Complaint Review: PaeTec

As a small business with only 7 phone lines we needed to upgrade to add more phones because of a few new employees. That caused a big problem for us because we had to decide what we would do for upgrades. It appears United Telecom works with Paytec and their sales men on both sides have equiptment that has to be bought in addition to the stuff we already had because we only had 1 phone port left available for hard wired phone lines from Traditional Phone Carriers (ours is Verizon). S

The sales men at PaeTech are just there to sell you stuff. We spent about a month checking into a couple of companies in Southern California to decide which company we wanted to go with and what services (we considered Digilink ((an awesome company from my research, and Bob the owner is just a great and helpful guy- he knows a lot)) or PaeTec).

After deciding that we weren't going to upgrade or toss our Avaya system to become a VOIP type phone system (since we still had a couple years left on our lease) we decided to call our parties and let them know that we were going to just max out at 8 phone lines and that was it for a couple years.

Then the owner changed his mind and decided to go with PaeTec's Digital phone lines over T1 (not a VOIP system no matter what they may tell you - I called their corp. office weeks before we signed their contract and found out that right now. They are not going to even test VOIP technology for another 6 months).

So we called paetec and United telecom to find out how much it would cost to do it it seemed cheaper and they gave us a discount (they didn't say that it was 1,500$ savings for the installation fees (which were hidden by the way) or 150$ off each month's bills). We thought it would be a good deal and their T1 service was only 370$ a month if we do a 3 year contract and our current T1 is like 800$/mo. But we would also have to add 300$ a month in new equiptment required to combine the PBX system to the Digital T1 phone service.

So after all the research and conversations with the United Telecom sales men and Paetec sales men the owner decided to go with the Paetec solution for the company because we were expanding a little and he wanted to have DID numbers for executives at his company.

So we signed the contract with United and paetec. They would do all the work but it would take about 40 business days to get done (it ended up being a 3 month time frame after we signed the contract). Anyway, 2 weeks after we signed the contract we talked to our Computer IT guy who is contracted to help us with our company computer needs.

Well we got a call from PaeTec and they wanted to get more information on our current T1 provider so they could talk to them. We ended up passing it along to our T1 guy who said that he worked on a project for a big client of his and they just went through this 6 months ago with Paetec.

THey lie. He knows that they give the wrong impression to the majority of their clients who dont know much about ISP because their sales staff dont know the technology. It appears they will configure everything up to the DeMarc. After that you are by yourself. Up to the demark wont do you any good. It will cost about $5,000 in labor for the Computer Guy to configure everything again from the websites to the email and the routers and network. the company will be down for 3 days at least and wont have email, vpn or anything.

I think it should be reqired by law for the phone system company and the T1/VOIP company to disclose all that is required to get it up and running fully. ie. what they will do, what the T1 co will do, and WHAT YOU WILL NEED TO DO! Otherwise people will find out that it will become a hidden cost nightmare. We already didn't know until after the contract was signed that there was an additional $1,500 installation fee. Now there's a $5,000 major overhall for the entire network that will affect every aspect of it. major reconfiguration.

No matter what they say, Paetec doesnt offer a plug and play solution for any company. To make matters worse paetec offers a 12 data and 12 voice channel split but it will decrease your effective data bandwidth by half. The voice and data channels cannot be balanced or interchangable as Paetec sales men claim.

Effectively the internet spped will be cut in half and so will the vpn/web/email connections given you have optimal conditions. The impact will be bigger due to the fact that the non linear dependancy between users/speed. It will create a major bottleneck for your whole company.

Even if we went with upgrading our PBX system it would still cost a couple thousand for another 8 to 16 port modual where the hard phone lines plug into to connect to the PBX phone system. Plus you will stil have to pay your phone service company its regular priced labor hours which will be 4-6 hours either way you go (Digital lines or upgrade for hard lines).

Before you make any decisions for Paetec type sercvices for your company changes. Make sure to include your IT guy and if he doenst know much about it. Look for another one. You need someone who knows the industry or you will get screwed.

Better yet, just forget them and go find a month to month ISP/VOIP service company (I really wish we would chuck this system before paetec comes and just go VOIP even though its pretty new, I tried it for a week on the demo phone over our t1 line and it worked fine. Digilink also offers a back up DSL line for use if power goes out or t1 goes down.) I'm not the boss, only the researacher.. I don't make the decisions, but I hope this has helped you make one - Don't use paetec.

Renee
N. HOllywood, California
U.S.A.

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