Review by Lenagainster - Location: Silver Spring, Montgomery, MD, USA
- Cost: $68 per month
- Install: about 113 days
- Cavalier
Nothing good to say about Cavtel Absolutely the worst company I have ever delt with Stay away!
| Pre Sales information: Install Co-ordination: Connection reliability: Tech Support: Services: Value for money:
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Update 11/2/07 I finally feel a sense of relief. I had recommended Cavtel to three others shortly after I first signed up with Cavtel and before all hell broke loose. Every one of us eventually had nightmarish problems with Cavtel and one by one, we were able to break the stranglehold that Cavtel had on our personal phone number and go elsewhere. The last of those three finally broke free today. I beg any readers who are considering Cavtel to study as many reviews of this company as possible, and read the Cavtel forum. The complaints are overwhelming. Original review: I had finally escaped from the grips of Cavtel (they had my phone number and I wanted to port it out) and thought I would go away quietly. But yesterday, our neighborhood was saturated with an ad in the mail for "blazing fast DSL for only $14.95 per month.." from Cavtel. I am hoping that anyone considering this company will carefully weigh this and other reviews, and save themselves a lot of grief. The ad claims "up to 10 mbps". That means if the CO is next door, you might get that speed. The consensus on the Cavtel user forum is that if you get 3 mbps, you are lucky. Note that the $14.95 is for the first six months, then $25 per month thereafter, with a $99 early termination fee (months 2 to 12) in spite of the ad's claim of "No binding contracts". (Cavtel may claim that the "no binding contracts" refers to their phone service, but their phone service is required for DSL, so canceling their phone service would require you to cancel your DSL and face the ETF). I wanted to point out these little tidbits of dishonesty from Cavtel, because dishonesty pervades everything they do and say. I had signed up with Cavtel a couple of years ago when 750 kbps DSL was the norm, before Verizon began offering their 700 kbps DSL for $14.95. It was a good deal at the time. In order to stay competitive, Cavtel began offering it's "blazing fast DSL, up to 10 mbps" for the same $25/month that I was paying for 750 kbps DSL. I requested to be upgraded, but was told I would have to fork over $80 for a new modem, something they were giving free to new customers. I balked, and signed up with Verizon. Before the order was completed, I called Cavtel back, told them I was switching, but said I would stay if I could be upgraded and get the modem for free. They agreed. That was at the end of November, 2005. Nothing happened for weeks. Then I noticed that Cavtel lowered my DSL by $10 per month. Without any communication from Cavtel, I figured they were unable to upgrade my speed, so they reduced my bill. I was content. Then, towards the end of March, 2006, I lost my phone service completely and without warning. I called, was told by customer service that my DSL was being upgraded, and my phone service would be restored "in a couple of hours". After 30 hours without a dial tone, I threatened to quit, and Cavtel found a way to restore my dial tone in less than five minutes. The following day, a Saturday, I learned that my new modem had not been sent out yet, and I would be without Internet service for at least a week. I had been using online banking, billpaying and ebills, and was concerned about missing payments. I was fed up with a company that doesn't communicate with their customers and thinks nothing of cutting off one's phone service at their whim for an indeterminate amount of time. So I signed up with Verizon FiOS (which was installed ten days later). I told Cavtel to cancel my DSL and they would not, as they claimed they could not stop an order in progress. I told them not to send me the new DSL modem, I wouldnt be using it. They sent it anyway, five days later. To this day, it sits unopened, waiting for Cavtel to demand it back. I wanted to port my phone number, which we had for over 40 years, back to Verizon. But one cannot port a number if DSL is on the line. After a week to make sure the DSL installation was finished, I called Cavtel and requested that the DSL be removed from my line. It would take 15 to 20 business days to process that order. Unbelieveable! A month passes and one day I notice that my dial tone is gone for four hours. No communication from Cavtel, but they must be doing something with my line. I call Verizon, select a plan and told that the switch would be made in 8 business days. As promised, the switch was made by Verizon and I wasn't without a dial tone for more than five minutes. I got an immediate call from a Verizon technician to confirm that I had been switched. My voicemail was working within an hour or so. The next day, my answering machine had a welcome message from Verizon, something unheard of with Cavtel. It is great to be free from the worst experience I've ever had with a service company. On the BBR Cavtel user forum, I have read about a lot of the problems that experienced users have faced. The technical jargon and acronyms they use are beyond me, and it is quite obvious that the installation and set up of this "10 mbps DSL" is not plug and play. This is definitely a company not to consider if you are not a computer whiz. And considering the pace at which technology is speeding up, isn't DSL pushing the limit at "10 mbps"? Where will you go for higher speed? If you are willing to give up your phone number, you could cancel immediately. But if you want to port your number back from Cavtel, it will take a month or more. Save yourself a lot of grief. member for 19.2 years, 1416 visits, last login: 14.3 years ago updated 16.4 years ago
