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Review by amolecule 
Posted: 3.1 years ago
member for 3.1 years, 0 visits, last login: 3.1 years ago
 Silver Spring,Montgomery,MD
 $24 per month
 about 28 days
 Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
 "less expensive"
 "inept, bad customer service and don't know what they are doing"
 "not worth the money saved.. go with a reputable company"
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We don't have broadband.. luckily we went with Verizon fios, which we are happy with. But we wanted a regular phone line, and verizon if you have fios insists on having your phone through fiber optic lines too.. so you lose phone service in a power cut.. even though there is a back up for a while. So we were happy to find that Cavalier serviced our area and we decided to go with them for telephone.
it has been a series of disasters.
we were trying to transfer our old phone no to new house when we moved and started cavalier phone service. They told us this would be fine, so we arranged for our old service to be disconnected the day we moved.
We had outgoing service for 2 weeks with cavalier ( although they denied it was them several times), without incoming service as they never transferred our old no, despite telling us they were going to. Eventually they admitted they couldn't transfer the no as now it was disconnected and they had to give us a new no. So after about 3 weeks of this, we had a phone service with a new no.
We got our first bill and taxes were $30... I called to query, and they said we were being charged for 2 lines... We only ever had one line.. and most of that time it wasn't taking incoming calls as we didn't have a number that worked. They said they would alter the charges accordingly.
then yesterday we lost phone service. We called for repair to be told that they had disconnected us.. and we had to talk to customer care. Called customer care this morning and after denying it at first they then went to check and found that yes they had cut us off, as they were cancelling the line we never had in the first place. AAGH.. now it will take 3-4 business days to reconnect. as they have to work through Verizon.
Bottom line.. do NOT use Cavalier. They are completely inept and can't even deal wtih a simple new residential service. Their customer service is often rude, and they don't seem to be able to keep reasonable records.
Its not worth it.
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Review by danieljlevin
Posted: 3.1 years ago
member for 3.1 years, 8 visits, last login: 2.8 years ago
Ellicott City,Howard,MD
$39 per month
about 24 days
Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
"Phonom is nice; Fast DSL speed for price; DSL + VoIP Package; Good equipment"
"Available in select areas; General customer service reps incompetant"
"Good service at a fair price if you can get configured the way you should be"
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I've seen some of the reviews under this section and I really feel for you guys. I wanted to tell my story with them.
1. Transitioning from Verizon to Cavtel can be more interesting than it should be. Numbers port fine. You really need a cell phone though so you can survive the down-time. Ours was particularly complex since there were 4 lines coming to the house and we didn't know the numbers. In 2 conversions at 2 different locations we discovered that the switchover required human intervention (in the form of a vendor meet, and all the trials leading up to it). We're not sure who is at fault here. Eventually when they had people who knew what they were doing and why instead of the ones who just do what they've always done, our phones began to ring. DSL is static IP.
2. Transitioning from Cavalier Phone + DSL to Cavalier Phonom VoIP + DSL was really smooth in comparison. Converter showed up early. Phone was dead next day. Used cell to get configured and viola, VoIP works. Price is pretty good.
3. To their measuring site I get about 10Mb/s D/L. They don't measure U/L. To other sites it ranges depending on things I don't understand. I like speak-easy's meter. It consistently says 4Mb/s to DC D/L and 841Kb/s U/L.
4. To me Phonom has a slight advantage over most VoIPs because all I need to do is get to Cavtel's servers and that's the smallest hop possible. Other services have a slice of internet between you and them where anything can happen. Just my thinking. Of course you cannot take your VoIP box with you like you can with other services.
5. Another thing I like about their service is they use hardware that prioritizes the VoIP data over the computer data. I realize you can do some configuring on some routers, but I don't have to. Their box is first off the DSL modem and they control the throtling. When they used the Innomedia VoIP boxes, you could get 2 lines out of it ($15 more for second Phonom line). New boxes have 4 ethernet ports and only one line. We never used the second line.
6. I've seen other VoIP complaints regarding faxing. We don't receive faxes over it, but when we send them, it works great.
