8x8

We only use 20% of our max bandwidth at each site, have low latency, and have our firewalls set to best practice according to 8x8. Still, the service is unstable at all 3 locations. When level 1 support “escalates” a ticket it apparently means it’s just back in a queue that nobody checks until call (again) for an update. We’ve talked to the same agents at level one and “two” before.

The Virtual Office software is buggy, and they update it frequently sometimes totally changing functionality or removing features without listing it on patch notes. The video portion works well enough, even though it is laid out strangely compared to most video conf software. The call-in numbers are spotty at best. They recently made it so end-users can’t change their own voicemail passwords (they could before) – the IT staff has to do it because now you need to be the admin for the service. When we questioned support on why they did this, they told us “we don’t know”.

Once we had enough of dropping calls and “line unregistered” errors with support being non-existent we had to get out. I was willing to just part ways with 8x8 and consider it not a good fit. I tried contacting my account manager, Byoung, who typically responds after a day or two to talk about this. I couldn’t reach him, so we just called the main number and got in touch with Giselle who was knowledgeable and well-spoken and tried feverishly to talk us out of canceling. I was offered a device that we would put at all the sites that would help with the service. She told me she’d even get it for free for two months then the normal rates would apply.

I was confused as to why I was paying for phone service and to make it work I needed to purchase a device to put on my network at an additional monthly fee. After turning that down we got bounced back to my account manager. I talked to him and told him we just wanted out, no harm no foul. He said he was sorry and would get that process started.

That was weeks ago. I was told that canceling was for the “support group and we don’t talk to them” and that “we just make the ticket”. After a week of silence, I called again, and he had his manager “escalate” the ticket. I was again told that “we don’t deal with those guys directly”. After a few irate emails, I was told that the “escalation manager” escalated the ticket on the support side. I’ve never heard of such a title but whatever. So here it is a month after my call to cancel and nothing has happened.

I can’t get contact information for someone that can help us and when I talk to the sales/account people they just tell me they can’t do anything but put a ticket in. I guess even internally their tickets are treated the same way they’ve been treated for their customers. If you’re considering 8x8 please save yourself a headache. I feel that they are dishonest, and the support is an absolute joke. Nobody at this company takes any ownership, they just pass the buck and tell you they can’t help. Communication with them is terrible and it seems like internally they are a mess.

Their softphone app constantly crashes or interferes with other programs like Webex, Chrome/Firefox, VNC, Lync, Skype, Hipchat, etc. and often causes issues with computer sound (running Dell OptiPlex and XPS in this office) forcing a reboot to restore sound levels. The "meetings" part of the softphone app is a disaster. It's so bad we just ended up using GoToMeeting instead. The conference lines kept having a problem where if you called in with an iPhone people could hear you but you couldn't hear anyone else. Billing is absolute nonsense. My company's accounting team and IT got together with 8x8 trying to determine what we were being billed for and no one at 8x8 could actually tell us. It's been 6 weeks and we're still waiting on an answer. This company has been an absolute nightmare to work with. If you decide to be brave and use them, you'll regret it.

However, what we didn't know was that 8x8's support system is based on case numbers and individual service reps do not take responsibility to work with a business to resolve issues. They had assigned a case number to termination and a separate case number for continuing service. The rep who established the case for continued service did not close this other case for termination, or perhaps didn't even know there was another case which is also a problem.

So a few weeks after the clinic closed, we get an email saying we were being sent to collections for not paying our early termination fees. We never received a bill for these fees so had no idea this was brewing. After many hours on the phone with 8x8 for a problem that should have been simple to resolve, I was told a new case number would be opened to return to the agreement to keep the line open for the duration of the contract. I confirmed our payment method was up to date and logins were working and just was glad to be done with a very unpleasant ordeal.

So today, Jan 22, we get another email telling us we are being sent to collections and it turns out this other case was never closed. And of course I was unable to reach a human about this at 8x8. It seems that 8x8 does not coordinate internally regarding support for their customers. Support is also very disorganized and difficult to access. So buyer beware.

