The spark that lit the inferno of customer rage against FairPoint

The Day the Wheels Officially Came Off.  Saturday, January 31, 2009 was Transition Day for FairPoint, finally making the long-delayed switch from Verizon to their own systems.  It was the equivalent of leaving a pile of ‘oily rags’ next to those overloaded electrical circuit breaker boxes in The Towering Inferno.  Only it was the customers who were on fire.  Must-see videos to follow!

“Asinine.”  That’s how one FairPoint customer summed up FairPoint’s transition to its own systems and finally cutting the last ties to Verizon.  Because when the last ties were cut, so went her Internet access… for days on end.  Company representatives wished her “good luck” talking to Technical Services, because they couldn’t even find her account.  She wasn’t alone.  Tens of thousands of customers across three states were left hanging out to dry when FairPoint’s transition and support services collapsed, leaving customers with no answers, busy signals, and online chat customer support queues that literally took hours to reach the front of the line, if you made it at all.  WMUR in Manchester, New Hampshire brought cameras into FairPoint and challenged company officials to use their own support systems to get answers.  On camera, the company official discovered she had managed, over the course of more than a dozen minutes, to finally achieve #516 in the online support queue.

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMUR Manchester FairPoint Says It’s Bringing In More Help 2-3-09.flv[/flv]

It wasn’t pretty over in Barre, Vermont either, where WCAX picks up the story of one businessman who not only lost his e-mail access, but all of his e-mail dating back weeks.  FairPoint claimed it was working “around the clock” to fix the problems they spent an extra half-year preparing for.  Patience is a virtue with FairPoint, because this customer was asked to wait for “one minute” for assistance, and was still waiting six hours later:

[flv width=”368″ height=”208″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCAX Burlington FairPoint Switch Causes E-Mail Snafu 2-4-09.flv[/flv]

Meanwhile, up in Jeffersonville, in northern Vermont, customers were unimpressed, and left with empty e-mail boxes as well.  This owner of a car repair business was simply frustrated because he just didn’t know if something important was sent to him in e-mail, because he wasn’t getting any at all.  He talked with a reporter for WPTZ in Plattsburgh, because getting through to FairPoint customer service was mission impossible:

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WPTZ Fairpoint Transition Angers Customers 2-3-09.flv[/flv]

In Maine, no luck either.  Home based businesses relying on e-mail through FairPoint were simply on their own.  FairPoint “underestimated” the demand and was unprepared to cope with the failures, as WCSH in Portland reports:

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WCSH Portland FairPoint Internet Mess 02-02-09.flv[/flv]

But this party is just getting started.  Coming tomorrow, the governor has to intervene and the e-mail/online problems were just the beginning of the story, not nearly the end.