Complaint Review: Birch Communications

Wow, when I think of Birch Communications all I can say is:

• Deceptive Practices • Hidden Fees

• Poor Customer Service

• Lack Of Communication

• The Worst Company I've Ever Dealt With

As a Cbeyond customer, we were forced to suffer under the buyout by Birch. To begin, our business is a technology company that requires frequent use of the Internet. When Birch took over, the speed went from 21 Mbps to 3.6 Mbps. At 3.6 Mbps it became extremely difficult having multiple employees accessing the Internet because of the tremendous slowdown that occurred when they did so. Next, the customer no service could never tell me when our contract ended because we were originally a Cbeyond customer. It's funny how we receive the email below:

From: Curts, Steve [mailto:Steve.Curts@birch.com]

To: . Sent: Wed, 2 Mar 2016 17:30:32 +0000

Subject: PTA ,

Your Birch account XXXXXX is due for a review to make sure we are providing the best service for your business. We can have a discussion about services that you no longer need and new services that help Peachtree Transcription Associatesincrease efficiency. Some areas I would like us to discuss are: o Reduce or removing off unnecessary analog voice line billing and apply that savings toward bandwidth upgrades or our Cloud PBX phone system. o Increasing your data connectivity speeds. We have recently added over 26,000 fiber-lit buildings to our network. Let me check the availability of Ethernet or Fiber for cost effective solutions for way faster speeds to help boost your productivity. o Your disaster recovery plans – A cloud hosted data solution may help your business get through disaster AND will help keep your critical data secure and backed up. Call or email to discuss these or other areas of concern regarding technology. I can be reached at (720) 215-3047.

Steve Curts Solutions Advisor 720.215.3047

steve.curts@birch.com<mailto:steve.curts@birch.com>

Customer service/Technical support: 1-866-424-5100

Need an order status update? Call: 1-877-727-2117 *4

Finally, we went to a monthly billing plan to cover us while Birch dragged their feet during the transfer of service. By the time the service transferred, Birch decided to end my monthly billing and automatically placed me in another year long contract. They knew we were transferring our service to Comcast and failed to actually assist us. No one ever mentioned that monthly billing had term limits. Review the phone calls, no one from the call center ever said anything about an early termination fee from a contract that I did not want. They mentioned the one time equipment extraction fee, but never mentioned that our monthly bill would increase and that our contract was renewed for a year without our consent.

Thank you so much for removing over $3,000 from my bank account. Nothing like informing the employees that birch stole the money that was supposed to be used to pay them. Only sign up for Birch if you want Crap service that costs a lot of money. Here is a list of birch Executives and their email addresses. Maybe you’ll have better luck than I did getting someone to refund your money.

Dr. R. Kirby Godsey

Chairman of the Board

Kirby.godsey@birch.com

Vincent Oddo

President and CEO

Vincent.Oddo@birch.com

Christopher Ramsey Senior Vice President and CSO

Christopher.ramsey@birch.com

Chris Bunce

Senior Vice President, Legal, Regulatory & General Counsel

Chris.bunce@birch.com

Tom Stachowiak

Senior Vice President and CTO

Tom.Stachowiak@birch.com

Scott Murphy

Vice President and CFO

Scott.Murphy@birch.com

Michelle Ansley

CAO and Vice President, Human Resources

Michelle.Ansley@birch.com

Grant Williams

Vice President, Customer Care

Grant.Williams@birch.com

Melanie Kreh Vice President,

Marketing

Melanie.kreh@birch.com

Claudette Atchison

Vice President, Human Resources

Claudette.Atchison@birch.com

David Gibson

Vice President, Business Development

David.Gibson@birch.com

Paul Masters

Vice President, Partner Sales & Solutions

Paul.Masters@birch.com

Mike Otting Vice President, Telesales

Mike.Otting@birch.com

Kristen Ritchie

Vice President, Service Delivery

Kristen.Ritchie@birch.com

Brad Smith

Vice President, National Partner Development

Brad.Smith@birch.com

Dean Young

Vice President, Direct Sales

Dean.Young@birch.com

----- Original Message -----

From: contractnotice@birch.com [mailto:ContractNotice@birch.com]

To: contractnotice@birch.com ContractNotice@birch.com

Sent: Tue, 29 Dec 2015 15:51:23 +0000

Subject:

Thank you for contacting Birch Contract Notice. I apologize, however, without the circuit active, all other services will not be active as well. In order to keep the web hosting as well as the email hosting, you will need to keep the internet. Should you have other questions, all Birch representatives are ready to assist customers between 7:00AM & 7:00PM CST Monday-Friday, also 8:00AM & 5:00PM on Saturday.

Abigail

Contract Notice 1.888.275.0777

contractnotice@birch.com

-----Original Message-----

From: Sent: Monday, December 28, 2015 2:18 PM

To: contractnotice@birch.com Subject:

FW: PTA

Hello, We need go to a monthly contract for the web hosting and the email hosting, and drop the internet and phone portion of our monthly contract. Thank you ________________________________________

From: Sent: Friday, September 11, 2015 11:20 AM

To: contractnotice@birch.com

Cc:

Subject: PTA

Hello, In regards to the account below: PTA Account XXXXXXx Contract Expires 10/10/2015 Please do not auto-renew contract when it ends in October. We would like to switch to monthly billing at the end of our contract. Thank you in advance,