I have had a long relationship with this well known technlogy VAR. I own a small tech services company in the San Jose area and I have been in business for 19 years. in 2009 I was introduced to Fusionstorm and I began performing technology services and consulting services as a contractor, soon after they offered me a full time employment opportunity which I took. Durring this time my company a sole proprietor still fully owned by me was managed by my father. in early 2009 I was invited to a meeting with John Varel in his SF office where we discussed Fusionstorm purchasing my company, but instead my proposal did not get a response but Fusionstorm leveraged my new employment to fully utilize my company, its asstes and resoureces. From one perspective this arrangement benefitted my small company but from another perspective I was leveraged and manipupated as an employee to use my small company and all of its resources to benefit Fusionstorm without fair compensation.
I was introduced to man named David by one of my Fusionstorm managers who would later become the middle man between my companies services and Fusionstorm. This was clearly manipulation and a fraudulent operation and it was debunked in 2013 when he was deemed a "dependent contractor" who only had one customer which was Fusionstorm, at that time I was given an ultimatum to either dissolve my company I had been working to establish for almost 15 years and continue as an employee of Fusionstorm or to leave my full time employment and go back to my company, this was a difficult and unfair decision for a young man with young children to support. I chose to leave full time employment and go back to manage my company. It was soon after that my company was set up as a direct vendor with Fusionstorm and I was employed as a services consultant on a 1099 basis for key accounts which were some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Fusionstorm would not pay my small company on time and they grew irritated of our payment reminders and at some points we had to give them ultimatums that we would not start new projects unless they paid us past due invoices, we never leveraged any project that were in progress as I felt that was unethical and could create huge losses for Fusionstorm. Fusionstorm proposed a work around to paying us on time which was to work through another vendor that would again become a middle man taking a part of our profits. I will not name this middle man company because they paid us quickly and the owner is a respectable man that I feel was not trying to take advantage of me or my company, this was another way Fusionstorm took advantage of my small company. They needed me because I was knowledgable, hardworking and loyal to a fault, I was even held in such high regard within the company that I was asked to assist with the design and then manage the IT and AV infrastrcture at thier new Newark CA integration center.
On a weekly basis I worked side by side Amy Morrisey Fusionstorms Chief Legal Counsel and for this project she was also considered the interior designer for the Newark IC, I heard many negative opinions about her but I just considered her frugal,tough and opinionated and I continued to manage and support the Integration Center build out through to its completion even though I was asked to manage a company other than my own capable and frequently used company to perform the install. Soon after its completion I was "released" as a full time consultant and my contractual agreement was not renewed as it usually was with out even a weeks notice, I thought this was kind of disrespectful but possibly the manager I worked for was too busy to give me proper notice. I had several technicians working full time at the Newark integration Center building and cabling data center racks through my time as a consultant and after my term ended on short notice, so I didn't complain about the short notice of non-renewal which caused finacial hardship to my company and myself.
I got over the lack of respect I was shown and later in 2014-2016 I supported many past Fusionstorm engineers and salespersons collegues on thier key accounts because my company needed the work and I had respect and loyalty to Fusionstorm. In 2016 I was asked to be the lead consultant and the subcontractor for Fusionstorm on a large critical infrastruscture data center deployment in Ashburn Virginia area for the worlds largest and well known colo data center company. I surveyed and analyzed data center architectural drawings and floor plans, I designed, engineered the cabling systems then I subcontracted and managed over 40 technicians to install 900 wireless access points and Cat6 cable runs in a corporate offlice and 9 production data centers including in critical UPS rooms, generator rooms, rooftops and other areas that required new conduits.
I had to take on many more tasks than I ever planned to but I did it because I was loyal and I felt my personal reputation was at stake being the only non-installer Fusionstorm representative onsite in virgina on a daily basis for several months working on a very critical project. The data center owner (fusionstorms customer) had many issues with getting the installers security access to the areas we needed to run cabling and install wireless access point hardware, this was documented on a daily basis and reported on a daily basis to fusionstorm project managers, the data center owner project managers appologized profusely and acknolwleged the delays would incur a change order for the time wasted waiting, after the project started they also imposed a requirement for facility escorts and scheduling short windows of time with these scarce resources in many areas which all added up to hundreds of hours of change order time that Fusionstorm project managers and the Fusion storm account sales executlive approved in email and verbally all which I have documentation of. They told me I would be paid in full for all of the hours reported wasted and out of scope, and that is what I needed to hear to keep progressing and keep thier critical project on the timeline to completion.