It took days to get simple responses. Lost a client because of his lack of professionalism, then after waiting 3 weeks for a return shipping label on the merchandise I purchased and sending emails every few days I finally get a condescending, obnoxious response saying he was busy with "actual clients" so he couldn't take 2 minutes to send me out the label. Another time he was away on vacation. Seemed like there was always an excuse. If that was the case he should have got me in contact with another sales rep as he was aware that time was a factor. I waited multiple times for over a half an hour to speak to someone about my return, they were ALWAYS rude, never gave me their name or any type of ID, and the phone call always magically disconnected mid conversation.

You'd think since they had my phone number on file I would get a call back after the "dropped" call... but no. Forget their web chat feature. Same thing. They refuse to give you a name, they were super rude, and will just disconnect after telling you to call the 800 number so you'd have to wait 30-40 minutes on to even speak to someone. Finally after almost a month I get a refund... kinda... It's not even for the right amount which I sent in multiple emails including screenshots of the bank deductions! I even added it for them since I know the level of incompetence. I literally could not have made up a worse situation to have had to deal with. I work with large phone vendors on a daily basis for my IT company and thought I'd give them a try for a small side job. Boy what a mistake that was.

I'm still dealing with getting the remainder of my money back. I have all the shipping details, email correspondence and phone conversations logged. Hopefully this helps someone avoid the nightmare of dealing with this company. See attached photo, I sent emails from 12/20/2018 every few days and I finally get a response 1/8/19 with a sob story about how the salesman can't respond and he feels bad all of the sudden... What a joke.

I finally received another email from a different sales rep (I opened a new sales ticket due to delays in communication with the first rep), and all they did was ask for my CC details. No secure payment portals, no direct debit details, no formal quotations. Just a single line email asking for CC details. What kind of company expects you to directly send all your credit card info by email? I'm glad they showed all their qualities before purchase as I feel I have avoided a huge headache with this company. Obviously they did something right in the early stages, but right now I don't think that company exists.

That day we advised we would find another service provider and have the number ported out to the new phone company, and that we DEMAND a refund of the almost annual service fee they had just billed to my credit card. That day we ported our phone number to MagicJack and purchased the MagicJackGO (12 free months phone service included), for only $35 (a savings of $325 each year). Our new MagicJack service has NO CONTRACT, no monthly bills. It includes UNLIMITED local and long distance calling to the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico & U.S. Virgin Islands, FREE MAGICAPP - Calls ring on your smartphone and premium features like unlimited texting included.

After our service was up and our phone number working on MagicJack, we called 8x8 to close our account. The 8x8 billing rep. was so disrespectful and rude, it shocks the senses that any company would put a wicked soul like this in a position to take calls from 8x8 customers. As of Jan. 7th 2019, 8x8 has failed to process the refund they've stated "WAS APPROVED" in November and again the first week of December. Called 8x8 billing department again today (01-07-2019), wanting to know why they have NOT refunded the over $300 they approve in two months earlier in November 2018, only to get the BS run-around stating that it WAS approved, but then the 8x8 supervisor that approved it later DENIED it. I'm an 81 year old widow woman living on a very small fixed income of social security and need that money to pay for my medicine. These people at 8x8 have no shame or conscience who they steal from.

Rather disappointed that on one at 8x8 really cares about my loyalty prior to needing to switch. I was told by the "cancellation department" that she gets a lot of angry calls over this. I asked why they need to charge this fee and she said, "because it's in the contract". Well, fair enough, I did sign the contract and I didn't change to a month-to-month billing cycle. Cost me $1000 I guess. In the meantime, they have lost any chance of any future business and lost ALL chance of any future referrals. I'm not an unreasonable customer, or someone looking to complain. Just letting everyone know what I experienced. I would have been helpful to know that I could have switched to month-to-month, but I think my sales guy wanted the extra fees he would get if I terminated.

2. I can never reach a live person. I expected to have some glitches in the beginning but couldn't believe how horrible customer service is. They want you to submit "cases" online and then wait for a response. Unfortunately that response can often come days or weeks later. That's not acceptable when my phones are not working. My business is dead without phones.