7. Cavtel doesn't seem to know if residential voice-mail has web access capability or not. My belief is that you do not. This is unfortunate, since it's pretty standard now with VoIP.
8. No way to forward when service is down. This should also be standard like at most VoIP providers.
9. Had a problem for a log time where Voice Mail picked up on 4th ring (that's 3 rings if you have a caller ID phone. Called up 2 times to get it fixed. No success. Wrote to feedback e-mail and got a call next day. Jeff was great! Now phone rings as long as we want. They also sent me latest VoIP hardware (free) to address potential issues with need to reset Inno Media VoIP box. We'll see if I can get more 9s reliability now.
Followup comments:  
memser
@cavtel.net
| OK experience with CavTel DSL for years . . . I'm 17,200 feet from the CO and grandfathered in with CavTel DSL and I've had them ever since they offered DSL service here in Va. Beach. Since I'm so far away, they uncapped me and charge me the cheapest rate: I get around 400 Kb/s down. The only real problems I have are that I'm at the cable end and there was only one working copper pair (and I have two lines - Verizon once did a repair and switched my DSL to the phantom pair and it was a pain to get it switched back, but that's Verizon). Because Verizon owns the copper, they would never really fix the poor line quality caused by the old underground cable. Then last summer, when Verizon installed their FIOS cable, they cut _my_ underground cable. Now I've got a "temporary" drop run from up the street, but my line quality is soooo much better. If I ever drop CavTel, Verizon won't let them hook me up again. I keep them because they give me a static IP and I can run any server I want, but my main Internet access is via Cox; I do route DNS through CavTel because the Cox DNS servers are not as reliable and I still use my CavTel mail address. The CavTel DSL tech people on the phone are not useful, but CavTel DSL has been so reliable for me (and more reliable than Cox), I haven't needed their help; when I have called for a POTS problem, they have always been very quick to respond and fix it the first time. | |
| tacoisleet
join:2007-04-18
Dendron, VA
| ** PLEASE READ ****** Basically any complaints against the service on due to the customers incompetence. The majority of people who call in do not follow instructions on the setup, or do not know how to configure their IP address. Another thing that these unintelligent people do not know that we use STATIC IP address so they hook up a router, and CALL CAVALIER TO SUPPORT THEM WITH SETUP, they are ignorant can't realize the concept that the router is acting as a DHCP server, so ONLY the router needs to be configured with the IP address, try to explain this one to a brainless one. Most of the complaints I've seen on this msg board are just due to ignorance in dealing with technology. *Noting* besides problems on the VERIZON side line which they own, most of the phone problems also lie on the users side, they either have the phone off the hook or just their phone has gone bad (which they will never accept this statement); techs can tell where on the line the exact problems lies if there actually is a problem.
Summary of Cavalier problems
10 % lies on the hardware side 90% in the cu stupidity
If you have some sort of education please read some of the negative comments some people have left and recognize how brainless they really are. | |
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Review by j1000k
Posted: 3.1 years ago
member for 3.7 years, 13 visits, last login: 282 days ago
Parkville,Baltimore,MD
$25 per month
about 7 days
Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
"(used to be) Price."
"Awful technical support, unstable connection with abysmal latency and packet loss"
"may work in your area fine, but I'm considering leaving"
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For surfing Cavtel is fine, not cable connection fast, but not cable price either. I've been a subscriber since 2003. First year was fine, happy with speed, service, everything. Then my uploads started to hang. I'd be uploading 13 or 14 7 MB pics to Smugmug and I'd get connection reset by peer time out, or socket write errors. Tried different uploaders, consulted smugmug, came here and ping plots showed 10-15% packetloss. Called cavtel, line tested with 10% packetloss, so they came out. (this problem is intermittent BTW) They tested it at the computer and it came out clean, within 10 minutes they tested it at the NID and it was +10% again. So they left. Said that VZ was going to come out and check the pair. VZ tech took down the voltage checked the line and said it was clean, fixed the ground wire at my NID and left. Then I got the litany about it being my nic, my router, my virus protection, my firewall. But it never got any better. Finally they suggested upgrading off of the reach DSL to ADSL this (and 100 dollars to upgrade) fixed it for 5 months and now it is back testing at 15% packet loss. They're tests from them to me come out clean, but it doesn't seem to be the problem anyway.. The problem seems to be father upstream. Tonight I emailed them (after I could not upload even a 400KB file) and told them I am going to send them ping plots every day for a week and smoke ping results, they have a week to fix it or I am going to Comcast. I've heard of people having no trouble and blazing speed on Cavtel...my service down never tops 600 kbps and up hovers around 30 kbps. When it worked it was fine, but now that it doesn't they don't seem to give a poo about making it right.
