Cbeyond

For over a year, I have been trying to find a service provider to consolidate my communications platform with one provider for the Multiple locations of my business. After reading about their award winning services in BBB, I figured it was worth the meeting to see what you hey could offer in February. I was absolutely blown away with their product set and how Birch can link all of my locations together as if they were in the same building! I never knew the type of things that technology can provide to create a more productive work force! I cannot rave more about how birch has saved my business! This is my very first review for anything but I found it necessary to let everyone know who the best in the biz is, Birch! I am reaching more customers and I have never felt so prepared and organized thanks to never having to address technical issues. (Not to mention it is an awesome feeling when the neighbors Internet is down and cannot work while we are not affected and are up and running with no problems! See ya ATT uverse!)
Birch has forever changed the way we conduct business.
Aprill H. Owner of Long Beach Candle Co.

Birch has done a great job for the past few months that I have been with them. Not only is their customer service easy to get a hold of and quick to resolve issues (like when our fiber lines going down for 30 minutes they immediately looked into it and found out that the city had accidentally dug it up at a nearby construction site) but they have also sent out reps numerous times to check our service and make sure things are running smoothly. After reading some of the other reviews I cant help but think that the problems people experienced where back before Birch had acquired Cbeyond. From my experience it seems like Birch is a very structured and organized company, so I would encourage anybody on the fence about Birch to ask them for customer references (as I did) to hear first hand how the experience has been for other business owners. I definitely recommend Birch for all tech savvy businesses.

my favorite part about interacting with birch is the amazing individuals that they put on their sales team. The rep i interact with daily is truly an amazing woman and conducts her business with an honest professionalism

If Unilocal ever allows for zero stars, this company will be the reason.
As others have stated, Cbeyond is now Birch communications. They called our office this morning and said that they were with AT&T. STATED «this is David with AT&T» and did some fast talking garbage about lower rates and how it’s still AT&T but with lower rates. I barely had time to comprehend what he had said and he transferred me to a lady who started fast talking as well and said to follow the automated instructions to get lower rates. It starts and I hear something something Birch communications and I ask her why it says Birch communications if they are AT&T. She says not to worry about it, it’s just the recording but it’s still AT&T and I reluctantly (and stupidly) said ok. After a few more automated questions, she says that they will call back later for the final confirmation (Thank goodness, I told them cancel cancel cancel).
After hanging up, I go online and WHOA SO MANY NEGATIVE REVIEWS OF BIRCH. I realize it’s all a big scam and I call them back, all of a sudden, it’s «no…we are Birch, not AT&T». UMMM WHAT. I tell them to cancel the whole thing, he says why, Birch has an A+ rating on BBB. Yeah, A+ rating and 16 NEGATIVE reviews (ZERO POSITIVE, ZERO NEUTRAL). I tell them to cancel it and he transfers me back to the lady with the recordings and she says «you don’t want the discount? You want to pay more?» and I say «yes, you misrepresented your company as being a part of AT&T, we are not switching providers» and she says «Fine, enjoy your higher rates.» and hangs up. WOW. They did call back later for the final confirmation and I told them to cancel it, we are absolutely not going to switch to Birch and thankfully, it ended there.
How does a company like this survive??? They lie and fast talk their way into cons and then give attitude when you catch them in the act. HORRIBLE!

A full 9 months after we’ve moved offices, we’ve FINALLY received a refund for the 6 months of internet service they continued to charge us for. A check for $ 900.
ON TOP OF THAT, did you know that when you cancel your internet service, you may continue to receive charges for their phone service? It’s because Birch/​Cbeyond contracts with an outside long distance provider. When you cancel Birch/​Cbeyond, you have to call and find out who that contractor is and cancel that service with that business on your own.
It took filing fraud against Birch and Cebyond to get a refund to our credit card for that long distance service.
ZERO STARS. AGAIN, BURN IN HELL.

Horrible. Found out that they are our service provider for Internet/​phone/​fax etc… Never would’ve continued to use them based on my previous experience had I known.
And guess what, today our internet/​phone/​fax crashed and when I called in, I was greeted by some ghetto girl with a b! tchy attitude who couldn’t do a single thing for us. Except tell us «we will fix it as soon as possible» and literally laughed when I asked a question.