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Cavtel should be run out of townThere can't possibly be 10Mb service offered, reguardless of what they provision your line at. I live just over 1000 ft loop length from the CO. It's right accross the street. The best I ever got Was around 5-6 Mb, but that's a hard thing to guess because their service is so inconsistent it's next to impossible to guage what speed you are actually getting. I spoke to management at Cavtel and they deny they sell 10Mb dsl, saying "We sell dsl, not 10Mb dsl". I would expect that type of response from a company like this. Take it from someone with alot of experience with computers and the internet, stay away from this company unless you are a deadbeat who owes all the other telcos money. | |
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computer geek
Anon
2006-Jul-25 6:04 pm
Re: Cavtel should be run out of townI have cavtel and am only 5000 feet from my CO. I actually get 12Mb download speed. I love Cavaliers service. I have never had an internet connection this fast before. Im not sure why so many people have as many problems as they do with their service, mine has been great for the year that I have had it... | |
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cavalier not4 me
Anon
2007-Jul-9 9:30 pm
cavalier services bundle planthis is the worst company:poor c service,slow or now internet,every day a problem with modem,TV!crap or shit.
cavalier sucks sucks sucks,they should not be in town. | |
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PleaseHoldFor
Anon
2007-Sep-12 2:47 pm
Not worth the timeThinking of signing up for Cavalier Telephone service. Before doing so, think of the following - 6 months of service, 6 incorrect bills, 8 phone calls to customer service, 10 hours 46 minutes total hold time, 55 minutes average hold time, 1000 assurances that the problem has been taken care of, 1 problem corrected (and that was when I cancelled service.) AT&T may cost $5 - $10 a month more, but at least I can talk to someone in a short amount of time. | |
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Relieved
Anon
2007-Oct-10 3:55 pm
Cavalier is by far one of the worst ! I have not had one positive experience with Cavalier since signing the agreement. The installation date was moved several times and delayed for a month. The sales agent said it would be no problem to cancel within 1 year but the contract said 3 years. Customer service does not care and will put us on hold for 10-20 minutes at a time. We were constantly transferred to the wrong department. All in All Cavalier is a very dishonest and unorganized business. They should be shut down by the FCC or whoever has authority over such companies. I cancelled the service and I feel relieved. My Worst Nightmare will be only a dream at last. | |
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Jnorth
Anon
2007-Nov-4 8:19 pm
Cavtel Rocks!I was swithed from TalkAmerica to Cavtel some time back. I didnt realize that my phone bill went up about $15 a month. When I called I was on hold on some automated system for about 10 minutes. All I said was my phone bill was higher than promised, and I was instantly transfered to a customer service rep that not only lowered my bill back to the origanal price, but credited for the months back that I was overcharged. Also, I did not receive a welcome kit, but I alerted them of that and received it within 3 days. I am still very impressed with Cavtel---Much better than Verizon. | |
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Re: Cavtel Rocks!In spite of being initially overcharged, having to wait 10 minutes to get through to customer service, and having to call back for your 'welcome kit', it is enlightening that Cavtel has at least one satisfied (for the time being) customer. You will probably be content as long as you don't change anything. The trouble starts when Cavtel people get involved. | |
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coreng
Anon
2007-Nov-5 8:37 pm
Cavalier Sucks!cavalier is the absolute worst worst worst company I have dealt with. I had their service for less than one month and had nothing but problems. I called less than a week after I had their service to switch back to at&t but that took almost three weeks to happen because of the freeze they put on your phone line and then I had problems getting them to finally release it. So I was trapped with the worst service you can possibly imagine. The entire time I was with them I did not have internet service but maybe 4 hours. Yes that it right four hours in one month. After countless calls with tech support and customer care which I would be put on hold for an average of a half an hour I would get a different answer each time or they would subcontract a technician from at&t to fix my problem the next day. They don't even have technicians from their company in my area so they would hire at&t workers to do their job. Not only that they also rent out at&t lines. Finally to top all of this off cavalier just sent me a bill and they are still charging me for service they are no longer providing to me. At&t took over my phone line on October 25 and cavalier is still trying to charge me for the month of November. I am so disgusted with cavalier I have filed a complaint with the Better Business Bureau and next I plan to visit my local police station because what they are doing to me has to be illegal. If anyone is considering to switch to cavalier DON'T DO IT. I would not switch back to them if they a year's service for free!!!! By the way it was my husband not me who decided to switch to cavalier when I warned him not to. Now we have switched back to AT&T and are perfectly happy. Their representatives are knowledgeable and helpful and get things done. I highly recommend AT&T and will never switch again. | |
