Telecom Service Agent Sues ex-Sales Rep for Trying to Poach Customers: Suit

Defendant Monette Garcia of Mission, Texas, solicited from Mississippi-based BBT an opportunity to serve as a sub-agent to promote its products and services, identify sales opportunities and close deals with South Texas customers for BBT's suppliers' communications solutions, the complaint said.

As a sales representative, Garcia would solicit new customers and BBT would provide credentials, email, office support and “access to valuable technical resources,” said the complaint. The communications services Garcia sold would be provided by supplier companies, with whom customers would ultimately contract with directly, it said. The life of the customer contracts with suppliers was typically not less than two years, during which time BBT and the sales rep would serve as liaisons between the vendor and customer, it said.

Garcia refused to enter into a written agreement with BBT defining the terms of her relationship with the agent, said the agreement. Common terms among independent contractors include the acknowledgment that while acting as a representative of BBT -- and using its name, resources and relationships -- the independent contractor “would not act in a manner that would disparage BBT, or cause to be solicited as BBT representative any customer which would not become a BBT customer,” the complaint said. “Nor was it ever permitted that an independent sale representative could divert that client account to their own name, to the exclusion of BBT,” it said.

Though independent sales reps may have business separate and apart from BBT, “under no circumstances could business be solicited under the license or representation that the sales representative was acting on behalf of or through BBT,” the complaint said. But in late 2023, BBT discovered Garcia was using company resources and its name to take business away from it while the customer was “misled to believe that they were doing business with BBT” and not just Garcia directly, it said.

In one of several instances cited, Garcia in mid-June 2023 approached a previous BBT customer with several accounts initially signed up under BBT’s agent ID starting in 2019, and to whom BBT continued to provide services, the complaint said. Garcia then “independently sought a quote outside of BBT and then bypassed BBT,” the complaint said. That caused “significant confusion” while demonstrating an “overt effort” by Garcia to “redirect business away from BBT,” it said.

BBT began to see “complaints trickle in” about the misrepresentations of products Garcia was selling, including a graph she used in sales presentations, “which oversold the savings to customers,” the complaint said. Customers voiced to BBT frustrations that savings Garcia promised “were not realized,” it said. In every case, the bill the customer received ended up costing “more than the solution they switched away from,” it said.

BBT told Garcia to stop using the proposal format but later learned she refused, the complaint said. As a result of her “deceptive and unfair practices,” BBT terminated the relationship with Garcia. Since the termination, Garcia has “actively used confidential information, including client list and pricing, she obtained while representing BBT, to solicit and interfere with BBT contracts” and to disparage its business reputation, it said. BBT has been forced to pay chargebacks and has lost revenue as a result of her actions, the complaint said.

BBT asserts claims of fraud, disparagement of business, unfair competition, common law appropriation, misappropriating BBT’s trade secrets, tortious interference with contract relationships, conversion and violation of the Lanham Act. It seeks actual damages of $150,000, punitive damages, pre- and post-judgment interest and attorneys’ fees.