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Review by Couriant7
Posted: 3.2 years ago
member for 3.4 years, 5 visits, last login: 2.4 years ago
Richmond,Henrico,VA
$50 per month (month by month)
about 14 days
Cavalier
CLEC party: Verizon
"Reliable connection $25 phone plus $25 for DSL."
"Bad customer service / tech support / you name it."
"Wouldn't recommend them if you paid me"
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At first the service was great, but then we ordered the TV package too (Broadband TV) and it went downhill since.
After ordering the service, the person said they will need to do tests and then an engineer will contact us to arrange the install within a couple of weeks. A month went by without no calls. During that time, I recieved a modem with no letter or anything other than the IP information that they gave you. One person told me that I shouldn't have been sent the modem. Another person on a seperate day said I needed it for the 'new system'. (that being the faster speed one). I used the new modem and the speed was about 5x more faster than the original DSL that I had.
Then I was disconnected from the internet service for 3 days. Reason? I don't know. They did get me back online and then exactly one week after that, I was completely disconnected, phone included for A MONTH! Back and forth I talked to Cavalier and finally someone came out and checked the phone line. The dude said that he couldn't get a tone. Then gets worse.
I get a call from Cavalier asking if I purposely ordered a disconnect from Verzion. Obivously I didn't because I was in service with them. Apparantly someone had ordered a disconnect and I had to wait another week to get the line back up. Once it finally came back up, the phone line was so distorted I couldn't use the phone. To this day it still does it, not as bad but it's there.
After all of this ordeal I'm switching back to Verzion.
It goes to show that you get what you pay for.
Also I know a worker for cavalier and he has mentioned that the company is in disarray (no way Capt. O) and will be bought out by Comcast.
COMCAST: DONT BUY THEM OUT!
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 Review by UnaFragger
UPDATED: 3.2 years ago
member for 7.7 years, 436 visits, last login: 19 days ago
Richmond,Henrico,VA
$50 per month (month by month)
about 23 days
Cavalier
CLEC party: Verizon
"Low pings, Reliable connection, Awesome Price, Static IP, Can share over a router, OMG fast."
"No coordination or communication between the different departments"
"I think that for the price, it's definitely worth it."
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I had phones up and going on the date they were scheduled. However, they forgot that I needed to get DSL as well. I had to call and get my port switched over for DSL. What I believed was their 4mb/1mb ADSL service.
About 3 weeks later, I had my phones back on, and DSL service hooked up. They sent me a Paradyne modem, and the phone filters that I needed, as well as a line, the IP address, and Information packet. Once all the equipment got to me, It took about 5 minutes to set up. Went to test it, and found out that it was running at about 380k/380k. WHAT?!
Called them to find out why I wasn't getting this SUPERB ADSL service that I've heard about.
"You're out of range."
"No, I'm less than 5000 feet from the CO."
"Oh. We'll have to put in to get a manual test done."
"I already had one done. They told me that I was less than 5000 feet from the CO."
"We have no record of that. Do you remember the name of the rep that took your original order?"
"I've spoken with about 15 different people. No, I don't." (I guess I should have written that one down)
That was later cancelled when I found out that my CO Doesn't support ADSL. Nothing cavtel can do about that. You'd think they would have told me that, instead of I'm out of range. They upgraded my 384k/384k service to 960/960, which is the same price. It's much more tolerable now.