3. Each time I call I get the same recording "We're experiencing high call volumes." If that's the case all the time, then the company needs to invest in more people answering phones - or offer a service that works so customers don't need help. I NEVER got a problem solved in less than an hour!!! I cannot run my business if it takes an hour each time something needs adjusting.

4. The "deployment specialist" (Jacqueline) they assigned to me must have been new at her job. She couldn't answer most of my questions. And she never gave her phone number. The only way I could reach her was via email. I had to schedule a phone conversation at least a week in advance. I'm sorry but problems don't occur on a schedule.

5. NOT plug and play - I am a small business owner with 3 employees. I do not have IT staff or phone staff on site. The day the phones "went live," I had to pay my IT person $350 to be on site and help troubleshoot. Their system may work great for folks who are very tech savvy or have IT staff, but not for me. 6. The initial device they sent to allow VOIP to communicate with my traditional fax didn't work. But we couldn't test it ahead of "go live" so we were without traditional fax for a week - until they shipped a new device to me. My low tech office did not do well with eFax, sorry.

7. Cancellation - when I tried to cancel, they tried to charge me thousands of dollars in cancellation fees because I was outside their 30 day window. I submitted my request within the first 30 days of using their service but since the contract was signed 30 days before that, they said it was outside the 30 day window. I sent in 37 pages of emails going back and forth showing how much trouble I had with their service, how many times I'd had to call in, etc. After 4 phone calls, I finally got it canceled and they waived the fees. But it went 2 days into the next monthly billing cycle and they don't pro-rate. So I had to pay for an additional month of service I didn't use. I will never, never, ever use this company again and I recommend you stay far away unless you have many hours to devote to getting the service set up correctly. And then pray you have no issues.

My other problems? Here goes. My phone kept on getting disconnected from their server. I can't use a soft phone on my computer so that was my only option. It would take over 20 minutes to get tech support over the phone. They would tell me I need to talk to an IT person. I'm an older gentleman who is virtually technologically illiterate working out of a home office. Where am I supposed to get an IT guy? They told me to talk to my service provider? About what? I'm technologically illiterate. If I need to go back and forth it's going to be great waiting on hold over 20 min to talk to support about something I don't even understand and they were unwilling to get on the phone in a 3 way call with my service provider. They are my IT if they want my business.

To make it worse, I had a girl try to take control of the conversation by talking over me. Definitely not a good idea to try with me. Listen and address what I say. Since she wouldn't stop talking over me I got pissed and started yelling at her. She put me on hold. This was a problem I'd had almost from the beginning with them that lasted several days. it wasn't unusual to spend about 4 hrs a day to try and get help resolving the problem. finally, I did get someone who could help and didn't try to pass me off to an IT guy or the service provider. Most of their tech support is not well trained. It took about 5 days to find this one tech who could help me.

Moving on, you'll note they are always pushing their High Def Conferencing. The problem is getting good help to learn how to use it properly which someone tech illiterate needs. Their prepared materials were ridiculous. Those materials extolled the features and benefits but that's selling me on something I already bought. What I needed was teaching materials which they don't have. ** joke. Most of their support had to keep looking through their resources to tell me how to use it. So they weren't well enough trained and wasted both of our time. And since I don't have resources to refer back to, I have to keep calling back for lessons where I have to wait over 20 min on hold to get to talk to anyone.

So do you want to work with a company that makes unapproved charges to your cards? Do you want a company where they avoid talking to you about billing issues and resolving them? They really don't want to give you your money back when they take it and shouldn't have. Not very honest or reputable, at all. Do you want a company that can't teach you how to properly use their features? Do you want to constantly be on hold 20 min or more when you're trying to get help or resolve issues?

Do you want to work with a company that can't fix issues and keeps trying to pass the buck to non-existent IT guys or your service provider? Do you want techs who try to force control by talking over you rather than listening and addressing the issue at hand? Do you want a company you can't speak with a manager when you need to? One time instead of the manager I finally got to speak to my salesperson. This was fun. I'd demanded a call back.

