Cavalier Telephone - Horrible customer service, horrible all around company

Cavalier Telephone - Horrible customer service, horrible all around company

My bad experiences w/ Cavalier Telephone DSL/phone This posting may seem long winded and some of my problems may seem trivial, but I believe anyone who is thinking about signing up with Cavalier Telephone should read the below letter that I wrote to the company and think twice before signing away (signing away your free time).

All of these problems actually happened to me within the 3 weeks that I had them as my phone company/ISP. I have to say, that the only good thing about them is that once you get past all of their startup problems and mistakes (which was alot) I didn't have many more problems. Here is my experience with them: -had to wait almost a month to get phone service

-Was never notified of the status of my order when I first placed my order for Cavalier Telephone and DSL service- Order #-------

I had to write 3-4 emails along with 3 phone calls asking when my phone/DSL service would start. And a week before my service officially started I asked when my phone service would start, your operator said my service would start “the week of February 2, 2005” this was also stated in an email: Thank you for your recent message concerning Cavalier Telephone services. In reviewing your order, I see that your service will be active the week of 2/2/05. –email from Linda Dart of Cavalier 2/2/05 was a Wednesday. When you say “week of”, how does a week begin on a Wednesday? This just added to the confusion of when exactly my service would start.

-Was never notified the day of when my service was officially turned on by Cavalier (like you state in your literature).

-Never got my welcome packet (of how to operate all of my phone features) mailed to me until a week after my phone service started. I had to call to request a welcome packet be sent to me.

-My DSL service didn’t work until February 10th(nearly a month and a half after I signed up online), over a week after Cavalier said it was supposed to be up and running.

-Your billing dept. didn’t credit me for the week without DSL service. I had to put in 2 phone calls to straighten this out.

-Spent a total of 1-1 &#189 hours on hold with your DSL tech support dept. (I sat through listening to your music on hold- Chicago’s Greatest Hits and listened to that album a total of twice through on hold!) and approximately 1 hour or more on the phone with your DSL tech support people trying to get my DSL online. A total of approximately 8 calls to your DSL tech dept. -got hung up on twice while being transferred to your DSL tech support.

-I was given the wrong IP address by Cavalier for my DSL service!!! -AT&T was still under the assumption that I was their customer for Local and Long Distance service past the date that I officially became a Cavalier customer (2/2/05). I had to physically call AT&T to let them know that I wasn’t a local or long distance customer anymore and cancel with them! Cavalier states in their literature that they will take care of contacting my local phone company and that all the customer has to do is cancel their long distance carrier. How am I supposed to cancel my long distance with AT&T if I was never notified by Cavalier that my phone service was turned on?

Now I’m going to have to sit on the phone with AT&T to straighten your mess out with my phone number/phone service and fax and/or mail them copies of my Cavalier phone bill to prove to them that I was a Cavalier customer on 2/2/05.

-most of the time you have to wait on hold for much too long when calling DSL tech support. 15-45 minutes on hold with each call! Hire more knowledgeable tech support people!

-During the first attempt of the switchover of your webmail system, a large number of my emails never made it to their destination the night before the switchover (before the time that was stated that the webmail system would be down). Also, I never received a large number of my emails that

family/friends and co-workers said they sent to me the day of and the day

before the switch of the first attempt of the new webmail system.

-Again I had to wait on hold for your tech support people to find out that the webmail system was down and wouldn’t be back up till the afternoon.

-During the second attempt of the switchover of your webmail system, which was 2 days later than what you stated (new webmail system –2nd attempt was up 2/27/05), I never received an email that had an attachment of my address book as a text file like you said you would do! Once again I had to call tech support (on hold for 15 minutes) to let them know that I didn’t have my email address books for 2 of my email addresses! Your tech support person said that they didn’t get to that point yet in the switchover of the webmail system. Shouldn’t they have done this before they switched the webmail

system over!!!??? Now all of us who use Cavalier webmail don’t have our email address books, so unless your customers have a paper copy of their address book printed out, they won’t know any of their friends/family/co-workers email addresses!!!

-When I tried to send an email to Email User (this email address is on the new help page of the webmail) to notify your tech support dept. of this problem, the email to this address failed and said that it wasn’t valid!!! Here is the reply email they sent me when I told them that they lost all of my address books (I had over 50 friends, family and business email addresses in there): From: "Cavalier Abuse Team"

To: N--------

Subject: Re: Where are my address books!!!???

Date: Mon, 28 Feb 2005 13:47:16 -0500 unfortunately, this information was lost due to a hardware failure that occurred when migrating email to the new servers. we apologize for the inconvenience this has caused. thank you. ----I imagine there will be more problems from when I write this letter

until when I cancel my phone service. All of the above problems, (there may have been some that I have forgot) have honestly happened within only 3 weeks of me being a customer of Cavalier! I can’t believe that I patiently stayed as a customer with your company through all of this! Is your company getting too big too fast, so

you can’t handle all of your customer’s needs? I understand that Cavalier is a small company, but what small company drops the ball this much with one customer? I honestly don’t believe these were isolated incidents.

There were much too many problems for them to be isolated incidents! To me, a good phone company and internet service provider is one that I don’t have to worry about working or not each day. Even if you give me a year of free phone service and DSL I would not remain a customer with Cavalier. Your company has wasted more of my free time and has caused an enormous amount of stress on me and my family. I hope Cavalier learns from their mistakes from reading this letter. If not, I foresee your company losing hundreds if not thousands of customers within the coming year. Sincerely, N.T.

