The Charleston Gazette

While the eastern seaboard begins to assess the damage of several feet of water invading New Jersey and New York, West Virginia continues to contend with several feet of heavy snow left by Hurricane Sandy. More than 8,400 customers and climbing have reported service outages to the state’s largest phone company — Frontier Communications, which has crews contending with storm-damaged infrastructure ranging from widespread power outages to downed trees and utility lines.

Although parts of the state anticipated heavy snows from Sandy, cities further south including Charleston were unprepared for the wallop of wet, heavy snow that was expected to remain further to the north. Sandy’s heaviest precipitation bands were on the west side of the storm — bad news as far west as central Ohio and Kentucky. While temperatures remained in the 50’s further north, the cold core of Sandy resulted in precipitation falling largely as snow in the Appalachians.

As of noon, more than 200,000 homes in the state remain without power, which also impacts Frontier Communications’ operations.

Sandy knocked out power to at least 32 of the company’s 230 central offices in West Virginia, but the company reports all but three are still running with the assistance of backup generators — some acquired after last summer’s derecho, which knocked out power at half of Frontier’s switching offices.

Frontier says it is trying to get the remaining three switches back in operation, but some remote locations remain inaccessible because of poor roads and downed trees. Tucker County is reportedly among the most difficult to reach.

West Virginia’s Panhandle region has an estimated 1,000 customers without Internet service as of yesterday, particularly in hard-hit Jefferson, Berkeley, and Morgan counties.

Although customers may find their landline phone service working, broadband service could be more intermittent because of power outages affecting remote terminals that help extend service into rural locations. Those are vulnerable to electricity interruptions which Frontier’s Dan Page reports are widespread across the state, with the exception of the Wheeling area.

Frontier won’t say how many customers in West Virginia are currently without service, but noted many will have to wait until power restoration efforts are complete. Frontier’s crews have secondary priority and will repair services after electric service crews move on.

The storm impacted Frontier customers all the way west to Indiana, where fewer than 1,000 customers were without service in the Terre Haute area.

Any customer experiencing trouble with their phone or Internet should call Frontier at 1-877-462-8188, option 2 to request repair (or 1-800-921-8101). Repair technicians are available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

A very frustrated employee of Frontier Communications working in one of their Ohio offices sent Stop the Cap! a detailed report on some of Frontier’s problems with customer service, unfair fees, and other horror stories. In this final part, a look at Frontier’s broadband service and how the company is still struggling to integrate ex-Verizon customers now a part of the Frontier family. “It is as if Dollar Tree bought out Wal-Mart.” 

Frontier recently began marketing faster Internet speeds to many of their customers who can finally sign up for something roughly equivalent to today’s standard speeds from cable operators. But even in its more advanced forms of bonded DSL, ADSL2+, and VDSL, all remain distance-sensitive. Customers may simply never get the speeds they were promised if they live too far from the phone company’s central office.

Frontier wants to see the end of speed test results like this.

We recently started pushing our premium speed broadband to customers who qualify for our new speeds, which run up to 25Mbps for residential customers. Customers who truly qualify for this service will actually get to receive decent speeds comparable to what Time Warner Cable and Comcast offers.

We were originally planning to market this as competitive with FiOS fiber optic speed, but I’m honestly not surprised they dropped that angle once they thought of how stupid it would sound to veteran DSL customers that a standard telephone line could reach those speeds. Even the majority of our Frontier FiOS customers are sometimes lucky to receive the speeds that cable offers, but for different reasons.

If a representative says you do qualify for faster Internet service, it is still an absolute crap-shoot whether or not you will actually get through a two-hour streamed Netflix movie in two hours instead of four thanks to buffering issues.

We are still in the early stages of rolling out these new speeds and there are still many issues in our internal systems to work out. For example, if our internal Salesforce/DPI system has not been updated, you are not going to get the faster speed service even if you can see the central office from your house. When it does show a customer is qualified, both the customer and I rejoice because I get a commission and the customer can now successfully access Facebook in less than three hours. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world and three of my orders for premium broadband Internet failed to complete despite the fact our system said they were qualified.

The cryptic reason? “Technology restraints do not allow this customer to reach any higher speeds.” That comes courtesy of our techs, who use it as a catch-all to cancel orders. Nobody can tell me why. I’ve asked dispatch, assignment, and tech managers and they have given me different explanations — none that seemed valid.

