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An Oak Hill, W.V. contractor has said Frontier Communications’ unwillingness to pay a $1.6 million dollar balance is behind a layoff of more than 50 employees who handled cable work and phone installations on behalf of West Virginia’s largest phone company.
S&N Communications laid off the workers indefinitely Jan. 9, telling them the phone company had not paid the contractor.
Frontier Communications issued a statement indicating the “contractual relationship between Frontier Communications and S&N Communications has ended. Both parties consider such contractual arrangements to be confidential.” It had no comment about S&N’s claim Frontier had an outstanding balance.
Frontier has experienced several challenges providing phone and broadband service in West Virginia. A plague of copper thefts, poor service, and a broadband service interruption last Thursday affecting 9,000 residents have all presented problems for Frontier’s customers. On Sunday, a squirrel chewed through a fiber line that disrupted service for hundreds of customers in Brooke and Ohio counties, also knocking out service for Brooke County’s 911 center and sheriff’s office.
[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WVNS Ghent Telecommunications Company in Fayette County Lays Off Workers 1-11-12.mp4[/flv]
WVNS in Ghent, W.V. reports on the layoffs at S&N Communications. (1 minute)
Awesome… S&N is being contracted by Frontier to hook our Cell tower up behind us… I should have known they’d find way to screw it up.
I work for WD Wright and Frontier also owes them over a million dollars . They chose to pull out and layoff around 60 employees also.
I’m not shocked at all, but did notice something today.
S&N was back working here on the fiber lines, they started yesterday and did more today, now it seems the trucks are gone completely. They had been parking them at the Frontier office. Not sure what to think now.
We had a reader drop me e-mail to report:
…”Regarding the story about S&N Contracting having to lay of 50 workers due to Frontier Communications non-payment for services rendered… You may want to know, that the Contractor who handled the whole northern part of the State for Frontier backed out 4 days earlier than S&N and had to lay off closer to 70 employees for the same reason…”
It looks like this phone company can pad bills for customers, but can’t always seem to pay the ones they owe to others.