 19, 2016

Two things are at play here. First is the fact that CBC Marketplace appears to be looking into this thanks to a Twitter user by the name of Sean Bridge. I’ve reached out to him for further comment on his involvement in this. Now CBC Marketplace is Canada’s long running consumer affairs show. It has the habit of blowing the lid off of everything from scams to dangerous products. A whole lot of Canadians watch them every week, which means that both sides in this dispute are about to get a big light shined upon them.

The second thing at play is that Best Buy is allegedly not selling netTALK products any more. If that were true, that would be huge. Thus I sent Best Buy Canada a Tweet:

.@BestBuyCanada Good day. Can you confirm that you have stopped selling @nettalk products in your stores and online?

— The IT Nerd (@The_IT_Nerd) January 19, 2016

I’m currently waiting for a response. But I got another one instead:

@The_IT_Nerd @netTALK nettalk duo removed from Walmart shelves before the end of the year. Not a good news for a company looking for growth.

— Martin Cousineau (@couzmart) January 19, 2016

That was a bit of a bombshell. So I took the liberty of going to Walmart’s website and search for netTALK products. Nothing came up. I also did a search for “VoIP” and no netTALK products came up. That was interesting because netTALK had been pushing their products through Walmart rather aggressively when they first popped onto my radar screen. Thus I’ve sent this Tweet to Walmart Canada:

.@WalmartCanada Good day. Can you confirm that you have stopped selling @nettalk products in your stores and online?

— The IT Nerd (@The_IT_Nerd) January 19, 2016

If either retailer, never mind both of them stopped selling netTALK products, that would really, really hurt netTALK. After all, neither retailer can be described as small. If I hear anything from either retailer, I’ll post it here.

Finally, I have confirmation that the CRTC is looking into this matter thanks to this Tweet:

@seanbridge #CRTC is aware of @netTALK issue and is in contact with the relevant service providers concerning customer numbers.

— CRTCeng (@CRTCeng) January 19, 2016

We’ll see where that goes. As always, more updates as they become available.

UPDATE: I did a search of the Best Buy Canada website. netTALK products are listed for sale, but are sold out online. Some stores do have some of their products available. Though I had to go to stores way outside of the Toronto area to find any stock. I’m still investigating.

This entry was posted on January 19, 2016 at 3:33 pm and is filed under Commentary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.