As for the good points, they have no problem with connection sharing (as most cable providers do), they give you a static IP, provide 5 email addresses, and 3 MB of web space per email address. For 50 dollars a month, I get great phone service with all the features, and 960k/960k (which actually tests at about 765 both ways), and a good solid ping to all my favorite gaming servers.
It's definitely not as fast downloading as the 3Mb/256Kb that I got from Comcast, but they charge about twice as much for JUST the internet. I'm satisfied. The customer support communication problems are super annoying though. I probably had to call them about 20 times. Of about the 10 times someone was supposed to call me back, only ONE of the people did. I started getting names and numbers and calling them back myself. Went much better after that. They probably all know me by now. But hey, whatever works!
Update: I still have yet to get over about 650kbps on a speed test. Sort of disappointing. But, still not bad for the money. I can't wait until ADSL2 is available at my CO.
Update 2: My CO was finally upgraded to ADSL+ (?!), and I was upgraded to the 10Mbps/1Mbps service. I've run a lot of speed tests, and although the speed does vary ~3Mbps, I still get an average of around 10. I've seen it hit as high as 13Mbps (over 1.3MB/s downloads!!!). My upload speed is pretty much topped out at around 800Kbps, but that's not all that important. The download speeds are blazingly fast, and rock solid. If this service is available in your area, go for it.
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Review by CossackRaid
Posted: 3.3 years ago
member for 3.3 years, 2 visits, last login: 3.2 years ago
Cockeysville,Baltimore,MD
$49 per month
Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
"Slightly less expensive than Verizon"
"Poor line quality, calls ring back if you hang up too soon"
"AVOID"
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For more than 4 years I've been dealing with phone service from Cavalier telephone. They seemed to be less costly than Verizon for average residential servcies (call waiting, caller ID, voicemail). And it ended up being slightly less expensive (about $5) with a number of major caveats--
tech support as has been previously reported, is subpar
calls themselves have a tendency to ring-back - IE I receive a call and hang up before the calling party does - it re-rings the line and continues to re-ring until you ignore it for the 6-7 rings it takes to go to voicemail. If you pick up, it just redials you until you ignore it. Only way to avoid is to make sure you stay on the call until the Cavalier switch actually disconnects you. A real pain. Tech calls have no response.
So after my automatic payments failed to post for the 3rd time (separate instances over the 3 years) and the 2nd time this resulted in a suspended line, I'm back to Verizon who now is cheaper and includes the same services as the original Cavalier plan.
Could I now try to get a new Cavalier plan that's less than Verizon?
Probably. But what I'd get is a plan that's indeed "less" - it may be cheaper by a couple dollars, but it is also cheaper in the areas that matter - performance, value, features and reliability.
Followup comments:
Bongo
@comcast.net
| Pretty good I have had their phone service for about 6 months now with no trouble. I used to get wierd calls in the middle of the night that sounded like crossed lines but I never heard it any other time. Anyway I still can't figure it out.
Cavalier isn't the best but believe they are on their way! They realize how bad they have been and are now in the middle of merging with Talk America(Which by the way if you are a new customer wait a while... Mergers can be messy especially Cavalier style)! But I beleive they are going to improve very shortly. | |
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Dopey789s
@comcast.net
| omg Their customer service is terrible. They act like they are the customers are bothering them! HELLOOOO IT'S YOUR JOB!!! I have called many of times and if it's anything more then checking a balance then you get an ear full of pure attitude. it's terrible. Every once in a while you get a great customer service rep that goes above and beyond. They don't belong at cavtel and if they do they should be managing rather then being surrounded my idiots all day long.
Bottom Line cavalier is not that bad unless you need to call them or you are changing your account around a lot. if you get it and leave it a lone your fine lOL | |
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Review by herbalgerbil
Posted: 3.3 years ago
member for 3.3 years, 3 visits, last login: 2.5 years ago
Reston,Fairfax,VA
$77 per month (12 month contract)
about 7 days
Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
"Reliable DSL if you live close enough to a Verizon CO"
"Fees, Weak signal, Poor customer service for all non-Internet issues"
"Avoid."
