Birch Communications

One Star is more than Birch Communications deserves. We were a CBeyond customer and once Birch acquired CBeyond the service has been unreliable, frequently down and when you call technical support they are unresponsive. We had been promised that they were going to develop the ability to use our existing phones (Cisco 303s) and they would then migrate us over from the old CBeyond platform to Birch. After many missed deadlines, and frequent outages on the old CBeyond platform that they were obviously no longer supporting, I decided to back away and move to another provider. The problem is that moving to another provider is a lengthy process. In the meantime we continue to have multiple service outages.
We have spent hours and hours attempting to get resolution, We have been on hold in the queue for 90 minutes more than once. Still no resolution.
We are taking our business elsewhere but it is a slow, painful process to port your phone numbers to another carrier.
I wouldn’t recommend this company to my worst enemy.

Horrible service. Have not had phone service for 3 days. They will NOT fix it. DO NOT DO BUSINESS WITH BIRCH. RUN don’t walk from this company.

It has the fastest most reliable internet service. I would recommend this company to all my friends and family. If you use internet for business this is a must have!!!

CBeyond was our carrier that was bought by Birch Communications. When there is an issue, there is no service available either by phone or online. I even tried to call their sales line to no avail. I tried to submit an online chat but that won’t submit. Our business is suffering from the lack of connection besides the fact that I can’t reach anyone to see what the problem may be.
Terrible customer service.

We pay them almost 500 $ a month and now our phone system crashes every other day. I called and asked if they could send someone out to test the lines and they said that if they send someone and the technician cannot find anything wrong then they will charge $ 165 for the visit.

We switched to birch hoping we’d get better customer service and phone system. They’re really sweet talk to you at first until the moment you sign the contract. Once you signed, it’s impossible to know what’s going in. On the day of installation, it was extremely chaotic. They were unprepared and the technicians asked me questions they should’ve known coming in. The technicians and the designer did not communicate with each other and I did not get the set up I wanted. They spent the whole day trying to install phones and minimum time showing you how to use them. I tried to reach out to birch and nobody answered my calls. Overall, I felt abandoned. Until the the day we went live, I did not know how to do basic function such as managing voicemails. When someone did reach out to me after I sent a long angry email, the questions are being answered in an extremely slow manner.
Please do your research before signing with them. The «customer service» is basically not there. I rather have bad phones than having to go through this stressful process ever again.

Stay away from this company. You do all the proper paper work to cancel service and then they clame they did not receive your paper work or have any history of you calling to cancel your service. Stay away they are a Scam.

STAY VERY FAR AWAY from this company if you want to keep your blood pressure down. I went through all the proper steps to cancel my service to ensure I would not have to pay anything extra… I waited until my contract end date, I gave 30 days written notice to cancel, and I called to port out my numbers and cancel. Since then, I have received excuses like «we never received your 30 day written notice» and «you never canceled your line» to try to continue to bill me. Today, I was hit with a termination fee of $ 1269.88. SERIOUSLY, BIRCH?! My contract ended back in April. It’s taken you this long to come up with some lame reason to bill me yet again?!
You have been warned. We were stuck with Birch after they took over Cbeyond, so we didn’t have much of a choice. You do, and you should take your business elsewhere.

We have had nothing but issues with Birch, they are extremely unprofessional and tried to trap our company into contract. Stay away from them. Message me anytime, if you have questions

RUN FROM THIS COMPANY!!! This is by far the worst customer service I have ever had the pleasure of dealing with. Porting dept RUDE! Customer service RUDE and liars! Mark, Betty, carol, find new jobs. You are obviously not happy with this one. Stay away from birch. RUDE RUDE RUDE!!! Did I mention liars too!

DO NOT use this company! Birch is an affiliate of AT&T so they can legally claim that they are AT&T. They will call you and tell you that they can lower your phone bill, but in reality only the first few bills are lower. Eventually, your paying about the same price and they lock you in for an absurd 3 year contract. Thus, if you try to cancel services, you are hit with an astronomically high termination fee as I was depending on how many months are left on your contract. DO NOT GIVE IN AND PAY THE TERMINATION FEE. After awhile they will hire a collections agency to try and get you to pay the $ 1000+ termination fee. However, according to the FCC, there is a law stating that any communication agreement with a phone company can only be 12 months long so they don’t have any legal standing to make you pay the fee. Threaten to take them to small claims or do as I did and just pay the remainder of what would be a one year contract and they will leave you alone.
Also, another rule of thumb when getting a phone call from a solicitor claiming to be AT&T.
–First, ask if they have an AT&T employee ID number
— Next, ask them to pull up your account number.
DO NOT GET TRICKED INTO A LONG-​TERM CONTRACT with this COMPANY!

