Complaint Review: Norvergence

I work for a small non profit group foster home that provides services for abused and neglected teenage boys in the Cleveland area. In March of 2004, local Norvergence representatives presented our agency with a proposal to provide us with a top of the line telephone system with voice mail and many other features that we currently did not have. The proposal presents a system that will provide unlimited local and long distance service, cell phones, pagers and internet service.

This was all going to be at a cost about $50 - $70 less than what we are currently paying for the same services, but this was also going to include the high tech phone system. Norvergence personnel installed the telephones and the Matrix box back in May. At that time we were told that within two weeks they would be coming out and switching over the service and at that time they would take over any contracts or outstanding money owed to stop our current long distance, local, cell phone and internet services. But until they made the switch we would be paying the $300/mth lease agreement AND almost $400/month to SBC for local and long distance, Arch paging for pagers, Verizon for cell phones and local cable company for internet. This was to only be for two weeks max.

I made numerous calls to inquire when this switch over was going to happen since it had been longer than two weeks. Never did anybody call me back. Last week I got a phone call that this company was filing chapter 7 liquidation and that our service may be shut off. I indicated that we were not receiving their service, but we were paying this high lease and without the Norvergence promised service we were now going to paying double for our phone service! This company was ESI and they mfg. the phone system and had no response to that since they just deal with the phone system and don't offer service.

After checking the contract and all the fine print, we find we're total screwed. The lease agreement is for the phones and we have those. We can not return the phones and we can't terminate the lease. We must continue to pay $300 for each group home for the lease for 60 months ie. $37,000 phone system after 5 years will be ours!!! Considering we have a total of 10 phones between the two houses, $37,000 is quite steep. In addition, we must continue to pay SBC almost $400 per month for our business lines service or we have no phone service.

If anybody out there is thinking about doing business with these people DON'T. Of course, I'm probably too late to help save anybody else since they're obviously in trouble.

Debbi
Berea, Ohio
U.S.A.