CBEYOND Communications reviews and complaints

I am a small business owner in Rockwall Texas, and a Cbeyond customer, unfortunately. I lease a full T1 from CBeyond and spend several hundred dollars a month with them. Recently I discovered a problem where my Rockwall business was not getting calls from 3 of the busiest phone exchanges in Rockwall. Two of the exchanges, (972) 771 and (972) 772 were some of the oldest and most established exchanges in Rockwall. (972) 722 was not working either and I had no idea how many other exchanges were not working.

This was affecting my existing customers as they could not reach us, and our perspective customers as they probably thought we were not a viable company since they could not get through to us. I reported the problem to Cbeyond. It took me over two hours to get them to understand the problem and I found out 4 days later they never actually understood the issue. My wife and I both worked in the phone industry at a senior level for more than 20 years each. We knew this was an interchange and all companies negotiate service levels with ATT. Apparently CBeyond service people never heard of this concept because they insisted the problem was not a CBeyond problem. They left me hanging for more than 4 days, without anyone in the company, higher than a call center service technician, bothering to examine the problem. They even told me the problem was not theirs and I should call ATT and report that my home phone, residential not business, had a problem because I have both 771 and 722 in my home... I contact more than 9 people in CBeyond, whose business cards I had because they had been involved in the original sales cycle to me, and only one of them even attempted to get in touch with me. I have to say that CBeyond's customer service was non-existent in a problem which greatly affected my business. When they said it was not their problem and left it at that for 4 days, and only one person bothered to call me back, and their Dallas headquarters phone went unanswered with no call back from the voice mails I left, I would say that they are not very attentive to customer problems. I finally ended up calling various contacts in and out of ATT and got the problem fixed on my own. CBeyond was absolutely no help and only wasted my time refusing to even raise the problem past their normal technical review process, despite the fact I was missing calls and losing business. I worked in the phone industry for a little more than two decades and have had a number of local providers in a couple businesses. I have never seen such poor customer care and ignorance of the facts as I just saw with CBeyond. They still refuse to check and see if I am missing other calls and don't even bother to return my calls asking that question.

My recommendation is to stay away from CBeyond if you have any choice at all. Ken Sterling, Rockwall Texas

Cbeyond is trying to extort additional revenues from our company. We had a three year contract that we honored. We had several voice and email conversations in regard to terminating our contract upon the completion date. When the contracted ended Cbeyond auto renewed the contract. Then when we complained they sent us a cancellation fee for the auto renew worth one year's payment. This deceptive and unethical policy buried in their contract needs to be removed. They have threatened us with harassing phone callas and turning us over to collection agencies. Cbeyond is trying to extort additional revenues from our company. Do not use their services or be prepared to pay up when your contract ends.

This is a highly unethical company. They came to my office offering internet, business phones and wireless services for a bundled price of $450 per month. The price seemed high and I told them that I was paying $ 310 for all that to another carrier and obviously I was not interested. They promised to include 5 blackberries in the deal for the same price of $450 per month and I bit the bait.
I have dealt with at least 10 individuals in this outfit and received no answer. I even took the time to go to their offices in Miramar, Florida and nobody takes responsibility. They kept on procrastinating and promising that they will come through with the deal and always end up referring me to another person. Nothing ever gets done. The contract was never delivered to me and all they did was transfer 3 land lines. The wireless services were never delivered nor connected. The blackberries, well…. they never came.
After 2 grueling months and losing all my sales dedicating my days in solving this problem, I am now about to lose my phone numbers which are the lifeline of my business and the only way for me to contact my clients. They have now threatened me to disconnect my service if I don’t pay $1, 908 for two months service for 3 land lines! Further, they refuse to port my numbers to another carrier and claim that I owe them $12, 380 in penalties and fees. This is outrageous and abusive. This is a company that should not be allowed to stay in the business of fraud and deception.
Yes, ...fraud.

this company did not deliver what they promised as far as competent reliable phone, cell, fax and internet service at a lower rate than we had with our current provider.
the service was intermittent with many many problems and we had to play techinician on our end while the reps tried to figure out the problem on their end.
cancelling was not an option as they stated it would be within the first 90 days. the cancellation fees are astronomical and unconscionable.
we had to give up their phone service and go with another due to the loss of time and business accounts due to the terrible service.
nothing but trouble...

I started getting calls from "Mike Turner". He told me everything was ready for my switchover to their service. I asked him what he was talking about. He said he had my signed order. I asked him to fax it to me so I could see what he was talking about. His responce: Go F k yourself. Kind of surprised me that someone who wants me to buy something from him would talk like that. Asked him to repeat his statement and he again said "Go
F k yourself". I terminated the call. Got a few more and it was the same conversation. About a week went by and on Oct 23, 2008 in the morning, "Mike Turner" called again. Told me everything was ready and will I have a tech here to make the connections to our phone system. Asked him what he was talking about & he said he is just completing my signed order. Asked him if he could clearly make out my name on this "signed" order. He said yes. My signature is not legible. Then he told me to
"go F k my self". I hung up. About 20 minutes later his "supervisor" called & asked me if there was a problem with the order. I told him there is no order. I asked him to fax this order to me. He said since I have not done what they requested he refused. I asked him what is it that they have requested that I did not do. He said I did not F k myself. I term the call. All other calls came in on a blind line however this "supervisor" call came in from [protected].
We are a collection agency. It was not hard to trace this company. I called [protected] to talk to Lane Brannan but had to leave message for him to return my call. He never has. On Oct 23, I talked to Erica Smith who told me she was with CBEYOND
legal dept. I did a little investigation into the Hou.
office and found they did not have Mike Turner. They did have Mike Richardson. This was the last name used by the "supervisor". At 1334 on Oct 24,
Mike called again. This time I asked if this was Mike Richardson. He asked me how I knew that. I terminated this call. Now every time Mike called he said the company name so fast I had no idea how to locate this company. However when the "supervisor" called, the # number [protected], with the name CBEYOND came up on our caller id. I gave all our numbers to Erica Smith so she cold check to see if our numbers were dialed by their office. Erica called me today, Oct 27, and she said our numbers do not appear on their system. She said looks like somebody SPOOFED their number and is just trying to make CBEYOND look bad. Nice idea but no sale. Every time Mike called me he talked so fast that we did not know the company that he said he was with. The way he said it I thought maybe CEEBION or something like that. Another interesting fact is that since I asked him if he was Mike Richardson, we have had no more calls. I plan on checking to see what my next course of action should be to put a stop to this company and it's procedures. I can be contacted at [protected].