Instead I got an email that did not properly represent the issue. On one attempt to speak with a Manager I got my salesperson who said he couldn't speak to me and hung up on me. All they had to do to avoid this review was return the money to me. I should have never been charged under a free trial. Instead they went to these lengths to avoid me. This is what they get. Again, I started the free trial 8/23. It's now 9/4 and all this has happened in this short time. Do you really want to do business with this company.

Update: you’ll all love this. Now billing is trying to say that charge was for taxes. Their quote for the entire month of taxes when I was first talking to them was $10 and change. So how do they come up with over $12? First problem with their lie. Next problem, I’d already paid the taxes for the free trial. No taxes were due. Lastly, I hadn’t agreed to continue with them past the free trial so any charges whatsoever for any future services were unauthorized and inappropriate. These people are liars and thieves that will say anything only for a few bucks. The company must be on financial very thin ice. That means they could go under at any time. That means your service could be interrupted permanently without any warning. Why else fight me so hard on money they hadn’t earned yet. Oh, I also filed a complaint with the FCC. Isn’t it stupid to risk an investigation over so little and keep fighting?

The conversation continued. This supervisor was going to reach out to the salesman and his manager to see if he could get the approval to refund the money stolen. I asked to be able to speak with that manager and was told I could not. It takes his approval for me to get my money back and I can’t give him my side of the story? Furthermore, if he gets an approval to refund me the money, it will take 30 days to process the refund. So they reach into my bank account, steal my money and say if they’ll give it back I can’t have it for another 30 days. You know what, 3-5 days many, 30? It only further supports my belief this is a company in financial trouble. Again, that means, if I’m right, service could end at any time permanently.

Is that what you want to sign up for? A company with an unreliable product, support that takes over 20 min to reach and most are poorly trained, no training on their features, steals your money, fights you tooth and nail to keep from refunding it to you, support that keeps trying to speak over you, a salesman who because I have a dispute about my bill says he can’t speak to me and hangs up on me rather than passing me on to his manager and if they should be so generous as to decide to give me the money they stole from me back that it will take 30 days? Is this a company you want to deal with? And this is all since 8/23 through 9/5/18. Not much time for so much to go wrong. This is why you should always get a full and free trial before you commit to these companies.

Update- Even a free trial doesn’t help. Found they billed me for something else along the way. I’ve tried leaving but the first problem was they changed the password on my phone so I could not reprovision it with the new VoIP provider I was going to. That wasted 2 days figuring out what the problem was and getting that fixed. Essentially, that was 8x8 stealing my phone by denying me use of it. If you’re bringing your own phones, don’t do biz with 8x8 for this and the following reason.

The next reason is harassment. Evidently their system is still trying to keep in touch with my phone even after I asked them to end my service with them. The way my phone reads their contact is as a telephone call with a 4 digit extension. It just rings and rings non-stop. My phone shows 24 calls from them all at once. I can’t talk to anyone else on my phone with that incessant ringing. They have to know this is happening. They say they have to scrub my number completely from their system but the dept that does that is closed for the weekend. Others at 8x8 have no clue about this. They seem desperate not to let a customer get away by making it impossible for a person to use their phone anywhere but 8x8. And the trouble getting money back from them? Again, I was told it would take upwards of 30 days. I’ve never had a debit card refund take more than 3-5 days from anyone else.

I forgot to mention that they originally told me with the video conferencing I could have 25 participants. Then it dropped to 15, now they tell me it’s only 5. And they can’t even teach me how to use it. I thought Ring Central was the worst. It took them years to get me this upset. 8x8 has done it in about a month. Stay away. Service terrible. Tech support a couple of good ones, the rest are jokes. Customer service has no clue what’s going on and unwilling to address problems. Billing when they shouldn’t be, repeatedly. If you try them, it’s at your own risk. These guys really have to be in trouble if they make it so hard to leave and get your money back. Who knows, maybe they won’t be around in a week and there will be a lot of surprised customer service who lost their service unexpectedly with no chance it will come back.