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Glad2bgone
Anon
2007-Nov-7 9:33 am
Re: Cavalier Sucks!FYI....Until yesterday I worked for Cavalier and I totally agree with you. The company can't seem to get together for their customers which made selling the products and services next to impossible. By the way...they are alying people off and closing markets as we speak so the "customer experience" as they call it will surely be effected. | |
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Re: Cavalier Sucks!you are right. i currently work ar Cavtel and they have everything back words. One thing i hate is the layoffs. You work all day and then hey your laid off. what is that? circuits are getting scheduled and nothing has been provisioned for the customer. i am worried about the future. since merging a yr a go, our 401k is still held up with the other privider. how long does it take to roll over. other markets have. i think most people that i know, which is a good % of the staff wishes they get laid off. the only good thing coming out of this company is the severance. anyone hiring out there? | |
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coreng to coreng
Anon
2007-Nov-14 7:07 pm
to coreng
Update:
It has been about 3 weeks since I got rid of Cavalier and they are still trying to bill me for November. At this point it is almost comical. They are now saying that At&t has to call and notify them that they have taken over my line. So I called At&t and their representative said Cavalier was notified when they requested my number and got a due date for service change but, he gave me a reference number to give Cavalier referring to the service change. I then called Cavalier again and not only spoke with their ignorant representative but their ignorant supervisor also. I informed both these morons with what At&t told me but they still insisted that At&t had to call and notify them of the service change. I also gave them the reference number that At&t had given me and they told me that they would put it in their system and send it to right department to handle this but if the numbers and dates did not match up with their system then there was a problem with the port and I would lose my dial tone. WHAT!!! Mind you I have already gotten a bill from At&t and even called the Michigan public service enforcement commission to handle my complaint and they told me that I was At&T's responsibility and not to worry about losing my dial tone. What gets me is that Cavalier rents out At&T's lines. At some point you would think that there would one competent person there that could figure this out and close out my account. All I can say is that Cavalier better sue me and take me to court where I will gladly explain myself to a judge if they want their $35 of past due charges. | |
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wake up folks
Anon
2007-Nov-7 7:38 pm
Has been better but could be worseI know the quality of the products, and I know the service side of the company. Cavalier is really not as bad as it is made out to be. There are a lot of frustrations out there right now because much has gone downhill since the merger with Talk America. Yes hold times have skyrocketed and service has suffered. I will not dispute that. There are people at the company that are very skilled and know exactly what needs to be done to make fixes though. I can say that I have personally been through many years of service with them and 3 moves (one being to transfer to a family member after moving behind a slick) and all has gone smoothly with no hitches. People always like to look at the bad and never what is good - I know from experience that it is not as bad as what it is made out to be sometimes. Just because you have to talk to someone does not necessarily mean that your service will be screwed up. I hope people can overlook some of these negative comments and understand that no matter what provider you go with there are always problems. Look at the reviews for everyone - you will see the same issues and the same gripes. So go ahead and take your pick of all of them - you will find the same thing at any company you choose. | |
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coreng
Anon
2007-Nov-8 2:19 am