The change order time and the original SOW timeline were so intertwined you could not separate the two and I was expected to succeed on this pilot project which could have led to hundreds of millions in revenue, except Fusionstorms network engineering team failed to impress the customer. Near the end of the project I started to call in the past due payments and requested purchase orders for the change orders and I was surprised to find that I was being taken advantage of. They disputed the change order after approving it daily and thier grounds for denial was that I didnt follow change order protocol, which was very cloudy and poorly defined given thier policy of precommit approvals by managers, but the managers I was working with did not have this authority they told me.
I will not name this manager as I feel he had no intent to rip me off. I will mention this had to be brought to the attention of Amy Morrissey who I had worked closely with in the past. She was diplomatic but very clear they would not pay the change orders that were promised by thier managers. I had taken out loans to finance this 500K project that was to be completed in 3 months, I was not paid on time by Fusionstorm due to legal disputes, my company had to refinance the loan and had to pay alot of interest and fees, I had to pay for legal counsel to represent me which costs over $10,000.00 and in the end I recovered less than half of the nearly 90K change order funds promised and due and this was just the next punch in the stomach, there is more.
My father had been diagnosed with leukemia and recently passed away within 3 months just prior to the VA project kickoff and in CA my company was left vulnerable without its two owners and decision makers while my father passed away and I was in VA managing the massive project. In late 2016 durring the legal dispute over the change order I had several technicians working for Fusionstorm building and cabling data center racks in the Newark IC that I mentioned earlier, Fusionstorm IC manager John Kim must have not known any better when he started making moves to poach my employees to go work indirectly through another vendor and competitor of mine which he was clearly breaking my MSA with Fusionstorm which stated they must pay my company 20% of the employees annual salary within a few days of the breach.
This might have been written into thier MSA due to the ugly lawsuit which resulted in Fusionstorm being sued in Tampa FLA for over 10M in a trade secret lawsuit which was essentially breaking an MSA to unlawfully hire another companies resources. Back to my companies story...Fusionstorm acted like the poaching of my employees was an accident and a misunderstanding but it caused three of the four employees to leave my company on short notice and one still works with me to this day and all of them told me clearly that John Kim told them my company would no longer be working for Fusionstorm so if they wanted to continue building and cabling the data center racks they would have to go work for our competitior. At this point I kind of lost it, I was paying my lawyer even more to look into this MSA breach and dismantling of my small company by Fusionstorm. Not only did they screw my company on the change order but they disrupted my companies work force to the point that I could not staff projects unrelated to Fusionstorm and this was all going on as I mourned the loss of my father and business partner.
My lawyer after careful consideration advised me to take the loss and damages incured by Fusionstorm because the MSA clearly stated that I would have to fight them in court in Massachussets across the country and this could cost my company over $50K and I could lose the battle since Fusionstorm had much more financial resources and they could drag out the process until I was bankrupt. That is when I thought I had lost everything to a company that I had done so much for and that I was so loyal to. Many of the Fusionstorm managers involved that I had known for many years were cowardly and hid from thier promises and actions and many others were noble, respectable men and women that told me they had no power to change the upper managements decisions and those people I still have alot of respect for today.
This is the long story of how Fusionstorms Massachusetts based executive team almost destroyed me and my company. I am letting subcontractors and potential customers know how shady and unethical they are even to individuals and small companies that contributed so much to thier growth and success. I also want to make it known that they are operating without required CA contractors licences to perform cabling and contstuction services with thier own employees, as a result many installs they perform do not meet building codes and requirements of the AHJ. You have been warned and if you are one of the cowards that ripped me off and hid SHAME ON YOU! You failed to bring me and my company down and we have overcome the set back you caused, karma...its coming.
