Speakeasy → Megapath violates their own written corporate policies

The written policy of Megapath as given on their website today is:

"To terminate an install circuit or service or to cancel an order in process: For orders placed on or before 9/30/10 with Speakeasy please call 800-556-5829 or via email to support@speakeasy.net."

Megapath seems to be ignoring any emails to support@speakeasy.net. Also when I call 800-556-5829, they refuse to process the termination request stating that it has been the policy for a while that ALL terminations must be submitted by web form regardless of the stated written policy of Megapath. A billing supervisor later explain that the billing is out-sourced through a third-party company which is given no technical means by Megapath to process or confirm terminations. As such they have not been provided any method by Megapath to actually follow Megapath's written corporate policies.

The bottom line is that the customer is held to the corporate policies by Megapath but the company does not hold itself to providing written notice to the customer of what it's policies really are. Megapath will pick and choose which written policies it chooses to follow and which it has undisclosed internal policies which contradict the written policies.

While this may seem like a minor issue for this specific issue as termination can still be "easily" performed via a web form, the problem of the undisclosed internal policies can come up in other more critical areas. Since transitioning from Speakeasy to Megapath, it has become common place for tier 2 technical support to state the only thing they can do is dispatch on-site support for a "possible" dispatch fee. The written corporate policies on this is vague stating that customer side problems will be billed for. What isn't disclosed but still can be confirmed wit tier 2 technical support is an internal policy that failure on their part to locate any problem at all is also something they bill the customer for. So, while issues in the CO existed, they remained unresolved for months even after issuing a dispatch fee for them being incompetent in troubleshooting and resolving the problem. This situation creates a clear conflict of interest where Megapath can gain additional revenue by failing to correct problems outside of the customer's control.

Failure to honor the written corporate policies is also just at the top of my list of problems with Megapath to communicate effectively with it's customers. It used to be that Speakeasy would frequently update a network status both as a web page and as a voice option from the call in menu tree. Megapath seems to have eliminated the direct customer access to network status or at least tier 2 technical support is unable to specify where it is still made available.

Ultimately, the transition of Speakeasy into Megapath seem to me to be a great embarrassment for anyone that had recommended to others to get the service. They simply are no longer the premium service that they continue to bill themselves as.

The great ISP formerly known as Speakeasy was, in my opinion, run into the ground by Bruce Chatterly. The final nail in the coffin was the sale to Best Buy. Everything that has happened since is a sad, predictable death spiral.

All my opinion, of course.

And I agree with your opinion.

After finally managing to get SE, uh...er, Megapath to cancel my account, it took another two months to get them to issue the credit that was owed me. Seriously, anyone still doing business with them will eventually have to deal with the insanity that is now common. Get out...got out NOW!

I'm glad I got out when I did. A bit over a year ago, they handled cancellations via the telephone. I had to wait a couple of days because their own VOIP phone system had failed, but when I finally did talk to someone, I was able to process it relatively painlessly.
I've been on a Comcast Business account since and the experience has been good.