Frontier Fields Customer Complaints After Switch-Over From Verizon
April 22 2016 - 5:31PM
Dow Jones News
By Drew FitzGerald
Frontier Communications Corp. is facing a flurry of customer
complaints after acquiring millions of phone, television and
Internet accounts in three states from Verizon Communications Inc.
this month.
The Texas Public Utility Commission fielded more than 150
complaints about Frontier's service this month, more than half of
them in the past week, spokesman Terry Hadley said. The California
Public Utilities Commission has recorded 235 Frontier complaints
during the first half of April.
Eric Sowell, 40 years old, of Garland, Texas, said Friday he
still can't surf the Web from his home. His service failed two
weeks ago, he said, and is still down despite a visit from a
technician last week.
Mr. Sowell, a software development teacher, has been spending
more time at Starbucks and Buffalo Wild Wings to use Wi-Fi, he
said, and plans to switch his broadband service to Time Warner
Cable Inc. "It is really inconvenient beyond just, 'I can't watch
my Netflix,'" he said. "I need the Internet for my job."
Frontier spokesman Peter DePasquale said subscribers who lost
service after the switch-over represented less than 1% of its
customer base, which now includes 7.5 million voice lines and 4.5
million broadband connections.
Most issues were fixed within hours, Frontier said, though some
persisted as the company worked to properly handle the flood of new
service workers who came over from Verizon.
Frontier executive Carl Erhart said during a Texas commission
hearing last week that many complaints stemmed from unrelated
problems that happened to spring up around the same time as the
Verizon switch-over, including an issue with a crucial piece of
network equipment that knocked out digital services to some
customers.
It isn't the start the Norwalk, Conn., company was planning on.
Frontier Chief Financial Officer John Jureller in March stressed to
investors that the company was working hard to make sure that
operations would be uninterrupted on the first day it took over
service. The deal closed on April 1.
The $10.5 billion transaction to acquire Verizon's landline
businesses in Florida, California and Texas roughly doubled
Frontier's Internet and television subscriber base, and will boost
its annual revenue to nearly $10 billion from $5.6 billion last
year. It is part of the company's plan to build a profitable
land-based telecom business as other companies invest in wireless
technology and media.
The rise in customer complaints also shows the difficulty of
handing off millions of customers to a new owner. Verizon has sold
other landline assets to companies like FairPoint Communications
Inc. and private-equity firm Carlyle Group LP, which bought
Verizon's Hawaiian operations. Both telephone carriers later filed
for bankruptcy protection.
But this isn't new territory for Frontier, which has struck such
deals before. In 2010 it bought 4.8 million rural phone lines in 14
states from Verizon, and four years later it acquired similar
assets in Connecticut from AT&T Inc. Both deals were smaller
than the current Verizon transaction in which the company took over
3.3 million voice connections, 2.1 million broadband connections
and 1.2 million Fios video accounts.
Frontier's Mr. DePasquale said the company inherited about
40,000 service tickets from Verizon in the latest handover. "That
created a backlog on day one," he said, noting that those
outstanding tickets have since dwindled to about 1,600.
That is little consolation to Bill Nesbitt, a security
consultant in Newbury Park, Calif., who said he lost service for
nearly two weeks at his home office. The problem, which started on
April 8, was fixed Wednesday when a technician came to his
residence. "The phone is your lifeline," Mr. Nesbitt said. "One
phone call could be several thousand dollars for me."
Write to Drew FitzGerald at andrew.fitzgerald@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
April 22, 2016 17:16 ET (21:16 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2016 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Frontier Communications (NASDAQ:FTR)
Historical Stock Chart
From Aug 2024 to Sep 2024
Frontier Communications (NASDAQ:FTR)
Historical Stock Chart
From Sep 2023 to Sep 2024