Cavalier and C2: Small Businesses Enter at Your Own Risk

There have been few vendors out there that have angered me as much as the infamous Cavalier/LDMI/Talk America - whatever, take your pick on what their name is this week. Being a small business IT consultant part of my job is to find decent, affordable telephony and Internet service solutions and I have had the unfortunate first hand experience of working with this company. To be fair, in the first 3 months of working with them (over a 18 month process) things were fine. The remainder of the time was a nightmare for my clients. Installations were botched, service was shaky at best, telephone and technical support were next to nonexistent. When you did receive support it took 4 days for a ticket to get completed. There wasn't a single facet of the Cavalier service that was good.

Well, let's talk about their people then. If I thought their service was bad, their CSR's and salespeople were worse. I have since spoke with peers that worked at Cavalier in sales and they told me first hand about their terrible sales tactics and lack of ethics. Things like making empty promises, changing contracts after signatures were given, and long contracts with no way out clauses were a common business practice. This is why people are filing complaints with the State of Michigan because Cavalier's gig is up.

Sitting at home the other night, I see a corny, low-budget commercial for something called C2. This just happens to be Cavalier's home telephone and Internet service. I laugh out loud at their proclamation of how they are "partnered with Google" and how using their service you get access to Google Apps. Obviously, anyone has access to these tools and I highly doubt Google would waste their time with such a joke of a company. Amazing on how such an example for the "C2 service" marketing speaks to their business practices by making such deceptive "offerings."

Cavalier, in any environment, is a joke. They have no room in the small business, home, or any market until they make some serious infrastructure changes and clean up their act. I received a phone call from a friend who is high up at AT&T the other day - he was giving me a heads up that Cavalier is apparently not paying their bills to AT&T and they are in danger of being shut off for all LDMI based customers in any state. What a laugh I had at that. Cavalier can't even pay their bills for the copper they rent from AT&T and as usual, their customers will pay for it.

My advice - when looking for phone or Internet service - avoid LDMI, Cavalier, Talk America (whatever) like the plague.