My concerned about VRS such as opening new provider and while there are another two center recent laid off by Purple.

My concerned—
* the call on hold could impact due several VRS provider could be longer to wait while FCC says allow up to 2 minutes on hold. If the fund is lower than we are expecting or the needs to cover that expense for interpreter/VRS. If the VRS fund isn’t enough due the amount large interpreter under VRS and it could affect slow service as new product, feature, and so on.
* I do not know if the VRS become two or three provider as not same as today. Again, it could increase on hold waiting.
* I don’t know if that VRS fund that has cause decision change base on abuse due cost is too high for only Sorenson getting approx 70 and 80 percents from fund.
* My other concerned about 10 digit numbers that not going be the FCC’s concerns?

I just want see VRS go crazy and keep marketing is fun thing to see success as show there are Deaf employee role to show Hearing people to see that we have ability!

I believe, if there are service that involved with device such as MVP, VP200, or VPAD+ . I don’t know if you agree or disagree that word “pay” their service instead have FCC pay more on that expense?

It just interesting how it will turn around but just my concerned not enough interpreter due provider doesn’t get enough met fund to keep VRS provider run and turn out laid off and not have enough interpreter with any VRS provider that we need to make call via VRS.

As only Sorenson shared the newsletter about FCC while the remain VRS provider doesn’t share the news, it make me wonder why…

On ur explanation of the profit/sales/etc of Purple. The following remarks are just educated-guess. I venture to opine that if salaries at the management level and higher are taken out of calculation, spreadsheet will show quite a bit profit. I would guess that most of the management folks in Purple are making lot of money – most certainly in 6 figures. Disclaimer: now this is educated guess so take it as an educated guess rather than as a fact. If I am wrong, feel free to correct me.

Now the fact that management folks make 6 figures and higher is not “wrong”. That is up to the shareholders to decide that. I just wanted to clarify how one can interpret spreadsheets.

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

Thank you for such informative comments and thanks to ur father for explaining the term.

I thought I better ask John Ricker who works for NECA and oversees TRS Fund operations to explain the term. John is the acknowledged expert on TRS Fund issues. That is what he responded:

“The weighted average cost takes into account all of the costs and all of the minutes where a simple average cost would be the average of the individual provider costs without taking into account how many minutes of service that provider handles. For example, say you have two providers one that handles 300 minutes and the other handles 100 minutes. The first provider has a cost of $4 per minute while the secont has a cost of $8 per minute. A simple average cost would be $4 + $8 divided by 2 or $6 per minute. The weighted aveage cost would take into account the minutes handled by each as follows (300 x $4) + (100 x $8) or $1200 + $ 800 divided by the total minutes of 400. This produces a weighted average cost of $5 per minute ($2000 divided by 400 minutes). Hopefully this helps highlight the difference. The weighted average methodology is the one that was used prior to the introduction of the new rate methodologies in the Nov 2007 Cost Recovery Order.”

Hope this is bit more clearer now.

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

weighted by what, inflation, cost of product???not a very clear comment….weighting means there is a factor like inflation, or cost of oil etc….figured into a calculation….Dad

Again, I am not smart enough to understand all of these things, but the one thing that I do understand is that if you take the amount of reimbursement (six and change, depending on your company’s tier) and subtract the weighted average costs listed for that year, you absolutely do not come up with the amount of profit for the company. I was sick the day they taught math at school, but here is how I know that I am at least right on this one point:
Purple recently laid off a whole lot of people. My understanding is that 35 people were let go as they changed the direction of the company. When I combine that with the alert you sent out about their FCC filing to get rid of the smaller competition, I thought it was very strange. They are the second largest provider. What do they care about small potatoes? If I open up a hamburger stand and sell burgers and fries at a small place in my neighborhood, will Wendy’s care? Will they accuse me of wasting the energies of restaurant employees? If so, there must be a reason. I looked up Purple/Go America’s balance sheet. Here’s the link:

http://moneycentral.msn.com/detail/stock_quote?Symbol=US:PRPL

And here is the analysis, which I also don’t understand:

http://news.moneycentral.msn.com/ticker/article.aspx?Feed=PR&Date=20090331&ID=9747489&Symbol=US:PRPL

I didn’t understand how to read them, so again, I can only post my father’s reply:

Their sales are skyrocketing, but it appears that they are not profitable even at the current sales level….Looks like they owe very little and are possibly poised for profits if sales rise even more….Love DAD

In other words, this idea that owners of relay companies are taking off their clothes and rolling around naked on the floor in their cash, giggling and making plans to go to the Bahamas, may not be as true as it seems. I was shocked to see that they were not profitable yet. The second largest provider isn’t turning a profit? They seem to be earning enough money to do what they do, but nothing more. Is it mismanagement? Did they spend too much money on something they really didn’t need to? Will this change of direction and layoff of 35 people help them? Were the deep budget cuts of a few years ago to difficult for them to handle? I really don’t know. I’m not an insider to the company. However, the public information that any publicly-traded company is required to post shows that they were not profitable for the period displayed on the report.

Aptly put. I have been postponing putting TTY away and closing telephone account for good. What you said plus living out in the countryside (no high speed broadband) are what is holding me back from donating TTY to Goodwill.

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

Harsh words, but lot of truth in what you say.

Thanks for expressing as you did.

eyes open & thumbs up,

Ed

First of all, here, the NECA report seems to indicate that the ‘break-even’ number is about $4.50 a minute. Now, the tiered payment plan has the rates at above $6.00 in increments. That’s a great contrast.

Anyway, back to the letter: the ex parte letter was a very strongly-worded letter (unnecessarily so, IMHO) but I had to laugh out loud at the arguments raised. Apparently they wanted to keep in place the tiered payment plan because to change it would harm the deaf community, the pursuit of functional equivalence, and so on. The letter even had a sob story of Snap!VRS investing over $50,000,000 in OJO VPs. (This story hasn’t changed since 2005, I think).

Anyway, the intro of the letter said that the proposed changes would inflict great harm on the deaf community, and tried to have a list of horrors but as I read the letter, it’s obvious that the harm would be done to their companies. They did not detail how it would affect the deaf community, only their bottom line.

This prompts me to raise three points:

1.) The VRS providers need to stop repeating the self-serving canard of telling the FCC to keep the interest of the deaf community in mind. Honestly, the VRS providers HAVE NO interest in the deaf community that’s more important to them than their bottom line. They want to keep the $ rolling in regardless of whether they’re efficient, doing it right, or whatnot. And will say anything to keep the status quo.

2.) The pursuit of functional equivalency is a joke. IT seems to be an oft-repeated line that is resorted to where no other legal arguments could be made to justify their positions.

3.) I think the deaf community is greatly saturated with VRS marketing. Since 2001, the VRS providers have repeatedly said that there still exists a great mass of deaf people who know nothing about VRS. It’s 2009 now and if the marketing done by the VRS providers (to the tune of over 30 million a year) hasn’t reached them yet, then by god, NOTHING WILL. Or it says that the marketing efforts are woefully inefficient.