Spectrum Voip

I wish I could post something positive here, but I cannot. This company and their business practices are deplorable. Proceed at your own risk of errant billing, shoddy service, promises broken, and in my cases numbers stolen, phones disconnected, and bills for services and equipment not owed. Here is the story…
We agreed to a test out their service as they offered a «try before you buy» type option where we would simply use a temporary forwarding from our current provider while checking out their services. That seemed risk free, so we did. Unfortunately, it did not go as planned.
First off they showed up unannounced, removed our equipment and installed new phones. They didn’t schedule this nor was I present as the business owner. We were TRYING their service because of some things we couldn’t administrate on our current system without calling in techs, such as old extensions, departed employees, need to change greetings, etc… Rather than meet with us to PLAN how we would like the service to work they simply copied the entire old system onto theirs and left. My staff had no idea I hadn’t authorized this. Later on, we couldn’t even find our old equipment. We don’t know if they took it or not, but POOF, our fully functional and paid for PBX phone system and all the phones are gone.
Additionally, it was mandatory that we keep a hard fax line on analog. We explained that to the salesperson, but we didn’t have fax service, and all this time, they never got it to work. We don’t know how many things we missed… This was simply a lie that they later told us we could buy a device for and pay an additional fee to get fax service. Or use e-​fax, which was not what we wanted.
We also experienced a ton of dropped calls, poor voice quality, and other service issues as well. They never fixed it. I have even had to pay some external IT people to resolve issues with the router and our network, in order for it to continue service in the interim. They kept promising to fix stuff, but NOTHING.
Then after I got so mad that I told them to cancel the whole thing and come pick their stuff up and reinstall our old system, they changed their tune and sent out a General Manager. He was profusely apologetic. Said he’d fix everything. They’d GIVE us the phone system, if we’d just try to work it out, because he recognized that it was misrepresented, and that it was supposed to be new but was an OLD USED SYSTEM they tried to BILL as new. WE gave a long written list of our issues and stipulated that we would not sign a LOA to move service unless they could address those issues. Sadly, they never fixed any of it.
It didn’t get better. They kept billing, and I kept saying I wasn’t moving from my other provider. Then suddenly my service went off, even though I was paying the other provider and just had the phones forwarded. What I didn’t know is that they PORTED my phone numbers away from my old provider without my permission. I couldn’t just shut the forwarding off, as I needed them to take out their crappy old used non functional equipment and put my system back in or we wouldn’t have phones. They new that and I believe that is why they refused.
Ultimately, once they had control of my numbers, in violation of FCC law governing the internet and VOIP providers, they used aggressive and illegal tactics to try to harass and extort money out of me. In the end, which still hasn’t come exactly, I sit here with them having PIRATED my numbers away that I’ve had for business over 25 years, and now they are holding them hostage to get back, wanting me to pay for a system that I didn’t order and never accepted.
I’ve been forced to make an FCC Complaint, a Better Business Bureau Complaint, and next up is the filing of a lawsuit for the countless lost hours of productivity and all inbound calls for over a week, which we as a business are totally dependent upon.
MY advice is as simple as this. Use them at your own peril and risk. I think they are con artists and shysters, and I will go to my grave telling people how bad they are.
The whole story is indeed more detailed and complicated than this forum allows, but I’m not hard to find, and I’ll gladly share my story with you in hopes that it helps you make a better decision than I did.
Good luck, and I suggest you walk right on by these guys…