Why Utilities Give Poor Customer Service?

When your family pet destroys something, you know it's your responsibility and you have to fix it. When our puppy chewed through cable wires, we had to do it before watching TV again, so we didn't waste much time replacing the cable. Our other dog chewed one leg on the dining room table ans we decided to live with the new design rather than replace the table.

My online business means I'm on the computer from about 6am into the wee hours most evenings, and that includes weekends. Our Internet access died yesterday afternoon and my husband is really good at trouble shooting. This story is real time, and my personal story dealing with Fairpoint Communications as they stall and delay sending a technician out to repair or replace our modem, and get us back online.

The sad thing here is our phone and cable companies are monopolies so customer service is sketchy, as they don't have competitors to keep them on their toes. Their recorded message when you call 800-240-5019 says “… for your convenience, we're available 24 hours a day” only refers to someone answering your call. It's probably good at calming down angry customers but it's misleading!

Timeline for Internet Outage

This article illustrates the frustration and poor customer service related to the loss of our Internet access in Hampton, NH beginning Friday, May 11, 2012.

• My husband found himself without Internet service around 3pm Friday. He called Fairpoint Communications and got a recording saying “… if you're in NH, power your modem off and on“. This seems to indicate a broader failure affecting many Fairpoint customers.
• After completing the modem power off, power on procedures … the modem had a red blinking light, the one that says “fail”. My husband reported the “blinking red light fail” problem around 4pm and they would schedule a service technician to come out to our home, but they wouldn't come until Monday afternoon.
• When my husband called me around 6pm to alert me to the Internet problem, I suggested he check on status and communicate the impact of the problem as we both work at home … and Saturday, I was told the problem was raised to “priority high”.
• Friday night I called when I got home, then again Saturday morning (twice, the second to get information for this article) and the troubling thing was, each time I got a very different story – problem opened around 7:30pm? problem assigned to repair department but they're not allowed to give out estimated up times.
• Around 11am Saturday, they called my husband's cell phone to confirm the modem had power? That was a ridiculous discussion as the box needs power to have a blinking red light!
• About 12:30pm, a technician arrived and Dave replaced the modem. Unfortunately they initialize the modem from the office but the process failed so we're still offline. There was nothing else he could do, so Dave left for the next customer on his list of work orders.