- Report: #1079008
Complaint Review: towerstream - Providence Rhode Island
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towerstream
Providence, Rhode Island, USA
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towerstream Bought my previous ISP Delos Internet (small local co), changed terms, service deteriorated, forced me to keep service?!? Providence Rhode Island
Our company have been a customer of a local houston small mom-pop ISP called Delos Internet who offers internet services over roof-top building antennas since 2009. I choose Delos because they are small, local and very personal. Everytime I call them I usually talk to one of the two owners.
Sometime in March 2013, Delos was bought by Towerstream, a public company on NASDAQ based in Rhode Island. Immediately I noticed some changes and deterioration of service.
Our company host many servers and web sites for our clients. We are also responsible for our quality of service.
INTERNET SERVICE ISSUES:
1. Internet service would be interrupted intermittently almost daily for about 1.5 week usually in the morning between 10 - 11am CST. Continuously morning after morning I would experience disconnections for about 1.5 week. Almost eveytime this happen I would pickup the phone and report this to one of the owners.
2. Network latency and ping time to Google and their next hop device would deviate greatly.
3. For the first 4 - 5 days service was handled by previous owners, who knew about my recent issues, then Towerstream took over and all the sudden they are not even aware I was even having any issue. Wow! I simply yelled at them and said they should call Houston office and get the full-story. That was probably the 6th day in a row I had morning internet interruptions.
4. There were no resolution to this issue, I was only told they are transitioning their operations to Towerstream and may experience some interruptions. But I am entitled for credits. Okay?!? Great.. I did not signup nor asked for for issues because somebody decided to cash out!
5. In April 2013, alone two outages both more than 1 hour long happened. On April 2 2013, one of the owner claimed hail storm (I was in the building that night, did not see any hail) have caused internet to fail for more than 1 hour. The next night April 3, 2013, the service was down again.
6. Previous to these recent downtime, 6 months ago (about November 2012), service was out for about 4 - 5 hours because of a broken fiber card. And then again for a few more hours the next day for the same problem. Really?
BILLING ISSUES:
Delos have always billed us correctly every month "after usage", meaning we would receive a bill, but either have 30 days to pay or will be auto-debit (ACH) from our account the next month. We had no problem with Delos, infact, we have been on auto-debit (ACH) for about 2.5 years.
Towerstream was a different story... since we were on auto-debit, I allowed Towerstream to do the same and they immediately screw up.
Our balance with Delos is always clear as we are on auto-debit. When Towerstream took over they decided to continue auto-debiting (ACH) under the name Towerstream without my authorization. Surprisingly my bank, Bank of America, did allow it.
They also changed billing terms without my approval (explained below), here is a portion of an email dated April 8th 2013, I wrote to one of the Senior Account Manager:
I was billed by Delos 3/17/13 for $920.13 (PAID BY ACH) (balance zero)
13 days later...
I was billed again by TowerStream 4/1/13 for $920.13 (PAID BY ACH) (never authorized)
Now I have a bill / invoice 7 days later with balance of $1840.26
Are you guys serious ?!?
Today is April 8 and the envelope was dated April 5.
If there is one thing I am sure you guys have improved on... is intensive future billing!
I mean this invoice was dated 5/1/2013. I wish I can bill my customers in the future.
Reply from Towerstream:
I’m sorry for any confusion. We send out the bills a month in advance, hence why its so early. I’m not sure why it has that amount. In our system I’m showing the amount due for May would be 920.13 but after the credit is finalized (I’m working on this) the amount due will be 828.12 please disregard the incorrect amount on the invoice you have.
Not only that Towerstream did not apply my previous two payments, they have just explained to me that I have to abide to their billing terms of charging in-advance before delivering service. In our contract it is written on clause 7 "Invoices are sent monthly in advance", not "a month in advance". Delos would have sent the May invoice to arrive at the beginning of May, not at the beginning of April.
I decided to formally inform Towerstream to revoke our ACH with Delos and/or Towerstream immediately, eventhough I never gave Towerstream permission for ACH.
Due to the above bad experiences, we decided to move on and abandoned Towerstream. Towerstream have been trying to collect and threatened law-suit for 50% of the remainder of our contract. Our contract was with Delos Internet and it does not have any clause for business transfer/assignment. We never agreed / signed contract with a giant company like Towerstream with their horrible service. We also never agreed to change of billing terms.
Before filing this report, I noticed there has been several other complains filed with similar issue (smaller companies got bought out by Towerstream). I would like to post this report to let the public know, we too have been a victim of Towerstream companies buyout.