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My complaints are not with the DSL service which has been good, but with the phone company itself. It started off OK and we referred friends. But our friends didn't like the service, which is understandable. We were embarrassed for recommending.
A number of times we've found invalid charges for calls, operator charges, etc. When called to correct, was toldwould receive credit on my next bill, but the credits never get applied!! This has happened several times. We have found customer service very rigid and uncooperative when calling.
At one point, someone changed the address on the account without authorization. First they said it was my wife. Then they said it was me. They took notes from previous calls and were rude about the whole thing. It was very bureaucratic to resolve this simple problem. Unbelievable! .
Also there are many "gotcha" fees added on to the bill. 1/3 of the monthly bill is various fees, some are taxes, but others are pure "cake" for the company's profit. On top of that the outgoing signal is very weak; people struggle to hear us, even on local calls.
We thought we would support an underdog phone company, but certainly wont choose this company next time around.
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Review by Ruben1132
Posted: 3.3 years ago
member for 3.3 years, 0 visits, last login: 3.3 years ago
Richmond,Chesterfield,VA
$50 per month
about 14 days
Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
"Fast connection line"
"Some shaky tech support"
"Good service if you live close to CO but patience is requiered sometimes"
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Well I read a lot of bad reports from people who use Cavalier and I've got to say it was the best DSL and phone company I've ever used. They told me it would take a week so I had to wait a while, I finally received the package on my door exactly a week after i signed up. It took 2 weeks to get the actual phone and DSL running. I had called them and they said they would send someone out to my house, they did and it worked perfectly. I had signed up for and got 10 Mbps at exactly $50 dollars a month also with cavalier's telephone service. Also as an added bonus I got a static IP address. The only problem was when they sent the modem and wiring, it was a little confusing at first. You actually have to figure some stuff out but not all. They sent me my IP address and it worked fine. I was running 10 Mbps service even through stormy weather, it never lagged and since I download large files a lot it was perfect.
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Review by mikeypm13
Posted: 3.4 years ago
member for 4.9 years, 4 visits, last login: 2.3 years ago
Philadelphia,Philadelphia,PA
 Business customer
Contract price not specified.
Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
"Was afforadble"
"Tech support is non existant. Engineers are a joke.No internal communications within Company"
"Its not worth the savings, you will loose the saving in loss of business"
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I don't even know where to begin. My oragnization has Cavalier for Point to Point T1/DS3 lines AND for local POTS lines. The lines were installed with no coordination knocking our sites offline, deleting their bvoicemails and leavingthem with no communication. Can you say TOTAL LOSS OF BUSINESS. ALso. When a T1 line goes down, not only is there no dependable number to call (they keep switching) then 99% of the customer support have no Idea they even SELL Data T1 lines and what to do with you. They wuill transfer you around all day from department to department looking for someone who has ANY clue what to do. Days pass before you can even get a ticket placed correctly and getting them out to the site to troublshoot is almost non existant. They are litterally the single worst business decsion I have ever help to make. I regert it everyday!
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 Review by jsmarkbrown
Posted: 3.4 years ago
member for 6.9 years, 506 visits, last login: 85 days ago
Baltimore,Baltimore City,MD
$25 per month
about 14 days
Cavalier
CLEC party: Cavalier
"none"
"pick any topic and i can mention a bad point"
"I can't put into words what a bunch of screwups they are."
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I live 2000 ft LOOP length from the co... yet here is my last speed test done tonight..... Download Speed: 3600 kbps (450 KB/sec transfer rate)
Upload Speed: 239 kbps (29.9 KB/sec transfer rate)
They have been working on this issue since the day my service went live (two weeks) and still haven't found a tech who has the knowledge to fix it. They keep giving excuse after excuse, yet I am still stuck with speeds I could have gotten had I stayed with Verizon, who ,although were slow, were extremely reliable. I wouldn't recommend cavtel to my worst enemy. BTW... I am not on reach dsl, I am on cavelocity. These people are the bottom of the barrell when it comes to tech support. Each time you call you get a different answer. Don't take my word... order it for yourself and see.
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