This is a head’s up to anybody who is thinking about signing up with Comwave for their VOIP service. I have been a customer of theirs since June of 2005 (1.5 years) and until recently had been generally satisfied with the service they provided. There were a couple of instances of dropped calls, but nothing terribly bad.
That all changed just over a month ago. During the entire final weekend of August my iPhone refused to make or receive any calls. I was unable to get through to Technical Support on numerous attempts. I would wait on hold for 10+ minutes before the call was dropped.
On August 30th I received an e-mail from the president of Comwave apologizing for a botched upgrade, at the time I thought it was a nice gesture. That was until the problems that were apologized for never actually went away.
I started to hear from friends of mine that they were having difficulties getting through to us, they would call our number and get a busy signal right away. They would sometimes get through on the 3rd or 4th attempt. Under normal circumstances they should have at least been forwarded to my voicemail so that I would know that I had missed some calls, this was not the case.
I attempted to contact Technical Support again, I waited on hold twice for more than 20 minutes before my call was dropped.
Shortly after this started I began having intermittent troubles making calls out, when I picked up my phone I would get a busy signal, that doesn’t seem right does it?
I was starting to get really angry about the whole situation so I dedicated an entire Tuesday night to trying to get on the phone with somebody at the company. On my first attempt I waited on hold for 22 minutes before getting through to a technician. I explained all my problems and we did some basic troubleshooting to make sure there were no problems with my Internet connection, which there wasn’t. I then reluctantly installed their remote control application so that the technician could look at my settings himself. While he was in control of my computer the phone got disconnected, noticing that he was still moving my mouse around I opened up notepad and informed him that the line had been dropped and gave him two (non-VOIP) phone numbers to call me back on. I never received a call and about 5 minutes later the technician disconnected the remote session. Not one to give up, I called right back, waited on hold for 20+ minutes again, but finally got another technician on the phone. I went through the whole spiel again (apparently my previous technician did not make any notes on my account) and finally the technician gave up and said he would have to elevate a support request to figure out what was going on. Apparently this means that a higher level technician would look into my problem and get back to me within 24 hours.
So much for that. Two days later I had not received a call so I got back on the phone again, this time getting through in a surprisingly quick 5 minutes. When the technician pulled up my account he said there was no record of the elevated support request that I informed him about. Trying to be helpful, he insisted that we go through the entire support process again. Another 10 minutes of him poking around in the iPhone settings and he agreed that there needs to be another elevated support request entered.
I let him do this, and got his name this time, Leonard, as he assured me that it was entered on my account. It’s been a week since that call, my friends still say that they have to call 3+ times to reach me after getting a busy signal. I called back this morning from work mentioning my history to the operator who then informed me that they cannot troubleshoot my problem unless I am at home with access to the iPhone. I tried to explain that these steps had all been tried before but got nowhere, she did however offer to schedule a time for a technician to call me at home so that I wouldn’t have to wait on hold. I agreed to that and we booked the call for between 5:00 and 5:30 EST (I made sure), I also gave them my cell phone number in case they were unable to get through.
The current time is 6:46 EST (just for consistency), and I have still not received the call. I just got off the phone with somebody in Customer Service (since I don’t have any reason to trust the tech support people anymore), who said my only course of action was for him to schedule the next available technician to call me when they get off the phone. After waiting 35 minutes I received a call from a technician, his only recommendation was to do a factory reset on the iPhone and waiting a day or so to see if the problem goes away. Not exactly what I would call helpful…
I am going to be switching to Cogeco ‘s Digital Phone Service tonight, hoping that they can install it soon. My next challenge will be to try to wrestle my $50 deposit from the incompetent hands of the people over at Comwave.
Any suggestions on a good way to handle that?
I am having the same issues with accounting, pricing and techsupport.
There are no free trial period and no cancelation procedures.
Long distance is not reliable and too expensive.
Very bad company.
It has to be shut down and repay all money.