FusionStorm, Inc. Reviews
I have had a long relationship with this well known technlogy VAR. I own a small tech services company in the San Jose area and I have been in business for 19 years. in 2009 I was introduced to Fusionstorm and I began performing technology services and consulting services as a contractor, soon after they offered me a full time employment opportunity which I took. Durring this time my company a sole proprietor still fully owned by me was managed by my father. in early 2009 I was invited to a meeting with John Varel in his SF office where we discussed Fusionstorm purchasing my company, but instead my proposal did not get a response but Fusionstorm leveraged my new employment to fully utilize my company, its asstes and resoureces. From one perspective this arrangement benefitted my small company but from another perspective I was leveraged and manipupated as an employee to use my small company and all of its resources to benefit Fusionstorm without fair compensation.
I was introduced to man named David by one of my Fusionstorm managers who would later become the middle man between my companies services and Fusionstorm. This was clearly manipulation and a fraudulent operation and it was debunked in 2013 when he was deemed a "dependent contractor" who only had one customer which was Fusionstorm, at that time I was given an ultimatum to either dissolve my company I had been working to establish for almost 15 years and continue as an employee of Fusionstorm or to leave my full time employment and go back to my company, this was a difficult and unfair decision for a young man with young children to support. I chose to leave full time employment and go back to manage my company. It was soon after that my company was set up as a direct vendor with Fusionstorm and I was employed as a services consultant on a 1099 basis for key accounts which were some of the largest technology companies in the world.
Fusionstorm would not pay my small company on time and they grew irritated of our payment reminders and at some points we had to give them ultimatums that we would not start new projects unless they paid us past due invoices, we never leveraged any project that were in progress as I felt that was unethical and could create huge losses for Fusionstorm. Fusionstorm proposed a work around to paying us on time which was to work through another vendor that would again become a middle man taking a part of our profits. I will not name this middle man company because they paid us quickly and the owner is a respectable man that I feel was not trying to take advantage of me or my company, this was another way Fusionstorm took advantage of my small company. They needed me because I was knowledgable, hardworking and loyal to a fault, I was even held in such high regard within the company that I was asked to assist with the design and then manage the IT and AV infrastrcture at thier new Newark CA integration center.
On a weekly basis I worked side by side Amy Morrisey Fusionstorms Chief Legal Counsel and for this project she was also considered the interior designer for the Newark IC, I heard many negative opinions about her but I just considered her frugal,tough and opinionated and I continued to manage and support the Integration Center build out through to its completion even though I was asked to manage a company other than my own capable and frequently used company to perform the install. Soon after its completion I was "released" as a full time consultant and my contractual agreement was not renewed as it usually was with out even a weeks notice, I thought this was kind of disrespectful but possibly the manager I worked for was too busy to give me proper notice. I had several technicians working full time at the Newark integration Center building and cabling data center racks through my time as a consultant and after my term ended on short notice, so I didn't complain about the short notice of non-renewal which caused finacial hardship to my company and myself.
I got over the lack of respect I was shown and later in 2014-2016 I supported many past Fusionstorm engineers and salespersons collegues on thier key accounts because my company needed the work and I had respect and loyalty to Fusionstorm. In 2016 I was asked to be the lead consultant and the subcontractor for Fusionstorm on a large critical infrastruscture data center deployment in Ashburn Virginia area for the worlds largest and well known colo data center company. I surveyed and analyzed data center architectural drawings and floor plans, I designed, engineered the cabling systems then I subcontracted and managed over 40 technicians to install 900 wireless access points and Cat6 cable runs in a corporate offlice and 9 production data centers including in critical UPS rooms, generator rooms, rooftops and other areas that required new conduits.
I had to take on many more tasks than I ever planned to but I did it because I was loyal and I felt my personal reputation was at stake being the only non-installer Fusionstorm representative onsite in virgina on a daily basis for several months working on a very critical project. The data center owner (fusionstorms customer) had many issues with getting the installers security access to the areas we needed to run cabling and install wireless access point hardware, this was documented on a daily basis and reported on a daily basis to fusionstorm project managers, the data center owner project managers appologized profusely and acknolwleged the delays would incur a change order for the time wasted waiting, after the project started they also imposed a requirement for facility escorts and scheduling short windows of time with these scarce resources in many areas which all added up to hundreds of hours of change order time that Fusionstorm project managers and the Fusion storm account sales executlive approved in email and verbally all which I have documentation of. They told me I would be paid in full for all of the hours reported wasted and out of scope, and that is what I needed to hear to keep progressing and keep thier critical project on the timeline to completion.