Do NOT do business with this company! The service is horrible, the customer support is horrible, the tech support is horrible and incompetent. They don’t return calls, they try to charge you for things that are their fault, the billing takes forever to get corrected. The personnel turnover is unbelievable. There is no one there to act as a single point of contact because no one stays with the company long enough. They don’t deliver on promises. I signed a contract and tried so hard to honor it but finally, I just couldn’t take it anymore. I switched to a competitor and called them to tell them I was done. Now they have billed me for a $ 3,000 cancellation fee! Yes, you read that correctly. Three THOUSAND dollars. I called to politely ask that they adjust that off my bill. They said they would «open a dispute report». I asked to speak with a manager, They said one would call me back. I told them no they won’t. You never return calls. He promised me I’d hear from him today. Did I get the call? OF COURSE NOT! You have been warned. If you start a relationship with this company you will regret it. Don’t walk… RUN away.

Worse company ever. We had few issues with Cbeyond but not as many as with Birch. Our service went out from Sept 7−9^th and then again on the 17^th-​23^rd thus crippling my business greatly. 85% of my sales come from credit cards and our online ordering system, which could not be used since our internet was down from several days. There were times when our phones went out too…
I’ve spent hours upon hours on the phone with these people and they’ve told lies upon lies. They will never send out a Birch technician. They will send out AT&T and they will tell you a Birch technician needs to come out. I still have never seen a birch tech. Oh they’re horrible at calling back too. I’ve had to call several times because I was not called back in the time frame I was promised. Thanks to Birch, I have to rebuild my business. Thanks guys, thanks a lot. Counting down the 20 days till our contract is up!

Took them 8 hours to determine that they had a cut fiber line which made my company (and many others in the area) lose an entire day of business. They don’t care if you’re on the west coast, they quit at 5pm CST, so you’re just stuck. Customer service is the worst I’ve ever encountered. No one knows what’s going on and the tier 1 tech reps are incapable of communicating to their managers — will only IM them, won’t just get up and go talk to them in person. NO ONE WILL RETURN YOUR CALL — DON’T BELIEVE WHEN THEY SAY THEY’LL CALL YOU BACK. No one has voicemail, no one has email, it’s completely unprofessional and bizarre. Do not enter into a contract with them.

This is the worst company i have ever worked with in my entire career. Is this a joke company to where you are on hidden camera to see how much bad service you can take and still remain sane?
DO NOT, I REPEAT DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THIS COMPANY! HORRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE, HORRIBLE INTERNET AND PHONE SERVICE.

This is by far the worst company… DO NOT SIGN UP WITH THEM! C-​Beyond was terrible to begin with, now they were bought out by Birch Communications. You would think they would try to IMPROVE, but they are even worse! Everything written in the previous reviews is 100% correct. Customer service is not a priority here at all.
Our business lines have been down for 4 days…4 DAYS. After constant calling to get the issue resolved, the lack of urgency is extremely insulting to any business that cares about being accessible to their clients and vice versa. Our phones just didn’t work when we came in one day. We called Birch immediately to see why our service was cut out. Our bill is paid up on auto-​pay every month, there should be no reason our service would suddenly stop working. They rebooted our system and we still weren’t getting any phone calls. We are the busiest at this time of year and our phones are typically off the hook. I expressed this several times to over 5 representatives; we were losing a lot of business while they keep ignoring our requests for immediate repair. They sent over AT&T reps to look at our phone system. They came in and left after 10 minutes, without telling us what was wrong or where they went. We called Birch for an update, they said AT&T was working off-​site to resolve the issue. When I asked when the phone lines would be up, the only response I’ve gotten over 4 days is «it’s going to be up as soon as possible.»
I don’t recommend this service to anybody. While a lot of phone companies are lacking in customer service, they do get a repair ticket started and work to resolve your issue rather quickly (Comcast). After 4 days of waiting for our phones to turn back on, it’s safe to say this is the most ridiculous amount of time to resolve an URGENT phone issue. Go somewhere else!

