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Telecom supplier CenturyLink left a pair in Oregon with out landline telephone service for 2 months, then despatched a invoice for $239.
CenturyLink buyer Kirstin Appel and her husband dwell in Banks, a metropolis with fewer than 2,000 residents in Oregon’s Tualatin Valley. They hold a landline for emergencies as a result of their solely Web service is satellite tv for pc, and mobile service within the space is poor. Appel stated they pay $41 a month for CenturyLink telephone service.
CenturyLink telephone service turned spotty and intermittent round January 20 when winter storms hit the realm after which went out fully on January 27, Appel instructed us. She contacted Ars practically two months after the outage started, determined for a repair as a result of her varied chats with CenturyLink customer support led nowhere.
The service was solely fastened after Ars contacted CenturyLink, and Appel needed to spend hours chatting with the corporate’s assist to get invoice credit. The shock $239 invoice needed to do with phantom 411 calls constructed from her quantity in the course of the outage (extra on that later on this article).
“I’ve chatted with them a number of occasions and had two canceled restore tickets since then,” Appel instructed us in late March when her service was nonetheless out. She stated that customer support reps supplied conflicting info on the standing of the outage.
“I hold listening to completely different tales from representatives about how there’s a widespread outage in my space—but no outages are exhibiting up on any outage map that I can discover,” Appel instructed us on the time. “One consultant even instructed me that the outage was fastened, scheduled a tech to come back out, after which that ticket was canceled with out my data. I reached out to CenturyLink at the moment through chat, and so they knowledgeable me that the outage continues to be affecting my space.”
Not our first CenturyLink horror story
If this sounds acquainted, you could have learn our February 2024 article about CenturyLink leaving Oregon prospects with out Web service for 39 days. In yet one more case we wrote about final 12 months, CenturyLink left 86-year-old Minnesota resident Helen Marie Plourde with out house Web and telephone service for over a month. In each of these situations, CenturyLink solely fastened the service after we emailed the corporate’s public relations division.
We contacted CenturyLink about Appel’s case on the afternoon of March 26, and the corporate fastened her telephone service on March 27. CenturyLink instructed us on the time that it was “making an attempt to get all prospects again on-line as quickly as attainable.”
A CenturyLink technician who fastened the service left a message for Appel saying {that a} line serving her home had practically been severed. It is unclear why it took CenturyLink two months to repair the road or how for much longer it could have taken if the corporate by no means acquired a message from a media outlet.
Repairs promised however not delivered
Appel supplied us with transcripts of chats she had with CenturyLink buyer assist. On March 6, an agent instructed her the estimated time for a restoration was 8 pm on March 7.
In a subsequent chat on March 9, one firm rep instructed her that “there is no such thing as a outage reported.” She was transferred to a different agent who knowledgeable her that there was an outage however that “the outage was restored early this morning.”
“I nonetheless don’t have any dial tone,” Appel responded to the agent. The agent then wrote, “I perceive, I’ve run a line evaluation in your line and a dispatch is really useful to repair the difficulty.”
The agent scheduled an appointment for March 19, however that date handed and not using a restore. In one other chat with buyer assist on March 20, Appel wrote, “I had a technician scheduled to come back out yesterday. Nobody arrived and I acquired no notifications of an appointment change or cancellation. My telephone line is lifeless—there is no such thing as a dial tone.”
The agent replied, “I can see you’re dealing with the difficulty with telephone line. I’ll actually test and assist you.” About six minutes later, the agent confirmed {that a} “service outage is happening in your space” and stated it could be fastened on March 22.
In fact, the repair did not occur till March 27. Earlier than Ars acquired concerned, CenturyLink appeared to have “no intent to revive my service, or no less than weren’t in any nice hurry,” Appel stated.