Have been having more problems since CBEYOND became Birch.
The customer service rep had an attitude because I was frustrated with their service.
Got transferred 3 times around then the technician could not even hear me or vice versa — proof of phone service quality!
They ran a speed test and claimed all is fine. My speed test says otherwise and he offered to send out a field technician to test and charge me $ 150 minimum of the technician would not find anything

We were CBEYOND which then became Birch. We were unhappy with every single service we were «provided» by this company. Our mobile service was particularly bad so we decided to change carriers last November. We also wanted to move our phone/​Internet but needed to wait until March to avoid a huge early termination fee.
I was aware we had a bundled Internet, phone, and mobile contract with some discounts so before making any changes, I called in to inquire as to whether or not we would lose any discounts if we moved our mobile services, as I knew we wouldn’t be able to get a different phone/​internet provider until March. During that phone call last November I was told that I would not lose any of my discounts. I actually was really concerned about this, and I posed the question in several ways and was told expressly that we would not lose any discounts.
Our move to the new mobile phone provider was not without hiccups and they continued to bill is for mobile services despite the fact that we were with another company. I called and made a billing dispute over the continued cell phone charges. They took over 45 days to respond and then when they did respond it was just to tell me that it didn’t matter that they continued billing us for mobile, because they had also been giving us a discount that we would not be eligible for if we didn’t use their mobile service. Their claim was if they took off the charges for mobile services they would also have to remove the discount and we would end up owing them more!
Here is my huge problem with this. I called and was specifically told I would not be losing any discounts. However the lady in the billing dispute department claims there is a note that in November when I called I was informed by someone named Victoria that I would be losing the discount. This is a full-​out lie. I was told exactly the opposite.
Now that we are not under a contract with them, we are trying to get away from their $ 500 crappy 1.5 Mbps and are getting jerked around even more.
Worst customer service. Dishonest employees who lie.
I highly recommend recording conversations because I have extreme cause to doubt the integrity of any employee based on my experiences.

It’s too bad that their customer service reps are the reason we are going to change providers.
I’d love to give a long raging review of why and the horrible experience I had with Tony. Then again Candy and Paul were somewhat helpful.
Bottom Line: STAY AWAY.
Find out who owns the lines and go directly with them.
Don’t get trapped into an auto renewal contact. We got out of it but all our services are with them. They promise you the world. Once your signed on you get pushed aside.

I really hate giving bad reviews and try to avoid it as much as possible. With that said… Terrible. Incompetent. Horrible. — I could go on and on with words to describe this company. Besides waiting on hold for at least 30 minutes each time you call, our company has actually been trying to upgrade from Aretta to the Cloud for at least six months now. We haven’t heard back from anyone regarding this after numerous emails and promises someone would contact us first from Cbeyond and now with Birch. An upgrade! We are TRYING to give them more money!!! Clearly they don’t want their customers to upgrade. I don’t know how this company is still in business. They have been an absolute nightmare! I only gave 1 star because I had to in order to leave a review. LISTEN TO YOUR REVIEWS CBEYOND/​BIRCH!!! Clearly there is a problem with your service!

I was never impressed with CBeyond, and I am equally unimpressed with Birch Communications that purchased them. The disconnected our main customer order line and our corporate office number on March 4^th. After a week on the phone with them they finally determined that it was the fault of their financial services department who said we hadn’t paid a late bill. Our bill is on AUTOPAY with a credit card and even their records showed were were paid in full. They promised that it would be back up on March 19^th, and surprise surprise, it is not.
Whatever you do, do not go with these clowns for your business communications.

The company that I work for has been a CBeyond (now Birch) customer for more than 7 years. I am told that before the acquisition, CBeyond was a great company to do business with. Unfortunately, I have only worked with them since the transfer to Birch began, and it has hands down been the worst «professional» experience of my life.
I spend an average of three hours per week on the phone with them for one issue or another, and have never received the help I need within a time-​frame that I found acceptable (24 – 48 hours). For the last seven months, I have tested our bandwidth and it has always been 3 – 4 Mbps less than what we pay for, even when speed testing through their certified test website.
I have 64 commitments for a call back from their customer service reps, and have not received 1. That is a total of 0 call backs, out of 64 promised. Even an accidental call would have blown my mind.
We are currently in the queue for an ISP transfer and could not be more excited. Last week the router on the wall (CBeyond’s equipment) failed and put our internet out for two days. That cost us more as a business than the entire three year contract that we signed with them. I totaled 13 hours of hold time on the phone with them during that outage, and had to hire an outside company to fix the issue in the end. Then, they had a rep (very nice individual) on-​site 8 days later as if the issue had just happened. By then, it was old news. I did not allow him to touch any equipment, as historically that doesn’t turn out well for us.
When the rep needs to call the office, he has to wait on the same hold line that the customers do, so he wasted about 90 minutes on site that he could have been working had he been passed through immediately.
I had a bill dispute with them open for 11 weeks, after it was promised that it would be handled and in the account within 14 days. I can’t imagine how a company of lesser funds would have reacted to not having THEIR money back in their account.
The point of all this is that there are no «great» ISP’s, however this one should especially be avoided. Call any IT company and they will verify this review and tell you to let Birch sink in a lonely corner by themselves without taking you along with them.

Do not enter into a contract with Birch. I have had the same terrible experiences shared in previous reviews. We have lost countless hours dealing with incompetence and bad service. They have cost us thousands in staff hours, extra billing because we had to put in emergency lines since they did not set us up properly and a lot of broken commitments.
Until they get their act together and actually focus on delivering service stay away from Birch.