The change order time and the original SOW timeline were so intertwined you could not separate the two and I was expected to succeed on this pilot project which could have led to hundreds of millions in revenue, except Fusionstorms network engineering team failed to impress the customer. Near the end of the project I started to call in the past due payments and requested purchase orders for the change orders and I was surprised to find that I was being taken advantage of. They disputed the change order after approving it daily and thier grounds for denial was that I didnt follow change order protocol, which was very cloudy and poorly defined given thier policy of precommit approvals by managers, but the managers I was working with did not have this authority they told me.
I will not name this manager as I feel he had no intent to rip me off. I will mention this had to be brought to the attention of Amy Morrissey who I had worked closely with in the past. She was diplomatic but very clear they would not pay the change orders that were promised by thier managers. I had taken out loans to finance this 500K project that was to be completed in 3 months, I was not paid on time by Fusionstorm due to legal disputes, my company had to refinance the loan and had to pay alot of interest and fees, I had to pay for legal counsel to represent me which costs over $10,000.00 and in the end I recovered less than half of the nearly 90K change order funds promised and due and this was just the next punch in the stomach, there is more.
My father had been diagnosed with leukemia and recently passed away within 3 months just prior to the VA project kickoff and in CA my company was left vulnerable without its two owners and decision makers while my father passed away and I was in VA managing the massive project. In late 2016 durring the legal dispute over the change order I had several technicians working for Fusionstorm building and cabling data center racks in the Newark IC that I mentioned earlier, Fusionstorm IC manager John Kim must have not known any better when he started making moves to poach my employees to go work indirectly through another vendor and competitor of mine which he was clearly breaking my MSA with Fusionstorm which stated they must pay my company 20% of the employees annual salary within a few days of the breach.
This might have been written into thier MSA due to the ugly lawsuit which resulted in Fusionstorm being sued in Tampa FLA for over 10M in a trade secret lawsuit which was essentially breaking an MSA to unlawfully hire another companies resources. Back to my companies story...Fusionstorm acted like the poaching of my employees was an accident and a misunderstanding but it caused three of the four employees to leave my company on short notice and one still works with me to this day and all of them told me clearly that John Kim told them my company would no longer be working for Fusionstorm so if they wanted to continue building and cabling the data center racks they would have to go work for our competitior. At this point I kind of lost it, I was paying my lawyer even more to look into this MSA breach and dismantling of my small company by Fusionstorm. Not only did they screw my company on the change order but they disrupted my companies work force to the point that I could not staff projects unrelated to Fusionstorm and this was all going on as I mourned the loss of my father and business partner.
My lawyer after careful consideration advised me to take the loss and damages incured by Fusionstorm because the MSA clearly stated that I would have to fight them in court in Massachussets across the country and this could cost my company over $50K and I could lose the battle since Fusionstorm had much more financial resources and they could drag out the process until I was bankrupt. That is when I thought I had lost everything to a company that I had done so much for and that I was so loyal to. Many of the Fusionstorm managers involved that I had known for many years were cowardly and hid from thier promises and actions and many others were noble, respectable men and women that told me they had no power to change the upper managements decisions and those people I still have alot of respect for today.
This is the long story of how Fusionstorms Massachusetts based executive team almost destroyed me and my company. I am letting subcontractors and potential customers know how shady and unethical they are even to individuals and small companies that contributed so much to thier growth and success. I also want to make it known that they are operating without required CA contractors licences to perform cabling and contstuction services with thier own employees, as a result many installs they perform do not meet building codes and requirements of the AHJ. You have been warned and if you are one of the cowards that ripped me off and hid SHAME ON YOU! You failed to bring me and my company down and we have overcome the set back you caused, karma...its coming.