| Related news coverage This outage has inspired many other customers to share their complaints about Fairpoint's awful customer service. These complaints show a company abusing its power as a primary carrier and demonstrate why customers justifiably don't have much patience left.
FAIRPOINT THREATENS TO DAMAGE CUSTOMER CREDIT RATING FOR ITS OWN ERROR
On April 29,2008 I wrote check number 1284 for $19.95 to Fairpoint Comm, Inc and mailed it. That check was cashed electronically on May 5,2008. On May 16, 2008 I received a very nasty letter from a collection agency representing Fairpoint and dunning me for $19.95.
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···ointblog
FAIRPOINT VIOLATES VERBAL GUARANTEES AND BILLS CUSTOMER FOR A FAULT IN ITS OWN EQUIPMENT
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···ointblog
FAIRPOINT BILLING CUSTOMERS FOR THE WRONG SERVICE PACKAGE
Today I got my FairPoint Bill and found long-distance charges, although I had the Freedom package... she said yes, they have seen these (incorrect) charges on bills. People - check your bills.
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···ointblog
FAIRPOINT VIOLATES ELECTRONIC FUNDS TRANSFER AGREEMENTS and VERBAL GUARANTEES
"Fair Point is now automatically withdrawing monthly bills early. Last month it was 7 days early, this month is 9 days early. Last month, customer support assured me that it was in the process of being corrected, but it has not. I was less than a dollar away from an overdraft charge..."
»www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps···90204001
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As Otter says, "I have watched this company for 10 years now - and have yet to see them come near telling the truth." But it's not just Fairpoint: many utilities are run by people who think they should always be in charge even when they are proven to be incompetent. The public service commission is worthless because the politicians do not really want to protect the public from those who abuse public property. That is why we have to change this regulatory model which is designed to prevent competition.
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FAIRPOINT TRI-STATE OUTAGE RELATED NEWS
# Verizon-FairPoint e-mail transition hits an early snag
# FairPoint grappling with e-mail
# FairPoint e-mail swap still wreaking havoc
# Three unrelated issues causing bouncebacks
# FairPoint seeing problems with transition of e-mail addresses
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···02039995
FAIRPOINT HUMILIATES CUSTOMERS
She was particularly annoyed because people trying to send her e-mail got responses saying "Connection refused due to abuse. Please contact your e-mail provider."
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···02049976
"Right now Verizon has all the email being sent to your Verizon account forwarding to your user account at Fairpoint but Fairpoint's server is considering it spam, and blocking it for abuse. On top of that they've managed to lose a lot of account information."
»Fairpoint switched over Verizon's alias names not username
FAIRPOINT REFUSED TO ANSWER THE PHONE
"I tried off and on for an hour-I got no place [in the queue]. First of all, it would ring busy. And then if you could get connected, it would ring and ring and ring, and then it would say, Your party is not answering."
»www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps···90204001
"After an hour of being on hold (got hung up on twice) I finally got a hold of someone from tech support."
»Fairpoint switched over Verizon's alias names not username
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ENGAGE REALITY DISTORTION FIELD
"Customers were being helped one-by-one, he said, and call volumes had diminished by Monday afternoon."
»www.burlingtonfreepress.com/apps···90202035
Possible Interpretation:
1) "Tech support answered fewer calls on Monday because they realized there was nothing they could do about a system-wide engineering problem."
2) "We reduced the volume of our telephone headsets on Monday because the customers were yelling so loud."
3) "We only have one person manning the phones in tech support."
"It seems to be a small percentage of customers..."
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···02039995
Possible Interpretation: "The problem involves a small percentage of the customers on this planet."
"The exact numbers of customers involved in each are uncertain."
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···02049975
WHAT FAIRPOINT DID NOT CONFESS TO CUSTOMERS AND THE NEWS MEDIA
According to information provided by FairPoint to the state Public Utilities Commission, the e-mail snafu has three unrelated causes.
1. Internet Protocol addresses for some of the Verizon servers were transferred incorrectly.
2. People who signed up for Internet service after Nov. 1, 2008, were not included in the "data extract" obtained by FairPoint.
3. "Many" people have had difficulty making the changes to update their e-mail systems
»www.nashuatelegraph.com/apps/pbc···02049975
WHAT FAIRPOINT DID NOT TELL THE PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION
»Fairpoint switched over Verizon's alias names not username
BEST OVERALL SUMMARY
"Fairpoint...seems to believe that cryptic communications to the media is the best way to communicate with customers concerning engineering problems."
»Telegraph coverage of email problems
THE BOTTOM LINE:
This service outage could probably have been avoided by migrating the Verizon accounts of volunteers first. It's called a "beta test." The following page indicates why a major aspect of the problem should have been easily detected during a beta test because it affects a majority of Verizon accounts:
»Fairpoint switched over Verizon's alias names not username
It's not surprising that Fairpoint has avoided discussing this aspect of the case because it demonstrates how good management decisions might have prevented the error from affecting the public. However, it does not explain this:
"...a friend of mine is an IT manager for an ISP where I live. We got our mail issues sorted but the ISP is still in trouble because Fairpoint swears that their ISP doesn't own the IP addresses that it DOES own..and because of that the PTR records are all screwed up and his reverse DNS isnt working..which is effectively killing his mail system for all of his customers."
»Fairpoint switched over Verizon's alias names not username
It would be very interesting to see a network engineer come forward and explain how that happened. It's starting to look like Fairpoint breaks just about everything it touches. Even if the board really cared about customer service, the size and complexity of this bureaucracy exceeds their capacity to manage it. This is why we must allow competition based on the line-sharing regulatory model. |