This is quite possibly the worst service that I’ve ever dealt with. We got locked into their contract and it’s been hell ever since. Just receiving calls and not having them drop is a mission for this company who touts itself as a reliable alternative to other companies.
I have no idea how this company is still in business. I would caution every person who think they’re getting a good deal to STAY AWAY from this company. I also have no clue how much business I’ve lost because of this company. When we’re on calls, they drop and then we have no ability to make or receive calls for sometimes hours.
Then when you try to get someone to help you and fix this error it’s another huge burden. We wait on the phone for up to an hour for them to say they’ll try to fix it and they do nothing. We have the same problems the next week or even the next day. The new thing they did was to say that they would send out a technician. That technician never came.
This is quite possibly the worst service and someone should really shut this place down.

Got our service activated. They didn’t port our phones over leaving us with no phones. Customer service is a JOKE. I had to call 3 times to get a reverse pointer record setup and it still wasn’t done; leaving us with no email either.
All-​in-​all a terrible experience. I switched back to our old provider after 1 week.

These guys are the nasty, low-​down equivalent of a frat party rapist who believes «no means yes». The «sales reps» will push and grunt their way through your office, backing you into a corner and not letting up until you scream and holler or hurl threats of bodily harm on them.
This company used to send these people to our office at least once a month, and each person was more obnoxious and pushy than the next. One had the nerve to bypass me and try to open my boss’s door when he was on a conference call! Are you fucking kidding me?! I had to yell in my loudest voice to get him to leave.
Then they’ll call you non-​stop and try a number of annoying tactics to get through that will always reveal what a shitty company this is. I can’t even imagine what kind of cretin the CEO must be if this is how he trains his employees. Now that I’m taking a look at the service record and the dismal reviews on Unilocal,it seems my judgment was correct in the first place… CBeyond is a plague and an embarrassment.

Please believe all of the reviews this the the worst customer service in the world our phone system is down at our office I’m on hold for two hours and get of recording saying they are unable to process my call please do not go with this company go with any other company I will be lobbying my owner to change companies immediately this is absolutely unacceptable. Please tell as many people as you can I will be posting this on Facebook horrible company

Cbeyond is a disappointing company. They charge an arm and a leg and they don’t provide the service they say they will provide. I’ve been on hold for 1 hour and 50 minutes waiting for someone to tell me WHY MY LINES HAVEN’T BEEN ADDED TO MY ACCOUNT. This is ridiculous and unprofessional. I should have gone with XO. It’s been 3 months and we haven’t gotten the lines that we signed for. I guess it makes sense seeing how bad the reviews for this ISP are.
And yes, I’m still holding and listening to that annoying jazz music that’s been on repeat for almost 2 hours. Wasting so much time.
UPDATE: I’ve been on hold for 2 hours 3 minutes and 34 seconds. No one has answered. I’ve moving on with my life and yelling at everyone I talk to at Cbeyond, I don’t care who you are.

THERE SHOULD BE A CLASS ACTION LAWSUIT AGAINST CBEYOND. THEY PREY UPON PEOPLE/​COMPANIES WHO AREN’T ESPECIALLY TECH SAVVY, SO YOU’LL GET SUCKERED INTO A HORRIBLE CONTRACT YOU’LL NEVER GET OUT OF.
Our company switched over from AT&T initially because we were displeased with their horrible customer service… and CBeyond’s sales team is soooo persistent and personable that we THOUGHT we would be well-​taken care of! But it’s all just a giant ruse to trick you into signing a long-​term contract (we were dumb enough to sign a 3-​year long contract with these blood sucking mosquitoes), and you can’t get out of that contract either without getting heavily fined.
In the beginning (the set-​up process) they’ll be very prompt and quick and cater to your every needs… but AFTER THAT, THE NIGHTMARE BEGINS. Jesus Christ. Nothing gets set up correctly, and when you try to get them to fix it, they either don’t respond or take forever (LIKE A WEEK) to get back to you. And the «fast, reliable T1» internet connection they promised? It has outages all the goddamn time, and it’s slower than a steamroller going up a snowy slope.
I think I’m a pretty forgiving and relatively patient person, but this company has made me feel angry, vindictive emotions that I didn’t know I was capable of. It’s so bad, it’s like they’re being shitty on purpose. I’m like, one more rage-​inducing thing away from making it my life’s goal to put this company out of business. Fuck. I think anti-​anxiety pharmaceuticals like Xanax were invented for CBeyond customers.

DO NOT USE THIS ISP!!!
We are going on our 5^th year as a customer with CBeyond, 5 years of nightmares. Not only are they overpriced, their customer service is horrid. You want to wait on hold for a good 2 hours before talking to a tech? this is your company. Oh but they have a nice chat support to save you the trouble! Have a fun time staring at a computer screen for 20 minutes on a reply.
Simpy put… for 3Mbs service, crappy customer support, 8 phone lines, its a grand total of $ 1600 a month for 3 years and auto renews.