9/25/18 and I’m still having trouble with 8x8. I still don’t have the unapproved charges to my card refunded. My phone is still ringing incessantly. I had one of their techs confess it was their computers contacting my phone and my phone interpreting it as calls. They have made my phone unusable, they’ve ruined it. They are refusing to replace it along with refusing to release my service to the new VoIP provider. WTF is that about. I cancelled, flip a switch and let me go. They say it’s being processed. They say they require 30 day notice of cancellation. On a 30 day free trial? Am I supposed to tell them the first day I have their service I don’t want it anymore? Their processes need to be fixed. Stay away from 8x8. It’s always one thing after another. This is my own phone and they won’t let it go. They won’t let me go. I’m losing money because of them, Time for a lawsuit?

Any lawyers out there want this suit? It would be a PR nightmare for them. Was just on the phone with support trying to get this resolved. They put me on hold for 40 min before hanging up on me. This is the second time they’ve done this to me. Each time I was asking to speak with a manager which they will never allow. Also just learned when I called back and spoke with another tech support and he was reading back my prior ticket. I found tech support lies to cover themselves from management on their reports of the calls.

When we did have a problem, we were referred to tier 3 when our issue could not be resolved which guaranteed a call within 24 hours. Over the next 2.5 weeks I would call in every other day and be told my the rep that they would deliver a note and send an email saying no one was ever getting back to me. When someone final did, they accused me on not buying the phone from them which wasn't true and had nothing to do with the issue.

Finally we had to cancel service and were transferred everywhere trying to cancel. When we finally reached what was supposed to be the right department, we were put on hold and disconnected. This happened multiple times spending hours of our time. Ultimately we got an email asking if we really wanted to transfer the numbers as they were ported out so we responded that we tried to cancel multiple times... The lines were no longer with them and to cancel. WE received another bill and got transferred around and finally spoke to Kevin. Even though we forwarded email from month ago we sent to 8x8 saying that we wanted to cancel and the lines were not with them anymore and the fact he know lines were not used in over a month... We had to pay for that month of non-use along with another month. That is over 2 months of paying for a bill when the lines were not even with them. They have become crooks.

They finally agreed to cancel our account. BUT, took all of our prepaid services with no refund in lieu of a cancellation fee. So essentially, they got all our money and "allowed" us to cancel early. Beware - switched to RingCentral and have had no issues. Do your research before choosing them. If you have time for dropped calls, unreliable meetings and hours with tech support, they will be a great solution for you. If not - better look elsewhere.

When we did have a problem, we were referred to tier 3 when our issue could not be resolved which guaranteed a call within 24 hours. Over the next 2.5 weeks I would call in every other day and be told by the rep that they would deliver a note and send an email saying no one was ever getting back to me. When someone finally did, they accused me on not buying the phone from them which wasn't true and had nothing to do with the issue.

Finally we had to cancel service and were transferred everywhere trying to cancel. When we finally reached what was supposed to be the right department, we were put on hold and disconnected. This happened multiple times spending hours of our time. Ultimately we got an email asking if we really wanted to transfer the numbers as they were ported out so we responded that we tried to cancel multiple times... the lines were not longer with them and to cancel. We received another bill and got transferred around and finally spoke to Kevin. Even though we forwarded email from month ago we sent to 8x8 saying that we wanted to cancel and the lines were not with them anymore and the fact he know lines were not used in over a month... we had to pay for that month of non-use along with another month. That is over 2 months of paying for a bill when the lines were not even with them. They have become very corrupt.

Updated on 08/09/2018: I wrote a previous review and got a nice response from the folks at 8x8. I was excited that a resolution would be forthcoming. Instead, on my ninth day without working service on my app, I went on to check the status of my case with the company and it had been deleted. The sales rep that I have tried to contact will not answer his phone and his voicemail box is full. Unbelievable. Please do not try to do business with 8x8.

The support people are very nice but I spent about 100 hours on the phone and by email, trying to figure out the system and to find out whether it does what I need. Sometimes I felt like I was going insane. After I insisted, they said they will refund me for one month and let me out of the contract if I choose to leave in a month.