Re: Has been better but could be worseI have looked at reviews on this website and also with the better business bureau for cavalier and AT&T and all I can say is that I wish I would have done that before I decided to switch to cavalier. On the bbb website cavalier's branch from Palm Harbor, Fl. has had 166 complaints in the last 36 months. This may seem like a low volume of complaints but take this into consideration. AT&T's branch from San Antonio, Texas has had 1,026 complaints in the last 36 months but this company has a satisfactory record with the bbb meaning it has properly addressed manners referred by the bbb. Cavalier whom is a smaller company which is why they would have less complaints is not addressed by the bbb as having a satisfactory record and the reviews on this website are more than half negative reviews. So like I said i wish I would have read some reviews and avoided all the wasted time, money, and grief this company has cost me. I had so many issues with this company and I had their service for less than a month. I expect to have a few quirks to work out when switching companies but no internet service and a phone line not working properly the entire time with no repairs followed through is not what I bargained for. I did get one phone call from them on my cellphone saying my dsl ticket had been repaired 25 days after having their service and this was also the day AT&T had taken over my line. My headache with cavalier is still not over. I have had to contact my local public service enforcement commission because they are still trying to bill for their service after I switched back to AT&T. | |
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to wake up folks
I agree that there can be bad experiences with all companies. Here's my experience with CavTel: I am a technology consultant who has been in the IT world for seven years and have dealt with at least eight different ISPs over that time. I was called in to help with a brand new client who has been trying to work with Cavalier for two years and seven months to get their Internet connection stable. This client has four 1.5Mbps T1 lines coming into the building. The longest period of time they've had stable service since signing up with Cavalier has been three weeks. The longest I've been able to see a connection has been 20 minutes. I called last Thursday and requested to be able to bypass two of the Cavalier-provided routers because they are not providing DHCP addresses. I was hoping that putting them into bridged mode might show some improvement. Customer service said they would test the lines and have an engineer call me back, which they did that evening. He said the lines were clean and that the routers they provided have DHCP turned on - in essence he said it's not their problem. The engineer told me that assigning one of our static addresses to the internal router and bypassing their equipment was an ordering issue and I would have to call back the next morning. I asked him to keep the ticket for the incident open and he said he would not do this because it was an ordering issue and that he'd already closed the ticket. I called back the next morning (Friday, 11/09/07) and waited for 81 minutes listening to a recording tell me the calls were being answered in the order received. To test this, I called on a second phone (leaving the original one connected) and I had a representative pick up within two minutes. The other line remained on hold while I was talking with customer service. The lady I spoke with gave me a ticket number, took my cell number and told me I'd be called back. I told her I could be contacted anytime day or night. I never received a call back. I called them again at 2:00 PM today (Tuesday, 11/13/07) and waited 12 minutes before having the call picked up. I was told that they had this issue documented by the ticket number I'd given them, but this was not an ordering issue and was transferred to Internet repair. I waited about 3 minutes before they picked up. The guy I talked to said he only dealt with DSL and cable and that he'd need to transfer me to the people that handle their T1 lines. I waited about two minutes before this call was picked up. The guy who answered said they only handle the East Coast area and that he'd have to transfer me to the people who handle the Midwest. He transferred me, I heard the on-hold music for about 20 seconds and was then cut off. So, I went to their website and chose to use their Internet Repair chat. I started the chat at 2:30 PM and saw that I had two people ahead of me. At about 3:10 PM the message changed to state there is one person ahead of me. It is now 4:12 PM and I am still seeing the screen telling me there is one person ahead of me. This is by far the absolute worst service I've ever seen from any ISP. I am now betting that I could remain connected to the chat and see that I have one person ahead of me tomorrow morning. The client I'm trying to help is locked into a contract with them until March, but I'm working with them to try to break this. Over the two years and seven months, the client has document 142 service calls she has placed with Cavalier. She estimates this is only half of the calls she's actually made for service to them. I don't know about everyone else, but this seems extremely poor to me. | |
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SoBad
Anon
2007-Nov-14 9:06 am
Re: Has been better but could be worseUpdate: I left the chat session open, but left the building at 5:00 PM. I returned this morning to find that somebody actuall did pick up the chat session. Here's the transcript of the entire session: Logged in There are 2 people ahead of you. There is 1 person ahead of you. Please wait for the next available representative to help you. Please wait for the next available representative to help you. You are next in line. Travis has joined the chat Hello The number you should call is 877-283-3982 Travis has left. Error: socket closed Connection closed.
