FairPoint Communications failed to credit the bills of more than 10,000 customers who were entitled to refunds following service outages, state officials say.
Testimony last week from the Department of Public Service shows that between July and December 2014, FairPoint knew that at least 12,483 landline telephone customers lost service for more than 24 hours and were therefore eligible for bill credits.
At least 10,611 customers did not receive credits during that six-month period, according to Autumn Barnett, director of consumer affairs and public information division for the department.
Barnett said the numbers are based on the number of customers the company knew had suffered an outage. She added, “there is an additional universe of customers who would potentially be eligible for a bill credit.”
The information is part of an ongoing investigation into FairPoint by the department, which advocates for the public interest in cases before the utility-regulating Public Service Board.
The department is investigating three main issues: a November 2014 Enhanced 911 (E-911) outage; the company’s alleged failure to meet baseline standards for service quality and residential repairs; and the company’s bill-crediting practices.
The department has questioned the company’s service quality since before its top telecommunications staffer sent a letter to FairPoint on Sept. 4 asking for improvements. While FairPoint’s four-month labor strike was ongoing, the department petitioned for an investigation and the board ordered FairPoint to answer questions about billing issues on Jan. 13.
Landline telephone companies must comply with Public Service Board rule 7.609(c). Under the rule, an “interrupted service credit” following a customer’s 24-plus-hour outage needs to be applied “to customers who contact the carrier reporting the outage and also to customers that the carrier knows are affected by the outage.”
In February, FairPoint’s state president, Beth Fastiggi, testified that a customer must contact the company so it can determine the correct bill credit. FairPoint spokesperson Angelynne Beaudry declined to comment Tuesday, citing the ongoing investigation.
FairPoint wrote in testimony in January and February that the company does not have the capability to give automatic refunds. FairPoint “believes it is providing all bill credits as required” and “is unable to provide a cost or effort level” required to automatically credit customers’ bills. The company said it paid out $56,909 in credits to 2,848 customers between July 2014 and Jan. 21.
The company’s lawyers have objected to answering many of the questions asked in the investigation, on the grounds that some of the information is competitively sensitive, and other information is too burdensome to provide. The board released a portion of those “allegedly confidential” answers to VTDigger following a public records request on March 5.
Jim Porter, the department’s telecommunications director, said the bill credit numbers used in testimony came from FairPoint’s quarterly service quality reports.
Porter said the department argued the numbers should be public information.
“It’s the department’s position that the board rule is pretty clear, and if the customer has an outage for more than 24 hours, then they are due a credit,” Porter said. He did not have an estimate for how much customers are owed.
Porter said the “vast majority” of customers call FairPoint to report their outages, but another portion might be on vacation when an outage occurs. “There’s a smaller subset, we believe, of people who do not report it,” Porter said.
