I would like to share a very horrible telephone experience that my two
companies just went through with a voip provider Telenet. When we moved
into our building in Lakewood in the middle of July, we learned that
Qwest did not provide local service at this location. The management
gave me a list of providers that we could choose from. I called Telenet
because they provided services to some other clients in the building. I
wish I had spoken to the other clients before I called them. I now know
how unhappy they are too. The VP of Sales, Durrell Middleton, informed
me that I had to use their phones in order to get service in our office,
because there is no local service provider. I explained that I had just
purchased an AT&T Merlin phone system, and he said it was of no use. He
explained how his phones are so good and inexpensive that we won't even
care. Those were the first 2 lies from him.

When we finally got the lines and phones installed, they did not work
properly at all. They set us up so we could only answer calls from the
phone it rang in on. We had 4 lines and 4 phones, 2 in each office. We
had two seperate companies, Christian Brothers Moving & Storage and
Toolman Pros. We had to run to the phone that rang. Our office manager
sometimes had to run to the other office, and we explained this would
not work. Because they could never get the phones to work properly, we
never even kicked off this new business, Toolman Pros. Durrell said his
tech would work on it, but we rarely heard from him. He did call on a
Friday afternoon and exclaim he's been working on it all day and he just
can't get it to work properly.

Aside from crippling one of our companies, we had much bigger problems
on hand. First, their was a 5 second delay on every call. The caller
could not hear us for the first 5 seconds of every incoming call. This
certainly caused many embarrassing situations. Customer after customer
complained that when they would call us in the middle of the day, their
phone call went to a voice mail service that was not ours. This happened
to us when we called into the office as well. Whenver we placed an
outgoing call, there was a 75% chance it would not go through. We
frequently had to call 4 or 5 times before the call actually connected.
We would set our phones to call forwarding at the end of each day, so we
did not lose out on business. Huge mistake. Once again, the caller
recieved a generic voicemail from Telenet. When we asked them how we
could retreive these messages, they told us we can't. Twice one of our
employees unplugged her computer to situate things in our new office,
and both times we lost internet and phone services for the entire day.
When we used our cell phones and called Telenet customer service, they
said they don't show us as a customer. Dave in repair said he never saw
this happen before, both times it happened. He was the only employee who
seemed to know how things work at this company. We were contacted from
Telenets billing department stating that we owed an invoice. I explained
our issues and Marcee agreed that we should not pay anything until our
service is up and running properly. She said that she would initiate a
meeting and get our phones repaired. Two weeks later and many more
emails sent notifying Telenet of all our problems, Marcee again said we
have an outstanding bill. I reminded Marcee that when we last spoke, she
was going to work on getting us up and running properly. She then
informed Durrell of all our problems

Durrell contacted us and said all our problems were simple and could be
easily corrected within a few minutes. I shared Tony's response with us,
and he then retracted that statement. I felt the need to put in writing
the fact that things were not working out between our companies. I
informed them that I could not use the 2 phones or 2 phone lines in the
back office, since we could not answer those phones. I said I was
resigned to the fact that I never will and I'm going to move that
business into my home. Durrell then threatened us with the fact that we
have a one year contract. He also said he will come out and get the
phones working in seconds. However, upon his visit, he stretched the
phone from the back office into the front office by using a long phone
cord. We would now have 2 phones on one desk. Not only did it look very
stupid, but it did not fix all our problems. Were we to buy another cord
and put a 3rd phone on the desk so we could answer it too? None of our
problems went away because of his visit. He said we needed training, and
really the problems did not exist. All of our prospects, employees,
customers, family and friends were wrong, and Durrell was right. We had
5 phone complaints from people trying to call us within 30 minutes after
Durrell left. We put them in writing and shared them with him.

This past weekend I wrote a long letter to Mr. Middleton, stating that
we just want to cut our losses. We learned that he mislead us into
believing we had to buy their phones, and we informed him that his phone
bills were more than our rent bills. I stated that we no longer wanted
the 2 lines and 2 phones in the back office, and that we should not have
to pay for a service that we could not use. I said if he can get the
other 2 phones and lines to work properly, we will keep them. If not, we
would like to pay for the 2 lines we have used, he could have his phones
back, and we could part ways as friends. Durrell then wrote to me and
said John and Alex have been assigned to my account. This was on Sunday,
August 30th. When I came into the office on Monday, August 31st, I no
longer had phone or internet service. Durrell called me in the middle of
the day and laughed at me and threatened me if I tried to do anything
about it. I told him that I had just spent a large sum of money on an
advertising campaign that began Friday evening, and he told me I was a
sucker. I tried to reason with him and let him know that a lot of
peoples jobs were on the line, and he cussed at me and told me to eat
you know what. I informed Durrell Middleton that we were going to
contact the State Public Utilities Commission, and he stated because
they are a phone provider over the internet only, they are not governed
by anyone, and they could therefore do anything they want and not face
repercussions. I told Durrell that I would switch our phone lines to
another service, and he said he will never, ever relase these lines to
another carrier. I said this will put me out of business, and he just
laughed. I called the PUC and Durrell was right. He then claimed they
shut me off for a lack of payment, and I reminded him that I set up
payment arrangements with Marcee, contingent on the phones working
properly. I also told him I had this in writing. I could hear a big gulp
after this, and his tone sure changed.I am now going to go public with
my story and we are going to picket this company. In these tough
economic times, this is not what people want to hear. We feel this is
necessary to make sure nobody has to go through all the pain we have
encountered. In the meantime, some of my movers and him have exchanged
some rude dialogue, and something occurred to me. If it was not for this
one rogue individual who would rather fight than mend things, I believe
all these problems stood a good chance of being resolved. Now, many
people have lost their jobs and another company is going to lose its
reputation.