That leaves me calling back the customer, now excited they can finally use our broadband service to play online video games or Skype their son in college without being disconnected and let them know I was a big fat liar when I promised them something better, only to leave them stuck with what they had.

Next we need to update the information in those customers’ profiles so future reps do not lead them on. I have rechecked those accounts and to this day none of that information was updated. I just see my cancelled orders. So, there is even misinformation taking place within the company, preventing us from providing a risk free service.

Modem fees are a nuisance to a number of Frontier customers. The company is eliminating them for some customers.

Modem fees no longer apply to many Frontier broadband plans

Modem fees used to be an issue, however they are now increasingly included in the price of your broadband service. This can be especially good news in a competitive market where your broadband bill drops by nearly $7 a month, but those already using their own equipment will no longer see any savings from service credits applied to their monthly bills.

Are you really getting Frontier FiOS broadband speeds? Maybe not.

Speaking about misinformation, we have several Frontier FiOS customers that are actually only getting basic cable or DSL Internet speeds because their house was never actually wired with fiber. A street may have fiber optic cables all around, but if a customer is still using copper cable from the pole and inside their home, they are paying for services they are not getting. These customers are often noted in customer records we can access, but we are discouraged from sharing that information. This is not entirely our fault. This was a problem left over from the previous owner, Verizon Communications, which left us the mess to clean up. If you are only receiving half of the FiOS speed you are paying for, this may be why. If you complain, we will issue credit or create what we call a “SIFT Ticket” to send a tech to investigate a possible service upgrade.

Playing the Telephone Game with the telephone company

There have been countless times when I’ve been told five different things by five different people about how to handle a customer calling in for assistance. I understand that with millions of customers it is hard to predict what will happen on that next call, but simple things such as a consistent way to handle customer requests should be standard stuff. So, what can I do? Pick one of the five options and hope it is the right one for the customer.

Working for Frontier means dealing with short term goals that vary wildly day to day with no focus on any sort of objective. These loose operations and inconsistencies come straight from the top. This affects our long term goals as a company (whatever the hell those might be). These endlessly varying short term goals leave us with no foundation for long term goals because… again, there is no focus. That needed to be said twice.

Customers notice the rampant inconsistencies. A lot of customers candidly tell me, “you guys are spread too thin, and there is a severe lack of communication between all of your call centers.”

This is true, and much of it has to do with our purchase of former Verizon landline customers. It is as if Dollar Tree bought out Wal-Mart. I feel like we have bit off more than we can chew, despite the fact management dismissed these concerns as “speed bumps from the conversion.”

It is now 2012 and 2013 is coming closer every day and I am still dealing with the same issues that should no longer be happening as often as they should.

So, in closing, this has been my rant about the company I work for. I do enjoy my job (honestly, I do) and the people I work with are great. Even the customers who scream and yell at me, or the ones who commend me for my work, they’re all great in their own way. Nothing is as satisfying as actually calming someone down who has an issue with their bill, only to have them apologize and be grateful they got me on the phone. You have to truly be a people person to do this job, and not just do it for the money or it won’t work out for you. I’m not the most perfect representative, but I hope to strive to truly make every day I’m there in my cube less and less miserable and tedious.

Hopefully this crap can eventually be flushed and one day soon Frontier’s wheels will run smoothly.

A very frustrated employee of Frontier Communications working in one of their Ohio offices sent Stop the Cap! a detailed report on some of Frontier’s problems with customer service, unfair fees, and other horror stories. In this second part, a look at Frontier’s fees, service commitments, and the caliber of customer service. (Stop the Cap’s comments appear in italics.)

Installation fees can be a significant component of a customer’s first bill — a rude surprise for anyone choosing a promotional offer and experiencing bill shock when that first bill arrives. That triggers complaint calls to customer service, where a Frontier representative will ultimately decide whether you will get the free installation you were promised.

How much will your first bill be? The broken promises of “free installation.”

If you order today, your installation will be free… or not.

Let me share a little secret. I believe most representatives will always quote free installation to get the sale. Most believe the payoff for the company in the long run is better than the temporary hit we take on installation expenses. It also makes our commission checks a little fatter the following month. Unfortunately, in the rush to make the sale, I believe the majority of reps fail to note what they promised on the customer’s new account, which means they get charged some expensive install fees. Many quickly call in,  accusing us of reneging on our offer.