Cockeysville, MD Note: I realize some of these problems are minor but if you add all of them up, we're talking hours of frustration and wasted free time. Fortunately for them, I was a patient person (for those 3 weeks). Finally, I had to give up on Cavalier Telephone. Click this link to e-mail the above consumer: Email User Consumer

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I am currently now disputing with a bill collector about cavalier telephone. When i joined i had problems. They hook my service up to the wrong address. Before i left i had problems. My DSL didn't work for almost 2 months. They were suppose to credit me and couldn't do that correctly. Then they charged me double taxes in a bill while still charging me for DSL that they didn't provide. I switched back to verizon. Two months later cavalier sends me a bill for service. So i call them and state my service has been off since mid Sept 2008. The said they'd look over it. Instead they sent it to a bill collector. The company has a 80% of morons working for them. Then when i hang up they ask me to have my friends join. I told them i wouldn't do that to a friend!

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Cavtel is staffed by idiots! I have been with them for over a year (which was far too long and is not going to be much longer, believe me! Comcast, here I come!) I have never received a bill either in the mail or via e-mail until yesterday. Instead I received dunning notices for unpaid bills (which I'd never received...), couldn't pay online and had to pay my money order at a bank. I was assured that I would get a bill. Never did. One of the "Customer Service" people in India told me that of course I had received a bill; the computer said it had been sent... The customer is never right with Cavtel. Yesterday's bill was a real winner -- it included late charges for last month's bill (which I'd never received...) etc. I'm a lawyer, a fact that I don't use unless necessary. With Cavtel it's necessary and I am going to hurl a letter at their law department (not customer service). Stay tuned, folks!

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I had Cavalier internet for ten days, it never worked. Disconnected every two minutes or so. Numerous calls spending hours on hold. No one had the same answer. No one could track that I had been calling since day one. At this point my bill for phone and internet read 64.00 dollars. Cancelled the internet and was told I wouldnt be charged for the internet at all. Cancelled the phone ten days later as I needed internet and found Clearwire which btw is awesome.A few days after that, Cavalier shipped me another modem.

Then I got a bill marked past due for 78 dollars. No breakdown. I figure I owe them maybe 30 bucks. They can rot before they get even that.

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I have had a very bad experience with Cavalier. If the DSL worked, then the cable didn't work and on and on.

Currently, I am in the process of transferring back to Verizon keeping the same telephone number. Cavalier has refused to relinquish the number. I scheduled cancellation for 21 July and as of 11 Aug 08, Cavalier has not canceled out the necessary information needed for the transfer to occur. However, Cavalier canceled my DSL and cable on 18 July and cancelation was not scheduled until 21 Jul. It took Cavalier almost a year to stop charging me for a second line that I no longer had and they didn't reimburse all of the money owed. This is truly a horrible company. And...let's not talk about Customer Service. I have stayed on hold as long as 2 hrs. Currently, I am trying to return their DSL equipment. After, holding for 2 hrs, I was given an address to return the equipment. Upon reaching the location, I discovered that the address given was not open to the general public

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Thank you! I thought I was alone... But I couldn't be.. The worst customer service in the world, didn't start when I called in! I went to pay my bill through their (Cavalier's) billing service (Bill Matrix). The payment was for $92, they took $184! I did an online chat immediately (because I NEVER get through to customer service via phone)... Was told to call Bill Matrix. Bill Matrix said they would credit the entire amount and I could redo the payment for $92. A week later, no credit, I call Bill Matrix, who tells me Cavalier DENIED my refund. How does that happen? Anyway, long story~short, I got on the phone (after 15 minutes of being on hold) with a rep at Cavalier, spoke to two supervisors who told me there was nothing they could do!

I said basically, your admitting that your company is in the business of STEALING! If I pay $92 and you take out double, and then won't give it back, your are no more than a THIEF! Needless to say, that is the last dime this low rate company will EVER get from me! I'm switching service to a place where their reps pick up the phone!

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I too have received lousy service from CAVTEL -- I was owed a refund and they sent my account to a collections agency! twice they have promised that my refund is on its way -- and today I receive an email saying that my refund was denied -- why was it too much trouble -- I can't complain too much about the service I received when I was a customer -- but I sure am getting the runaround now!!!!

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Customer service stinks. My phone line stops working every few months. Nobody ever answers the 24/7 support line to get someone out to fix it. I've called several times only to listen to music for 20 or 30 minutes and then give up -- I don't have time for this.

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I don't have the service yet, but can confirm part of this already precisely for that reason. We were told a technician would be out a week ago when I signed up. No tech and they don't respond to telephone calls. Also, I too did not get an order number. I was trying to handle two calls at once and forgot to ask, but that doesn't get them off the hook for not providing one.

That said, after eight years of Comcast cable service they've gotten so bad that I can't even use the router because the speeds are good but the quality of service is 100 percent of the time too shoddy. I worked on this with them for weeks on end but they see their only duty as getting rid of you. I even had FOUR technicians at the house at the same time and they were all clueless. So they blamed the lack of a software update for . . . my web browser! Then they went home. Unfortunately my wife was here then, because I would have called them liars to their face. We did fix the problem that day (and of course it had nothing to do with the browser) but Comcast cable has got to go and nobody else is allowed to use their pipeline. So we will go DSL, but I'm having doubts about Cavalier.

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I agree that Cavalier service is awful. I had Cavalier for a year and they messed up on my billing but most of all my phone wouldn't ring when calls came in. After hearing many complaints from friends and family members about me not answering my phone while at home, I decided to call myself to see if it was true. I called home from my cell phone and surely enough the phone did not ring at all!

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I am having similar problems with Cavalier. Mine are mich worse. I have spent many hours on hold. I have called a dozen times or more. How do I get in touch with the president of the company right now?