Radio Station Escapes 8-Year Contract and Saves $115K with Zoom

The Challenge

Waterloo Media, a radio station based in Austin, had been sold a UC product by Spectrum that never worked the way it was promised. The system was plagued with glitches, call quality issues, and unreliable performance. When problems arose, Spectrum’s support was unresponsive and ineffective, leaving the team to deal with a broken communications platform on their own.

To make matters worse, Waterloo Media was locked into an 8-year contract. They were stuck paying for a product that did not work, with no clear path out and years of payments still ahead of them. For a radio station that depends on reliable communications for sales, programming coordination, and advertiser relationships, a broken phone system was not just an inconvenience. It was a business problem.

Key pain points included:

• UC product riddled with glitches that disrupted daily operations and call quality
• Terrible vendor support with slow response times and unresolved tickets
• Locked into an 8-year contract with no obvious exit strategy
• 120 users affected across the organization
• Lost productivity and frustration from staff working around a broken system
• No confidence in the platform for critical business communications

Our Approach

Waterloo Media needed two things: a way out of the bad contract and a communications platform that actually worked. We delivered both.

Phase 1: Contract and Vendor Assessment (Weeks 1-2)

We reviewed the existing Spectrum contract in detail, documenting the service failures, support deficiencies, and performance issues that Waterloo Media had been experiencing. We cataloged the glitches, unresolved support tickets, and gaps between what was sold and what was delivered.

We then assessed Waterloo Media’s actual communications needs, including user count, call volume, feature requirements, and integration needs. With 120 users and a need for reliable, straightforward unified communications, we knew exactly what to look for in a replacement platform.

Phase 2: Vendor Negotiation (Weeks 2-4)

Rather than simply shopping for a new UC provider at market rates, we leveraged our vendor relationships and negotiation experience to secure an exceptional deal. We approached Zoom with a compelling case: a 120-user organization ready to commit to a long-term relationship, coming from a competitor’s failed deployment.

The result was a deal that included 5 full years of Zoom service at no cost to Waterloo Media. This was not a trial or a limited-feature offer. It was a complete Zoom UCaaS deployment for all 120 users, fully licensed, for five years.

Phase 3: Migration and Deployment (Weeks 4-8)

We coordinated the migration from the Spectrum UC product to Zoom, ensuring a clean cutover with minimal disruption to daily operations. All 120 users were provisioned on the new platform with voice, video, messaging, and phone capabilities. Call flows were configured for the station’s specific workflows, and the team was up and running on a reliable platform.

Results

Waterloo Media went from a broken UC product they could not escape to a modern, reliable platform at zero cost for five years:

• $115,200 in total savings over the 5-year term ($16/user/month x 120 users x 60 months)
• 5 years of Zoom service at no cost for all 120 users
• Eliminated the broken Spectrum UC product and its constant glitches and poor support
• Full Zoom UCaaS deployment with voice, video, messaging, and phone for all users
• Reliable communications platform replacing a system that never worked as promised
• Zero disruption to operations during the migration and cutover

Client Feedback

“We were stuck in an 8-year contract with a UC product that never worked right and a vendor that could not care less about fixing it. Catch Advisors got us out of that mess and negotiated a deal with Zoom that gave us 5 years completely free. That is over $115,000 in savings. We went from dreading every phone call to having a system that just works. I cannot say enough about what Kyle and his team did for us.”

• Brian, Waterloo Media