So, it took at least 2.5 hours before somebody picked up, but most likely much longer. Furthermore, the number he gave me was not a number given by any other representatives. I'm calling the number right now (7:29 AM, 11/14/07). I got right through to a human within a minute. He's starting a trouble ticket for me and I'm being told I will be called back. We'll see. Call ended at 8:04 AM, and I was told it's most likely an ordering issue again because they're showing my client doesn't have any static addresses assigned to them, despite the belief that they'd paid for five when signing up with Cavalier (which I'll try to verify). | |
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SoBad
Anon
2007-Nov-14 10:59 am
Re: Has been better but could be worseUpdate: I was told I'd be called back by 10:00 AM by Cavalier. I did not get called back, so I called again at 10:19 AM. I got right through to the same person who was working with me earlier this morning. He seems like he's really trying to help and I appreciate that, but it's not looking like he's having much luck dealing with their own internal processes. He put me on hold while attempting to contact the other people who need to be involved to get this resolved. I was on hold for 30 minutes before somebody else picked up and answered that they were with DSL repair. They had to transfer me over to the T1 people, who picked up immediately. I had to explain again what I was looking for and the lady who answered said they should have called me back within two hours of the initial report (which they had recorded as 7:46 AM). She has now escalated the request. I verified they have my cell number in the ticket and she said I should be called back soon. Again, we'll see. So now I'm wondering... just exactly how do people could think this could get much worse? I suppose the people on the phones could be rude, which they haven't been so far. So that must be the silver lining, I suppose. | |
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SoBad
Anon
2007-Nov-14 12:13 pm
Re: Has been better but could be worseUpdate: I received a call back from a T1 engineer at 11:58 AM. When we were talking, she mentioned that she sees one of our T1 circuits is actually down. While we were on the phone, she said there are now two T1 circuits that are actually down. She is going to work on getting these circuits back up and will call me back. It's now at the point where it's comical. It's lucky for my client that I'm not billing for my time wasted with Cavalier, as we'd have just passed the one thousand dollar mark with no forward movement on this issue. | |
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SoBad
Anon
2007-Nov-16 11:31 am
Re: Has been better but could be worseFinal update: We never actually got this issue resolved. We've spoken with a technician on-site and a sales representative who both told us to go with a different service provider because there's nothing they can do to get the answers we're all looking for within the company. I will be glad when the client has new service in place from a different ISP. The good news from all of this is we've been told they won't come after my client for breaking out of the contract early. | |
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BobbyD
Anon
2007-Nov-13 10:06 pm
All the claims of how bad they treat you is for realThe frusration I've experienced with Cavalier is beyond desciption. How a company can conduct themselves like this is beyonf belief. TRUST ME WHEN I SAY THEY SUCK!!! I FEEL SORRY FOR THE PEOPLE THAT ARE TRAPPED BY THEM | |
| | abrody join:2000-07-20 Silver Spring, MD |
abrody
Member
2007-Nov-29 4:07 pm
Re: All the claims of how bad they treat you is for realI had my few months with Cavalier Telephone, and I was glad to get rid of them. Worse yet, when I removed service I was without phone service for 4 days. Initially advertised as 962 kbps SDSL and started out to be that, turned into a 384 SDSL. Glad it was only month to month. | |
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