I just got another call this morning from a sales rep at CBeyond and he told me that, I quote, "You need me more than I need you." After he told me how we could work together to build both our businesses, of course. If you think this is an isolated incident, it's not. Even their higher ups use the same lines. At a recent VAR event, one regional sales rep said, "You should tell your customers about us because I have sales reps calling every company and they will hit your company." Albiet, as threating, but I figure you'll get the point.
To the "current employee" Who wrote on 19-08-2008 20:13. I don,t know where you came up with the retention rate of 99%. Possibly your ***? No company has a 99% retention rate. Also - there is a current Class action lawsuit filed in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey against Cbeyond and its founder, Chairman, President and CEO, James Geiger, with violating Sections 10(b) and 20(a) of the securities exchange act of 1934. The case alleges the defendants made specific misstatements designed to hide the fact that Cbeyond was recording higher churn rate for its services, which permitted certain of Cbeyond's officers and directors to engage in insider sales of $39 million of Cbeyond stock at artifically inflated prices. Shortly thereafter, Cbeyonds stock dropped 20%. For a copy of this complete lawsuit contact Dustin Mansoor at 201-567-7377 or by e-mail at
Most of those supporting CBeyond on this site are right. They (Cbeyond) do hire a bunch of kids straight out of college and I am sure it is a great plce to work. But from a consumers standpoint, it has been nothing but trouble for us. Looking to upgrade our service, we gave cbeyond a shot. They promised us big saving promotions and inclusive cell phones (which turn out are NOT inclusive- in fact, you will pay for them although they have been discontinued and you could get them from Sprint for free). We were told our monthly bill would be $485 plus tax. It has never been less than $650. Cbeyond is a large company and as a consumer it is expect these types of incidents to happen from time to time. Problem is, I called and called, emailed and emailed and never once got any response. The one time I did actually get to talk to someone, they trasfered me and I somehow got disconnected. When I called back it went straight to the automated service which tells you to email the service department (that never responds). The primary problem I have with Cbeyond is not their service department. If they would have sold me what I bought, I don't think I would have needed their service department. When we purcahsed the Cbeyond package, we bought it because of 5 different needs we currently had. Cbeyond put it in writing that those services would be met. Out of the 5 we got 1. We paid for 5 but again got only 1. Now we needed the non-existing service department. One of our partners actually went to the Cbeyond office and was told that they did not offer the other 4. They still insisted on charging us for the undelivered services (full amount of the bill) and justified it with their admitted unexperienced sales staff and extremely high turn-over ratio of their sales staff. His suggestion was to wait 3 years until the contract is up and renegotiate. So the Cbeyond system works as such; the sales staff is coached to do anything to get them signature on the contract, the non-existing service department is told to ingnore all complaints.; the management blames everything on emplyees who have only worked there for a couple of weeks and are no longer working there.
That being said, don't take anyones advise here. Do your own homework. Ask the sales rep how long he/she has been working for CBeyond? Ask if he/she has ever had a complaint? Ask if Cbeyond is a member of the better Business Bureau in your area (Cbeyond has been suspended from the BBB in our area due to the number of neglected complaints)? If you are gutsy, tell them you are going to audio record the negotiation and sales pitch ( I wish I would have).
Be sure to do your Due Dilegnece with cbeyond. They have a nasty reputation as a "sell em' and stick em'" company.
3. Written by Cbeyond Employee, on 19-08-2008 20:13
Can you really fault an entire company based on the shortcomings of a single individual?
Listen to yourselves. Most of you who are ranting and raving can't even spell correctly. Sorry you're pissed, but for every single pissed off customer, there are 9 extremely happy ones out there. I've seen it first hand. Most people don't log on to pissedconsumer.com to give kudos, am I right?
We have a 99% customer retention rate. This is on a month-to-month basis when the customer is off contract. Explain that one.
If Cbeyond is such a bad company, how did we land partnerships with Cisco, Microsoft, and Blackberry?
I'll tell you one thing from personal experience, working for this company has changed my life. I was fresh out of college without a way to pay rent in this crappy economy. I got hired at Cbeyond, and while it has been by far the most challenging job I've ever had, I have grown in maturity beyond my years. My quality of life has only improved. Every day of work is about 10 hours long, and I don't mind it because of the quality of the people I work with.
There aren't a lot of opportunities out there today. This company gives a lot of college grads a chance. If Cbeyond used me, I hope if I ever take another job they too "use me" in the same fashion.
4. Written by pissed customer, on 27-07-2008 01:54
Andy Smit sales person of cbeyond is the Devil .. a liar . c beyond sales rep are full of lies.. avoid them. avoid c beyond or u be messed up for a long time...
I am amazed at how many poor souls take the time to give bad reports or complaints about this company, Cbeyond. I own some of their stock and am very happy. The vast majority of official reviews says something positive.
The people posting on this site seem to be people who have some personal vendetta. I have worked "sales" in the past when I was younger, however I found a passion in another area of work. Nonetheless, sales is very respectable, and very difficult.
If you take a minute to recognize, you will see that the majority of people complaining here, probably completely failed at their job working at cbeyond!