They do offer a decent flat rate for international calls and they do have good service to Dubai, where I call often, and where Skype and WhatsApp are not well supported. And it appears that they offer unlimited call recording, which I sometimes need. So I may stay with them because I need those two services and I want to move away from relying on Skype (Microsoft) and WhatsApp (Facebook). But I need to preserve my sanity and with this company that is questionable. I suggest you only use them if you need what they offer and can't get it anywhere else. And I hope they will actually refund me the one month and let me out of contract if I decide to leave in a month. Basically, the company is a mess. I feel badly for all the nice people who work there.

The long story: I was quoted $133.46 a month including all taxes and fees by salesperson Dedo ** in Febraury, began service February 22nd. I have this in writing via email. Received our first full bill on April 1st or 2nd for $164.84, attempted to contact Dedo via email and phone and gave some time for a response. First call to customer service on 4/12, was on the phone for at least 30 minutes, was told I would get a call back later that day or the next day. Never received a call back, called back on 4/16/18 was on the phone for 23 minutes just to be told I would definitely be called back this time.

No calls back, called back on 4/20/18 spending 44 minutes on the phone being told it was escalated to the sales managers Carl ** and Mark **, the phone operator told me she left 3 messages. No calls back by 4/24/18 so I called back requesting to speak to a manager, was put in touch with sales person Bill ** who stated that he would get in touch with Dedo and also emailed myself and Dedo stating that they would lower the bill $32 a month and credit us $32 for the bills already paid. That was at 10:51am and Dedo responded back via email on the same chain at 12:04pm the same day (April 24th): “Rob, I have opened another ticket to escalate the monthly cost discrepancy. This will be resolved shortly and you will be refunded the difference.” I was on the phone for 35 minutes that day.

Emailed Dedo and Bill and called on May 3rd. Spent some time on the phone as well that day at least 30 minutes. No answers or solutions. Emailed and left messages again on 5/7/18. No responses. Called customer service on 5/8/18, spent 57 minutes on the phone to be told by salesperson Dominic that manager Carl would call me back in 5-10 minutes, they would not let me hold. Dominic said he was literally looking at Carl who was 15 feet from him and Carl would absolutely call me back in 5 to 10 minutes, no call back.

On 5/10/18 called back, spent another 57 minutes on the phone. This time being told that this was being forwarded to “everyone” and the best they could do would be a one time $32 dollar credit, despite emailing the evidence that Dedo stated our bill would be $133.46 and we entered into the contract based on that number, therefore they were in breach of contract and we would be well within our means to exit the contract based on their breach. They stated that someone would get back to me “next week,” further explained that the response time is typically 48 hours, but with the weekend approaching it would likely be by Tuesday for some reason. To their credit, it ended up being a $64 dollar credit, so 2 months worth out of the 12 in the contract… Messaged on the support website Tuesday 5/15/18 around 1:30pm asking for an update. No answers at all.

Called on 5/17/18, a full week after the 5/10/18 call where I was told I would be called back within 48 hours, but because it was the weekend it would be Tuesday, so 4 business days, but I never received a call anyway. Waited to speak with someone for just under 30 minutes, spoke with Santiago who attempted to explain again to me that it was a mistake with the taxes and fees and I had to explain yet again that it was that we were quoted $133.46 including taxes and fees with no discussion at all that that amount could possibly be different. He spent about 20 minutes of bumbling around before finally telling me that he called and left a message for Carl the manager in sales and also provided me with Carl’s number to try myself if Carl did not get back to me on his own accord. I called at 5:38 and left a voicemail with a bit of an explanation and asking him to please call back. Left my number 2x on the voicemail.

Since then I have attempted to call Carl several times, once per day, each time leaving a voicemail with my name, a brief description of the issue and my number 2x. It is almost 2 months since the first contact and still no solution, still no contact from a manager. Our case is still open with no contact from the company. This is by far the worst customer experience I have ever had in any industry or with any product. It is a clear breach of contract (quoted one amount all inclusive and charging more).