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Trade association CompTIA’s CEO Todd Thibodeaux says it’s not the organisation’s role to police the IT industry.
Speaking to PCR at the CompTIA EMEA conference earlier this month, he said that CompTIA’s Trustmarks and certifications show that resellers follow best practices.
"It’s shocking – this industry is one of the few where you don’t need a licence to destroy someone else’s business," he commented.
"That’s why being able to look for companies who are a member of our organisation is valuable. If a company has our Trustmark, you know they’re following best practices. Chances are, if you can pass the Trustmark, you’re going to do a good job."
When asked if CompTIA would ever step up and police the industry by handling unscrupulous dealers and offering customers recourse, Thibodeaux said: "That’s not our role. That’s not our job. We don’t get involved in individual member issues.
"A reseller has a service agreement with their customers. There’s jurisdictions, rules, recourse, terminations involved in that. If someone lost your data, that’s not really helpful. But in terms of getting financial compensation and recourse, all of that is governed by the service level agreements."
Last year trade bodies clashed over the idea of a ‘tech police’, and earlier this year Synaxon’s Derek Jones called for an IT trade association that would protect customers.
"It would really have to be driven by customers themselves, not by the industry," added Thibodeaux. "Customers are interested in seeing Yelp ratings and reviews on sites like Angie’s List.
"There is a company we work with called Service 800, and they’re primarily looking at companies in the service industry who are going out and doing break/fix and some of that. They do follow-up surveys, but it’s mostly the large companies like Ricoh and Xerox for example.
"A lot of it is the role of the solution provider. They need to go in and do a good job. But having some end user information like ‘the ten steps to choosing a good solution provider’, we can certainly do that kind of stuff. We wouldn’t get into validating one company or another – we’re vendor neutral."
The news comes as CompTIA announces nominations are open for the 2015 IT Hall of Fame, which recognises IT industry icons such as Bill Gates and Steve Jobs.
Nominations for IT channel experts and IT innovators can be submitted now until January 13th 2015, by completing this online form.
Read the full interview with Todd Thibodeaux in the upcoming January issue of PCR
