Regus: Jekyll and Hyde...or Just Another Rant?

This information extracted from my blog is misrepresenting several facts such that I am a Notary Public who charges $10 per signature for notarizations. Many times customers want just one or two signatures. I provide a much needed public service. I essentially do not really conduct "meetings" but need under 15 minutes approximately to conduct notarizations. Had I known Regus planned on charging me $10 per guest after I signed up, I would have checked out the local competition to see what they offer, which in fact is an even more prestigious virtual address for $199 a month and 16 hours of private office at 30 minute intervals and free use of a touch down area for notarizations.

The other incorrect statement was I pay $80 a month, not factoring in the $300 Regus yearly Gold Card Member fee for the business lounge.

So essentially when it comes to notaries looking for a quick place to notarize for customers, that was the purpose of my membership, not just to hang out in lounges staring at the HDTV screen to watch CNN and drink coffee.

It's not my fault Regus changed it's policies four months after I signed up. It seemed like a bait and switch since it first represented I could bring two guests into their business lounges. When a company gets a contract from you based on misrepresentations, that qualifies scrutiny in my opinion.

So I'm not living high on the hog taking advantage of Regus facilities as is suggested in your article. People have a hard time finding notaries in San Francisco and I provide a viable much needed public service.

I didn't intrepret that the intent of the article was to be critical of either this client who posted their own well considered blog comments; or any business center operator, including Regus.

I felt that the intent of the article was to challenge any variety of policies that are used within the business center industry at large and to ask for well considered comments and suggestions on 'best practices' for this and similar situations. The minor error of what a client in this case charges for their services or the understated total amount of their costs at this individual business center is not material to the higher level discussion of policies and practices on an industry wide basis; and I for one would be grateful to anyone within the industry commenting on their views about the policies in general and what they think would be a best practice overall.

At Centrum Offices, Queen Street, Glasgow, we offer break out areas in our reception lounge to our virtual clients to conduct informal meetings, it's something we encourage, in order to welcome our virtual clients into the Centrum Community. I can appreciate that in any Business Centre overuse of the facility would cause problems. We have had situations in our Business Centre where our virtual clients holding informal meetings have been unable to conduct these effectively during an extremely busy period at reception, and have subsequently requested a meeting room, for which they have been willing to pay.

When our clients sign up for Virtual Packages, we advise them of the facility, however we also inform them that our reception area can be busy and while we wish to encourage them in to our community they should be aware that all clients are welcome to utilize this informal meeting area, and would dissuade any excessive practice.

If we felt the situation was that a client was using the facility to the disadvantage of other clients we would hopefully discuss a beneficial alternative.