“One customer may have to move his business [from New Hampshire] to Massachusetts because he can’t get [phone] service in his store.” — WMUR Manchester (3/13/09)

Third world phone service?  Now into spring, the saga of FairPoint continues with no end in sight.  Customer complaints achieve alarming proportions in all three New England states where FairPoint Communications assumed control of customers discarded by Verizon.

Across Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine, local media present disturbingly similar stories of customers left weeks without service, unable to reach customer service representatives.  Palpable frustration over what seems to be an endless litany of excuses about why things have gone wrong, and how things are “getting better” start to ring hollow.

Now there is a new complication.  Questions about FairPoint’s financial health are now openly pondered by the media, as FairPoint asks for a three month delay in paying back its debt.  The Associated Press reports FairPoint is struggling.  Even before the transition problems erupted, the company lost 12% of its New England customers in 2008.  The Maine Public Utilities Commission received 1,200 complaints about the company and the company’s stock price was rapidly declining.

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMUR Manchester Fairpoint Says Payment Delay Request Not Due To Customer Problems 3-13-09.flv[/flv]

Of course, no nightmare with a phone company is ever complete without them botching your bill.  FairPoint doesn’t disappoint, and as customers begin to receive their monthly statements from the new “transitioned” FairPoint, all too often they were wrong.  Customer payments were applied late or not at all, late fees charged even to customers on “autopay” plans, and new charges billed for lines that were disconnected.  Even customers on their way out the door were snared, as WMUR discovered from one Manchester resident who swore “I’ll never go back to FairPoint.”

Kate Bailey from the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission: “The level of service that FairPoint is providing to its customers is unacceptable right now.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMUR Manchester Hearing Will Be Held On Fairpoint Issues 3-31-09.flv[/flv]

More than 700 complaints about FairPoint were received by New Hampshire’s PUC in February.  More than 1,100 complaints followed in March.

In Maine, same problems, same nightmares, same excuses from company officials.  Small businesses were especially hard hit, relying on FairPoint for business telephone service.  One company e-mailed WMTW in Auburn, “we are a small engineering company and FairPoint cannot manage to get us our transferred phone service.”  Another wrote, “…a [representative] said he would be right back [on the line] and never did.  I guess instead of hanging up on people now, they just don’t come back to the phone.”

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMTW Auburb Maine Urges FairPoint To Improve Customer Service 3-18-09.flv[/flv]