SubscribeOne of the major consequences of having insufficient experience and resources running a telecommunications network FairPoint inherited from Verizon is that when something goes wrong, it often turns into a catastrophic service failure that leaves people without service for days on end.
As we continue to watch the teetering FairPoint Communications lurch towards either a “white knight” rescue or bankruptcy court, ponder being one of 12,000 Vermont residents who suffered through a DSL service outage that lasted nearly a week this past June.
“The first day I was mad, the next day I was angry, the third day I was begging for Internet service so I could continue on with day to day activities of running a business,” said Bret Knapp, co-owner of Hilltop RV Center in New Haven.
Knapp relies on his FairPoint DSL service to stay in contact with his customers.
Knapp spent hours on the phone with FairPoint customer service representatives in Texas trying to resolve the problem to no avail. At one point, after 50-60 calls, a FairPoint representative hung up on him.
Beth Fastiggi, a FairPoint spokeswoman agreed the problems were unacceptable.
“We are making significant progress; internally, we still have a lot of work to do,” she told WPTZ news.
The state telecommunications regulator in Vermont told the station complaints regarding FairPoint arrive daily from across the state.
http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WPTZ Plattsburgh FairPoint Outage Affects 12,000 Vermonters 6-10-09 .flvWPTZ-TV Plattsburgh covers the FairPoint DSL outage that wiped out service for a week for 12,000 Vermont residents. [2 minutes]
Other stories of interest:
- Bankruptcy Watch! FairPoint ‘Swirling in the Bowl,’ Hurtles Towards Bankruptcy; Groups Opposing Deal Say “I Told You So”
- Get the Money Fast: FairPoint Owes New England Nearly $3 Million in Bad Service Fines
- Special Report: The Lessons of FairPoint – A Tragedy in New England – Part Eleven
- Special Report: The Lessons of FairPoint – A Tragedy in New England – Part Four
- Special Report: The Lessons of FairPoint – A Tragedy in New England – Part Seven
Hello, Beth Fastiggi from FairPoint correcting an innaccuracy in Mr. Dampier’s article, “12,000 Vermont residents who suffered through a DSL service outage that lasted nearly a week this past June.”
FairPoint experienced an Internet outage on June 8 affecting about 12,000 Vermont customers. However, the duration of this outage was less than 8 hours, NOT nearly a week as stated in Mr. Dampier’s article.
While we regret that Mr. Knapp had difficulty with his service, Mr. Knapp’s specific service issues were isolated to his business and were NOT a result of an outage that affected multiple customers over an extended period of time.
FairPoint employees have worked tirelessly over that past several months to improve the customer experience in northern New England since we transitioned to our own operating and support systems in February 2009. With the improvements that we have made in our internal processes and systems, it would be extremely unlikely that a customer would have a similar experience today.
It is to laugh. My DSL service from FairPoint was regularly going down for days before I finally threw in the towel and switched to the cable company for service.
My neighbors still have problems, and when calling customer service they get put on hold forever or hung up on. The last time their service went out, it reminded me of my last experience… five days before a service appointment, and then the repair person said it was in the cable and they had to refer it to someone else, who they never heard from.
They canceled service too.
I used to think Verizon was a pain to deal with until FairPoint took over and I realized how much worse it was going to get. I think the number of people fleeing this company for any other option speaks a lot louder than the empty promises we’ve gotten from FairPoint for months and months.
Nothing personal Beth, but this entire experience has been a total disaster from day one. I’m just lucky I’m not getting billed hundreds of dollars for service I canceled.
Both the video representation, and the response about it seem worse than the way TWC handles their customers, and I didn’t think you could get worse than TWC. I feel sorry for ANYONE having to deal with Verizon, or their leftovers as well, and when my phone service agreement it up with them, I will NEVER have anything to do with them or their faulty services EVER again, no matter who owns the hardware! As was said by Super Chicken, I offer to anyone else picking up the leftovers from another company….”You knew the job was dangerous when you took it Fred.”