FairPoint customers pay $25 fee to stop automatic payment withdrawals FairPoint failed to make, causing accounts to fall past due

By late March, those customers who had dial tones from their FairPoint lines began to grow concerned about the newest nightmare from the company that took over telephone service across three New England states.  Billing problems began immediately after FairPoint converted to its own billing systems, and customers noticed.

The company explained it had a “loss of data” when their own billing system went online, and information from Verizon’s old billing system never made it to the new FairPoint system.

The result was loss of confidence in FairPoint, as customers grew increasingly concerned about inaccurate bills, lost payments, and as one New Hampshire couple discovered, the company’s inability to process “automatic payments” from customers on time, generating past due bills.  Concerned about the impact late notices will have on their credit rating, they spend $25 to get their bank to stop automatic payments that FairPoint failed to make on time.  WMUR reports:

[flv width=”480″ height=”360″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WMUR Manchester Fairpoint Customers Report Problems With Phone Service 3-30-09.flv[/flv]

In Vermont, customers frustrated with bills that never arrived wanted out.  As one customer working in Saint Johnsbury discovered, there was no way to reach the company to tell them to cancel service.  Vermont state regulators finally grew tired of FairPoint’s Public Relations excuses.  They demanded evidence service was improving.  WCAX reports:

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Live Coverage of SaveOurNet.ca‘s National Open Internet Town Hall, netcasting from Toronto has now concluded.  Unfortunately, connectivity issues at the hotel plagued the live streaming event, and a good deal of it was not available on the live stream.  A recording of the presentation should be forthcoming shortly, and will be embedded in this space, when available.

“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.”

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Thanks to Jay Ovittore and the City of Wilson, we have the video from the consideration of HB 1252, the horrible bill that would have made municipal broadband a virtual impossibility in the state of North Carolina.  Everyone who participated in our pushback should give themselves a pat on the back, because YOU helped make all the difference between broadband choice and advancement in the state vs. forcing communities into a broadband backwater.  Don’t believe for a second you just have to sit back and take what big telecom forces on you.  This shows you don’t!

This is what we can do — make the difference!

The NC Public Utilities Committee sends HB 1252 to a study committee. May 6, 2009.

The Time Warner protest in Greensboro attracted a lot of car honking approval, and even with a relatively small group of protestors, got significant coverage on local media.

“The fight for a flat rate.”  WXII reports regularly emphasize Time Warner has delayed, not withdrawn their tiered pricing experiment.  April 18, 2009