We handle these as if we were playing some version of Russian Roulette, straight out of Deer Hunter. One out of every six customers will not get their installation fees waived simply because we refuse. Sometimes it becomes a game of using your gut and flipping a coin. Other times it is the amount of the refund.

It is much easier on us if the fees we reverse are under $100, because we have the authority to issue an immediate credit. If the fees are over $100, things get complicated because the request must be approved by a regional office manager who relies entirely on the notes left by the customer service representative. If the request is denied, it is our job to call you back with the bad news. But the good news is the odds are still in your favor if you persist asking for the fees to be reversed.

I hate to say it, but it all comes down to the mood of the rep you get on the line and how much he or she is willing to fill out those forms for you. It sucks, but there is no full-proof system to prevent this and it frustrates me to no end.

Stayed home all day waiting for a Frontier technician who never showed up? They marked your problem solved anyway. 

Waiting for the service technician that claims he rang your doorbell and nobody answered.

This is truly the one that bugs me the most. I deal with at least 15 calls a day (this number has increased since July) where either the technician does not call a customer to notify them they can’t make it, or simply does not show at all and writes off the service order as “completed.”

The latter irritates customers and our call center to no end. Customers are infuriated when we tell them the technician knocked on your door, nobody answered, so they left you a note. Of course, the customer insists nobody ever actually showed up and they don’t have any note. We tend to believe the customers when they tell us they do not have working service, if only because they are calling us on their cell phones.

Customer service representatives can be audited and disciplined by Frontier for not clearly including a phone number where the customer can be reached, all for the benefit of Frontier technicians. Despite this, we find our techs rarely contact the customer to keep them informed about the progress of their service call.

Our worst problems are currently in Michigan and Indiana where the majority of our missed commitments stem from. No call, no show — a technician can do this to a customer and still have his job the next day. I would get a pink-slip marked “customer mistreat” and shown the door if I pulled this trick. But many technicians just don’t care and do not have to take the angry calls from customers wondering where the hell the technician is. We see it in tech notes left on the account that say things like ‘didn’t make it to the job on time – leaving to go home.’  They never bothered to ask the customer to reschedule or call them to let them know they won’t be coming.

I understand that their job is just as stressful as ours, but they need to pull their weight as well and stop marking incomplete orders as “finished” or avoiding the customer on a missed commitment. It infuriates customers and makes the company look bad.

The Race to the Bottom: Lower wages = inferior customer service

Over the past few years, Frontier has been consolidating its call centers — moving to locations where average wages and benefits are notoriously low and politicians push a “pro-business” agenda that hands out favors in the form of tax credits and incentives to companies willing to relocate.  For Frontier, this spells doom for employees that were paid enough to earn a living in places like Coeur d’Alene, Idaho ($15-21/hr) in favor of cheap labor staffing new call centers in states like South Carolina ($11-12/hr with a five year wage freeze). That is bitter news for former Frontier employees in Idaho who saved the company an estimated $84 million successfully converting an inherited Verizon computer system to the one Frontier uses in other states. Employees were thanked with termination notices and a cheap, plastic travel mug with the company’s logo. Paying a good wage or cutting paychecks to the least amount possible may make all the difference between a good customer service experience or an embarrassment for the company.

I am going to name a call center that every other Frontier call center loathes: DeLand, Florida.

This is one of our main sources of broken promises, bad orders and misinformation. In DeLand, you are considered a lifer if you’ve worked there for more than two years. They pay near-minimum wage to fresh-out-of-high-school students to sit on the phones, most of them quitting before their six month probationary period ends. Working for Frontier customer service is a summer job to the kids down there. They could care less if they write an order for someone in an area we don’t even service, provide customers inaccurate pricing, or just cold-transfer the customer back into the call queue if they are too ignorant to help the customer out.

Thankfully, not everyone in DeLand is doing a bad job. Some of our DeLand supervisors and representatives are earnest about delivering good customer service. But too often that is the exception, not the rule. DeLand is notorious for “cherrypicking” customers. That is a term Frontier call center workers know all too well. It means picking incoming calls that are most likely to generate commission-rich sales for the employee while throwing other callers back on hold for someone else to deal with.

The drive to make the sale is so intense, representatives sometimes start writing the order before they even verify the customer is actually in a Frontier service area. We use a simple verification system called CERT to check whether a potential customer is served by us or another phone company. But the orders for customers actually served by AT&T, Windstream, Verizon or CenturyLink still show up, and the customer has to be told later. We have heard about 60 percent of the orders placed in DeLand do not actually go through, either because of this problem or customers calling back changing their mind after they discover they were mislead about something.

