Complaint Review: Birch Communications

On August 20, 2015, at 3:20 PM CST, I sent an email to cancel our service with Cbeyond/Birch as I was instructed to do by our Birch representative, Corey C. The contract was coming to the end of the full 3 year term and Corey supplied me with the email address to send it to and told me to send it right away. Corey told me that, because we closed our physical offices and no longer had their broadband, Birch could not serve us anyway with only voicemail, which is all we had for over a year.

After I filed the cancellation, I stopped receiving invoices from Birch for a month or two. Then, in February of 2016 I received a bill from Birch for $11,499.16 claiming I owed another 3 years on a contract that they had automatically renewed.  So on February 16, 2016, I called Birch and spoke with Vicki at ext. 46007. She said Birch was claiming I sent the email canceling our service five (5) days too early so the contract "automatically renewed" but she said she was filing a request to cancel the bill that Birch claimed I owed. She said it was nothing more than a technicality and that someone within Birch should have advised me that the email was five days too early, though it was still within Birch’s discretion to accept the cancellation. Vicki told me it would take about 30 days to get the issue resolved. I told her that Corey C did not tell me to wait five days to send the email of cancelation but to send it right away. Further, when I sent the email, no one at Birch responded to my email to tell me that it was received five days too early. This being true, I can only assume that Birch was intentionally misleading me in order to make the contract automatically renew and make me owe them an incredible sum of money. In my opinion this is deceptive business practices. I have tried repeatedly to reach Vicki at ext. 46007 but those people answering the phones at Birch say that I am not allowed to speak directly with her. Those I have spoken with will not listen to me other than insisting I pay them for three more years!

I have a very strong feeling that this is happening to many other people

across the country and that Birch will only stop this deception if other consumers such as myself come forward and work together to stop these practices.