FairPoint Says It's Making Progress
Posted By: Caroline Cornish, Reporter 18 hrs ago
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AUGUSTA (NEWS CENTER) -- FairPoint Communications tried to accentuate the positive Wednesday, as it's president testified before the legislature's Committee on Utilities and Energy.
The committee held a hearing at the request of Senate President Libby Mitchell, who was concerned about FairPoint's continual problems with customer service. The committee didn't expect to create any legislation as a result of this hearing. It was only a way to keep up the pressure on FairPoint.
FairPoint has faced some tough crowds recently, going before legislative committees in New Hampshire and in Vermont. Vermont regulators threatened the company may lose its ability to do business in the state. But here in Maine, committee members and the state's Public Advocate said those threats do no good. They just want to find a way to fix FairPoint's service problems.
The Public Advocate is asking the Public Utilities Commission to force FairPoint to hire a third party to look into problems with its computer system and fix them. The Public Advocate said that while FairPoint has been doing better at responding to customer complaints, it has yet to fix the underlying computer problems that have led to the issues in the first place.
FairPoint agrees that the third party solution is a good one. The two sides only differ on how much that third party should be required to report to the Public Utilities Commission.
The company emphasized that it's made significant progress in reducing the backlog of customer complaints. It's unclear how long it will take for a permanent computer system fix to get in place.
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