You would have to have been living under a rock to escape the talk about the now infamous interviews that have taken place this November with Voices-Dot-Com Co-founder, David Ciccarelli. Interview #1 was conducted in the Voices headquarters in London, Canada, with Edge Studios, Graeme Spicer. It was a very fair interview conducted by Graeme. However, David’s responses tried to time out the allotted time and the tap-dancing was clearly on exhibit. I don’t think David had any idea that their changing of their business model, by adding the Professional Services Managers and their lack of training, would snowball as it has with inaccurate responses and propaganda double-talk. Triple-Dipping, lack of listening to all auditions, etc., was covered.
Judge for yourself. Interview #1 (audio only)
BTW…this interview was NOT released publicly by Edge Studios or Voices. Excuses were made. Fortunately, the voiceover community had the foresight to record it themselves and it has made it’s way around the Internet without much trouble. The cat is most definitely, out of the bag.
Interview #2 was conducted over the Net, once again with David Ciccarelli, by Bill DeWees. A Q&A Webinar that was definitely not as volitale as the first. Bill is a great Podcaster, Voice Talent and shares his knowledgable wealth of the industry freely. However, David basically double-talked all the way through the webinar again and Bill, unfortunately, did not hold his feet to the fire to get to the truth. No disrespect meant to Bill’s ability. He just didn’t press David to be honest and let answers that were clearly inaccurate go by without question.
Only again, judge for yourself. Interview #2 (full audio/video)
Needless to say, these complications at VDC are not new. I had felt this change last Spring when some of these items came to my attention. At that time, I requested my membership be stopped and a refund issued asap. I was told by Customer Service at Voices, that the terms of membership didn’t allow for refunds of membership. So, I asked that when my membership expired on August 31st, I wanted the auto-debiting of my account to be stopped. I was assured that a note had been put on my account and they would be sure that I was not charged and that my membership standing would end as of that date. I’ll give you 3 guesses what happed on August 31st and your first 2 guesses don’t count.
Yup, I got an alert from Chase Bank that my account HAD been debited to the tune of 199.00 for Interactive Voices – Canada. (Their original name in 2004 when I first started) I was angry and immediately wrote to customer service asking what was the deal? The CS rep acted surprised and asked when did I request that I not be billed? I responded with my story. They responded by asking me to produce this email in writting that I had received. I reinterrated the story and told them that I had spoken to their rep via phone. Thus, there is no written transcript on my end. The next email I got started with an apology and they assured me again that my debit would be refunded. About a week later, it was completed.
Since then, other disgruntled members have followed suite and have even gone to the extent of asking that their “free” profile be taken down too, so there would be no signs of them supporting Voices now, or in the future. I too felt that was a worthy effort and I did the same in September. Recently, a graphic has been garnering a lot of attention to help get the word out. Feel free to SAVE AS this graphic and share it on your site, if you believe the same.