Management does not seem to mind the aggressive sales tactics, because it brings the opportunity for new revenue, but customers left waiting or given bad information might.

Tomorrow: Frontier’s broadband service speeds, fees and some new facts about Frontier FiOS you shouldn’t miss.

A very frustrated employee of Frontier Communications working in one of their Ohio offices sent Stop the Cap! a detailed report on some of Frontier’s problems with customer service, unfair fees, and other horror stories. Over the next several days, we will present excerpts of this very long and detailed open letter, starting with what it is like to work in a Frontier customer service center dealing with customers unhappy with Frontier’s way of doing business. (Stop the Cap’s comments appear in italics.)

I work for a company that I am, quite frankly, frustrated with. The company is Frontier Communications.

I am currently an employee in the Marion, Ohio office/call center, and I am a customer service representative. I handle everything in terms of selling services, troubleshooting issues with telephone service, writing orders, setting up payment arrangements, etc. We occasionally refer to ourselves as universal service representatives. The latter title would admittedly sound better on a resume if my company were to ever find out that I had wrote this and fired me. So, after spending a long while working for this company I have learned a lot. I have taken every type of call that there is to take out there, ranging from a simple billing issue to someone getting absolutely screwed because of a mistake one our other representatives made.

I understand that when you have a customer base of three million residential accounts that you will take some angry calls, statistically speaking. It happens. I imagine that happens with every company out there, whether it sells phone service or a t-shirts. You will eventually run into a dissatisfied customer. I feel with Frontier, it happens way too often.

First off, before I go any further, I would like to say my supervisor and director are very knowledgeable individuals, and in no way am I implicating them in this open letter. They do their best to curb ignorance and poor customer service. I feel that the company limits their abilities to do even more to make customer service at Frontier a much more honest experience. Even the director of our call center still has to take orders from someone.

Frontier’s Shock and Awe:  The $200 Early Termination Fee for a Two-Year Contract Customers Never Realized They Had

Frontier’s early termination fees and contracts often come as a surprise to customers who had no idea they signed up.

I have noticed a lot of people calling in (and leaving comments on numerous review sites, as well as our Facebook page) voicing their displeasure about suddenly finding out that they were in a two-year contract, unable to cancel their services without incurring a 200 dollar early termination fee (ETF). This is something that I hate to deal with, as there are almost always no notes on any of these accounts left by previous representatives indicating they informed the customer of an ETF. Unless it is a special circumstance, we are supposed to tell you that you are notified on every billing statement that you are in a contract, and there is nothing that we can do to waive your fees. Most of the time, if a customer is persistent, they can actually escape and have these fees credited.

Firstly, the systems we use to write orders (Salesforce and DPI — yes, we have two different and completely redundant systems that serve the same function — one just looks prettier) both automatically default to the option of a 1 year contract with the option of automatically renewing that contact indefinitely. Frontier does offer a no-contract plan, but then you will fail to receive any sort of promotional pricing. So, a rep will write an order, complete it, and most of the time fail to review with the customer they are agreeing to a one year contract. We get a LOT of these types of calls, the majority originating from orders written by our service center in DeLand, Fla. What frustrates me is the lack of protocol that makes sure a rep notifies the customer that they are indeed being put on a contract. The calls are recorded and could be reviewed, but there are still too many of these people who fly under the radar and get stuck with a fee when it is too late to opt out.

It sucks to no end to have to tell somebody that they will have to spend an extra $200 to cancel their phone and Internet service, and many are left bewildered over the fee. It is always  hard to tell who has really been screwed and who is trying to dodge an ETF. So we handle it with our gut. That’s the best we can do.

Once a Frontier Customer, Always a Frontier Customer… Unless You Pay and Pray

Frontier works hard at holding onto the customers they have, either with long term contracts with heavy early termination penalties or other tricks and traps that can make departing Frontier a difficult and costly ordeal. In addition to term contracts, Frontier heavily markets extra services they claim will protect your account from mischief, but in reality makes it much more difficult to switch phone companies or terminate landline service.

Locking your phone number from third party transfers also buys you a headache if you want to switch providers.