I had same problem, not on VoIP, but for long distance service. Most of the time numbers are busy. Customer service sucks. They think they have grown so much so they don’t need to care about customers.
I saw that they were now offering some long distance and cellular services. I can’t believe they’re still in business. Even though it’s been a couple of years now, I still cringe every time I see one of their cheesy ads on TV.
comwave??? cheap yes, reliable no !!!, i’ve signed up with them a couple of years ago and the service was not bad except for some times when it just didn’t work. for example last night i used it without any problems but tried to use it this morning and found it dead [the phone]. i contacted them with my fido and was told to check all my connections and talking to their tech used up my $25 credit without getting anywhere. later my step-son came home and we contacted them via SKYPE and both myself and step-son followed the instructions from their tech meticulously but again to no avail. since the trouble shooting procedure required connection changes to our router and modem and to their phone box we lost the skype connection. we re-established same only to be told “don’t you have a house phone or cell phone??”,meanwhile we used 2 computers for trouble shooting and i asked myself “why is this guy asking me for a house phone or another cell phone ???” i thought comwave was my house phone or do i need 2 with comwave ??? hahaha, what a joke this company is !!!.
I’m happy to hear they have been making some progress on their support issues and technology… What a pathetic waste this company is, there’s no way they should be allowed to be the lifeline for any Canadian homes in case of an emergency.
I AGREE WITH EVERYTHING STATED ABOVE
It’s amazing that this company is still around, nearly 4 years since I’ve put this article together it is still often my most viewed post each month. Just goes to show how many disgruntled customers they have. I had hoped they had disappeared when I stopped seeing their silly looking commercials on T.V.
Thanks for the feedback.
Comwave sucks. I subscribed to their long distance service and could never use it as their local access numbers were not available at the locations I travelled to. Finally after a month and a half I called in to cancel. They called me back and I was sure I wish to cancel. The person calling said he can give me acess numbers and will call me in an hour as I was driving. I never got the call though they claim to have left a message. If they had they should have followed it up. No that is not their problem. I have been invoiced again and the custome r service says that it is not thier job to cancel accounts. I have to call a different number and that has to be done the next day as they close early in East and I am in Vancouver. I will be damned if I ever even look up their ads even. Till date I have not made a single call using their service.
If you want to cancel with comwave and get away from them then you will have to file a claim against them in Small Claims court.
You can cancel your credit card but they will continue to invoice you.
If you don’t pay your invoices they will report you to the credit bureau.
They will charge your credit card without your consent.
They do not have a valid contract. A valid contract is only valid
if you sign it and if the contract is legally enforceable.
If there is even 1 item in a ‘Contract’ that is legally un-enforceable
the contract is void on it’s face.
Don’t be scared to take them to court, the small claims court is there
for the consumer not the company.
hi there , i was a comwave employee, lots of people were fired because of telling the truth to customers.its a scam. its a company located in a basement of some building.(now i dont know) they made 50 million of apple so apple can use iphone name. customer service is bad, tech support is extremely bad, we were told to trap customers in a contract without asking them. bosses are bunch of fools, its a family business, half of the team is their family members. 20 ppl workin there all together, customer support, tech support, accounts and bosses they are fat in the head same as they look. extremely rude greedy and inhuman. a 8 by 8 room controls everything of their network. used stolen equipment. do not trust this company they are bad people. dropped out kids work there u don’t need any experience, even for tech support, if u do and u understand everything and u cant cheat ppl(small things are fine) but when it comes to tell a customer a bigger lie. u just cant do it. if u trust your team lead or supervisor and express yourself then u are fired next day. count your minutes and match with their long distance minutes they purposely put a glitch in the system-to charge extra minutes.be careful comwave is like a hiv virus if it gets you there is no cure trusttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt meeeeeeeeeeeee.
I have been trying to contact Com wave for the last two days but no response. I want to cancel my home phone service but it seems to be impossible to approach them.I don’t know what to do. Already written two emails to call me on my phone at their convenience.The customer care service has become the worst as even after calling and holding for hrs together no response.