The Public Service Department testified to the utility-regulating Public Service Board in writing in March as part of the ongoing service quality investigation that started in January. The issue came up again at a public hearing Wednesday.
Autumn Barnett, who runs the department’s division of consumer affairs and public information, said in her testimony that 14 customers had complained between April 2013 and October 2014 that their phone service had been cut off without their knowledge.
Barnett said the department investigated one of the phone disconnection complaints and found another 47 customers who had experienced the same issue. The Public Service Department represents the interests of ratepayers in utility matters.
Jim Porter, senior policy and telecommunications director for the department, said if the phones are disconnected, the customers should still be entitled to a bill credit under Public Service Board rules. The state has already argued that more than 10,000 customers are owed credits.
“[Barnett] knows how many cases she’s had before her, but I know sometimes that’s the tip of the iceberg,” Porter said. “My guess is that one complaint represents more instances.”
FairPoint’s spokesperson Angelynne Beaudry said in an emailed statement: “We do not find the pattern of disconnecting customers that the state alludes to. We want our customers to be connected and work diligently to do so.”
Beaudry pointed to testimony from Beth Fastiggi, the Vermont state president for FairPoint. “Three examples [that Barnett cited] related to customers in the process of being disconnected for non-payment, and the other two resulted from FairPoint’s misunderstanding of the instructions,” Fastiggi wrote.
The issue came up at a public hearing on Wednesday between the state and lawyers for FairPoint. The department said it had been in a dispute with the company for allegedly not releasing enough information during the investigation process, including information about phone line disconnections.
FairPoint responded that the staff had gone through “herculean” efforts to release 17,000 pages of information as part of overall investigation in front of the utility-regulating Public Service Board. The company said it did not have any correspondence among its senior staff regarding the disconnection issue.
At the end of the hearing, the Department of Public Service reached an agreement with FairPoint’s lawyers that will open up more records about FairPoint’s staffing volumes.
The company will provide one document representing staff levels for each month of 2012 but will redact much of the information about personnel. The information about disconnections does not exist, according to FairPoint.
Aaron Kisicki, a lawyer for the Public Service Department, said the dispute means the state would file more testimony in a few weeks, rather than next week as it had originally planned.
The main thrust of the overall investigation is a phone technology outage from Nov. 28 that knocked down the 911 system, and the company’s general level of customer service.
“The ultimate goal is to find the root causes of those problems and fashion a recommendation to the Public Service Board to try to alleviate those problems,” Kisicki said.
Kisicki said the state’s main priority is serving Vermonters with no option for landline phone service other than FairPoint.
Hearings resume Sept. 15.