When a Frontier rep asks you to put a free service on your account that will make sure nobody else can steal it without your permission, most people agree to it. This is called a Primary Local Exchange Carrier Freeze. Representatives have an incentive to push this free service, winning a $3 bonus to our commission if you let us add it to your account.

This service makes sure any third party companies cannot port your service over to theirs without your permission. Even with your permission, they still can’t do it until a Frontier rep removes the freeze. That requires customers to call in and speak with us. This gives us a very valuable opportunity to rescue your business and get you to change your mind. Customer retention is vital, which is why Frontier pays us extra to push a service that costs you nothing.

If a customer insists on “porting out” — keeping their current phone number but moving service to a new provider — we will remove the freeze on your account, but you will pay us for doing it.

It does not cost Frontier anything to remove the freeze, but we now charge customers a $1 fee to change your provider. Want local service with one company and long distance service with another? We charge $1 for each.

When customers accept our offer to place a freeze on unauthorized third parties messing with your phone service without your permission, we are required to obtain third party verification of your desire to have this service. Frontier uses an independent verification company that is god-awful and treats customers rudely, even yelling at some who do not follow the precise verification procedure. If they don’t like your answers, the order will not go through.

Their treatment of our customers reflects poorly on Frontier, especially when a customer’s order to obtain service never gets beyond the verification process.

I’ve heard these reps rip into customers for not answering with a “yes” or “no.” In one case, a gentleman from South Carolina had simply wanted to make sure that telemarketing calls would not screw with his phone bill/service, so I offered a freeze to ease his mind. I was absolutely appalled when he was asked by the third party verifier if he authorized the changes and he replied with the usual southern-accented “ya” and the woman on the other end literally yelled at him for not answering “yes.” The customer was completely taken aback and abruptly hung up. I would have too.

As a result, I often do not bother to include line freezes on larger orders, fearing the unprofessional attitude customers might endure could sabotage my commission and the customer’s scheduled service date. I wish Frontier would utilize a different company to process and verify orders.

So You Are Leaving? Do Exactly What We Say or Lose Your Phone Number

Listen very carefully

Oh boy, do I LOVE number porting. Of course that is absolute sarcasm. So, a port-in/out on paper sounds like a rock solid type of deal. The customer can retain his or her phone number, and check out the grass on the other side, greener or browner.

The process for handling a port-in is also fairly simple, and you would think that this would not be an issue for the customer to worry about. Of course, I wouldn’t be venting about it if this were always the case.

One big mistake routinely made by Frontier and other companies is cancelling your existing telephone service before the number port is complete. Some customers want to hurry the divorce and take it upon themselves to terminate service with their old provider as soon as the new service is turned on.

Under no circumstances should you do this, as it will absolutely screw you out of keeping your phone number. This is basic knowledge instilled in every Frontier rep during training, yet screw-ups still happen when one of our reps cuts off service before the other company has taken ownership of your phone number. That means your number is gone. Sometimes the porting process takes as long as 60 days to go through, so please be patient.

Unfortunately, with no system in place to prevent ignorant reps from screwing things up, numbers get lost. Sometimes it is our fault, sometimes it is with the customer, other times the new company created the problem. But we are often the ones left to explain to a customer the phone number they have had for 40 years is gone for good.

But it can get worse once someone else randomly grabs your old number. Imagine what happens when a grandmother’s lost number is reassigned to a porn smut peddler. Now some porn shop down the way has grandma’s number. This actually happened to a customer of a major cable provider. Imagine her friends and family trying to get her only to reach these people instead. It’s not a fun mess to clean up.

Coming Up: Wheel of Installation & Modem Fees, Adventures With Missed Appointments & Lost Trouble Tickets, and Big Trouble in Little DeLand

Frontier Communications has found a new way to make a little extra from customers who disconnect their Internet service.

According to a document obtained exclusively by Stop the Cap!, Frontier will charge a $9.99 “Broadband Processing Fee” for new customers shutting off their Internet service starting Nov. 1. Customers that order Internet service from Frontier after Oct. 1 are supposed to be notified about the new fee during a review of their order. Existing customers are not affected.

This fee is above and beyond any early termination fees contract customers may face for ending service before the end of a service contract.

According to Frontier, broadband services subject to the new fee include:

• DSL
• “Simply Broadband” (broadband-only service)
• FiOS Data
• Frontier Satellite Broadband
• Frontier Tandem (VoIP)
• Wi-Fi (Commercial accounts only — basic, sponsored hot spots, etc.)