I will have to second every single one of the bad reviews on here. Do not do business with this company!
Over the last 3 months, we have lost internet and phone service multiple times WITHOUT NOTICE! We have been put on payment plans that no one in our office authorizes and Birch/​Cbeyond does not care at all. They have no interest in customer service and do not care that we lost business and will no longer be renewing our contract due to all the issues they have created.
If you want a company that will make you feel powerless and unimportant as well as lose you business, this company is for you! But, if you are a normal person who has stuff to get done, use anyone else! (Seriously, dial up would be better than this)
STAY AWAY FROM BIRCH/​CBEYOND!

Well I came here to write a bad review since our phone system went down on April Fool’s day I have not recevied one call back from their Tier 2 support team which was supposed to call me on ⁴⁄₂ at 11:30 a.m. I did not receive a call so I followed up with them at that time and the next Tier 1 representative asked me the same question did you reboot the system. Yes I did as I mentioned to the 1^st rep. Oh okay she said let me check to see where Tier 2 is at with your ticket. It appears they have not doen anything with it at this point but not to say that they are not working on it behind the scenes. I said okay so basically you will have them cal lme back today since it is affecting our day to day business having all our phone lines down? She said yes Tier 2 will call you with an update and when a technician will be on site to take a look at the problem right away.
I guess right away meant I should call back like I did this morning at 8:30 a.m. on Day 3 of no service and no call backs from BIRCH. CBeyond was actually better to work with we had no issues but I understand equipment fails after a long period of time but can I get a technician out here? The answer so for to that question is no. This 3^rd Tier 1 rep had me disconnect the power cords from teh UPS back up system and plug directly into wall power. To no avail it is still not working and I am no further than I was on day 1.
I was thinking it was due to us sending a termination letter to them that we are switching to Comcast for Business to get higher speeds at a lower cost but that is not why our service is bad based on all the reviews on this page they are consitently HORRIBLE. One of our other employees told me she met up with a friend yesterday and they were talking and she mentioned our phone system issues and her friend said they have BIRCH and they have been down for 3 days as well! I am being told I should hear back from someone within 1 hour as of 9:20 a.m. we shall see. If not I will become that squeeky wheel needing oil and call like there is no tomorrow to resolve this BUSINESS CRITICAL ISSUE. ***UPDATE 4/​3/​15*** I had to call them back again and this time I was told a Supervisor is working on getting a hold of the technicians or Tier 2 support team and the Supervisor will call me back at 12:05 p.m. I am sure I will have to call them to follow up at that time. No calls have been received from them since we put the ticket in on 4÷1÷15.
I can’t wait until our construction for new Comcast service is in place so we can move on from this company.
P. S. below they ask on Unilocal «Have additional tips on this business? Why yes do not sign up with BIRCH poor customer service and slow to resolve Business Critical Issues. Customers should not have to call you 3 days in a row when a ticket is already in you should be calling us with updates and taking action swiftly. How do I know this I am in the service industry myself and I am right because I am the CUSTOMER!
DMF 4÷3÷15 wishing this issue was an April Fool’s Joke but unfortunatley it is my reality…

Our company is a legacy Cbeyond customer. Since Birch acquired Cbeyond they have performed miracles: they have succeeded in taking the worst company in the communications business to even lower levels. I thought it wasn’t possible to have worse service than Cbeyond, but here it is. If you want to sabotoge your business and alienate all of your clients, please sign up for Birch/​Cbeyond, as they will assist you to close your business.

I just wrote a lengthy review which, when I went to Post it, mysteriously vanished!
This is a terrible company only to be outdone by cBeyond which they acquired. We were being charged for Web Hosting except we have our web hosting through a vendor unassociated with them (wtf?) — when I brought it to Birch’s attention, they said a manager has to review it before taking it off our bill. Seriously!!! It’s going on 3 months with no resolve. Finally, I took us off their auto pay so I’ll be able to write a check less the amount of the erroneous charge!
cBeyond, with their egregious business practices, didn’t break down the charges on their bills so I never knew I was being charged for this! Nearly $ 15 per month doesn’t sound like a lot but it’s nearly $ 200 yearly.