Every sales job has high turnover rate, so they are not "exploiting" anyone, that is a horribly inaccurate suggestion. In fact, anyone who says that about any sales job has no clue what they are talking about.
Cbeyond is not the best company on Earth, however it is very successful and they are obviously doing something right. If you can not admit this you are bitter for either being a past unsuccessful employee, or you are a no-risk-taking business owner, or you are a business owner using their service who is afraid to admit a 23 year old sales rep is better at selling and earning business than you are.
(i do not completely agree with their methods, but business is business)
6. Written by jonathan Stahle, on 09-07-2008 20:22
I have been in sales myself for years and I have never seen such a solid sales model....aggressive yes...successful....you bet. Whoever wrote that sales model at Cbeyond got it right, and the bundled services has only enhanced our business
7. Written by Used Car Salesman, on 08-07-2008 13:27
I have a girlfriend that left her home state to work there saying that it's the best oppurtunity that she could find. I know better, because I've been there, I've seen jobs like there where you just solicit and basically are a glorified telemarketer on feet. From a financial perspective they look to be a solid company, but I have no idea.
8. Written by Cbeyond..dont work there over , on 26-06-2008 14:31
Fresh out of college I accepted a sales rep position at Cbeyond. Yes, the sales techniques are a joke...I am with a commercial real estate group now, if I attempted to press as hard as I did at Cbeyond perspective clients would have nothing to do with me. Besides the job completely sucking it does give you an interesting perspective on "used car sales" mentality.
Don’t worry if you work there now...Sales is not like that anywhere else. People actually take you serious and respect your time when you have a product/service that they see value in...With out slamming it down their throats.
As mentioned earlier Cbeyond does exploit the *** out of post grads. The good thing is you can get the experience while getting used.
Doing some research to see what was new out there for CBeyond. This talk about sales tactics only skim the surface of their tactics. I am currently a CEO of several servers at corp. office that host several big clients. We signed with CBeyond because of their packages. Our ISP cost was high for our bandwidth needs, so we went with CBeyond for the so called cost savings. After the fact I was told when getting ready to sign the paperwork, is that the company is going under the "February BeyondMobile Handset Promotion". This allows for the amount of cell phones that we needed, they were free and no activation charge. CBeyond told me that they are cutting this deal because we were also becoming a partner for their products to sell to our clients as well and there is only a couple of days tell Feb. That allowed us to get $300 credit per month on our bill for the partner promotion. First bill came and charged $500 per BlackBerry that was discontinued by Sprint two years ago. Sprint is their cell carrier for the cell phones that CBeyond brands as their own. Also was charged $450 per LG 150, of which is discontinued by Sprint, I believe around the middle part of last year. CBeyond accepted and entered the contract in their system on 1/30/08 and now they say that I do not qualify for the Feb. promotion because the contract was accepted on 1/30/08, not in Feb. 2008. The sales person (would love to say his name on here) said that we were getting the Feb. promotion. I entered a dispute against the hardware cost of the cell phones on the first month billing. Now 4.5 months latter, there is no resolution, no follow up, no acknowledgment to my complaints. Once a week I inquire about it to several people at Cbeyond. They just keep saying that it was not accepted in Feb. Sense the charges are in dispute, the first month bill is over due, because I will not pay something that was not per agreement. Furthermore, this has disqualified us for the $300 partner credit, because the bill is past due. Keep in mind, our network has went down 4 times. 3 times were within CBeyond, 4th CBeyond was out system wide in the whole county. Considering that we host several clients in our datacenter, and was down over a total of 35 hours. You think that wouldn't hurt? Along with feeling like you were taken advantage of a smooth talker of a CBeyond sales and channel manager, so he could wrap as many deals before the end of the month in January, even telling them that they are getting the Feb. promo that was going to save us a lot of money is hardware costs. Think again about CBeyond, it is a negative experience that has a domino effect. Let alone the fact that they found out some of my clients and their locations and have harassed them and have new sales people every week showing up in their lobby. One of them made the CFO at one feel insulted and in-house counsel had to intervene. So, what about sales tactics? I can say I am totally pissed off about CBeyond, and when the name is mentioned to me, I can feel my ears getting hot.
10. Written by Former Employee, on 06-05-2008 13:15
The hard sales tactics are typical of anyone. Cold Calling, following up, appointment setting, getting separation etc. Telecom is one of the harder sells out there as far as a sales rep goes. 90% of the reps are fresh out of college and don't know much better. It's a method that has worked, and they exploit their new hires in the first few months to cold call and fill Cbeyond's funnel. If you think every outside salesperson would not walk into a door that says "No Soliciting" than they would never sell to anyone. All the numbers on that card you got probably go directly to that rep as there is a lot of stealing leads that can go around. Then again you never know, maybe they acted that way cause they were quitting and were equally unhappy with the company. Chances are there are at least 10 of your business cards circulating around the office so have fun with that. The managers micro manage the *** out of the reps. Counting business cards daily and marking them because they don't trust the reps to hit the "minimum of 50 doors a day"
Comments
Comments (13)
