My company has been a customer of Avaya for probably 2 decades. We have had a contract to provide maintenance to our Merlin phone system. Each year, when the contract was up for renewal, Avaya violated their own contract by failing to notify us of pending increases in the monthly rate. Last year, they did it again and after several phone calls, we got them to roll the rate back to the previous level.

This year, we can't even reach anyone who knows what we are talking about. For more than 2 months, I have been calling and leaving messages which are never returned. On 3 occasions, I actually got through their maddening voice mail barricade to a real person, but those people also failed to follow up with a return call.

So now I am attempting to cancel my contract and Avaya is trying to impose 'early cancellation fees' of several hundred dollars. This despite the fact I never renewed the contract in the first place. (Automatic renewal applies only if the rate stays the same; in this case, it did not.)

They don't even know the meaning of the phrase 'customer service.'