[A] company formerly known as Great Auk Wireless is working to respond to customer complaints in Vermont and Massachusetts about the internet service provider’s recent outages, lost e-mail accounts, and lags in customer service, in spite of the last-known owner’s legal entanglements and federal investigation, a spokesman said.
Luc Beaubien, who previously worked two stints as president and general manager for GAW High Speed Internet, sent a statement to all of the company’s roughly 500 customers saying that Homero Josh Garza has not operated the company for about a year and a half. Beaubien said Thursday he was working to retrieve customers’ lost email accounts and speed up customer service.
The news comes a week after VTDigger’s special report revealed that Garza was still listed as the chief executive officer on GAW High Speed Internet’s website, despite the fact that his LinkedIn profile said he left in 2012.
Garza and his partners at an unrelated crypto-currency company, called GAW Miners, were subpoenaed on Feb. 6 by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. The SEC declined in June to confirm whether Garza was or is still under investigation. (Garza allegedly left the country to avoid investigation, according to Crypto Coin News.)
Garza founded a company, Great Auk Wireless, in Brattleboro in 2005 with Stuart Fraser, currently the vice chairman of the New York City-based investment firm Cantor Fitzgerald, documents from the Vermont Secretary of State show.
Fraser dissolved Great Auk Wireless at the end of 2009, according to Secretary of State documents. Garza then registered a company called GAW High Speed Internet, according to documents from the Secretary of State. The company’s status was terminated in 2012 for not filing annual reports.
In an interview, Beaubien said customers who are worried about GAW High Speed Internet have a “legitimate concern” when they see the recent news about Garza’s other business ventures.
“[T]hey’re separate businesses and they operate completely separately,” Beaubien said, speaking of the difference between GAW Miners and GAW High Speed Internet.
Since VTDigger broke the story about GAW on July 8, about 10 people have called the consumer support hotline at the Public Service Department, according to Autumn Barnett, the director of the Consumer Affairs and Public Information division at the Public Service Department.
Customers told VTDigger they now have service, but poor customer support, and they can’t retrieve their email accounts.
Beaubien said Thursday he is working as an independent contractor on a three-person team to respond to service issues, including customer service wait times and email accounts that customers lost that were set up through Gmail. He said the company has about 450 customers in the northeast Kingdom, Brattleboro and western Massachusetts regions. The state has said the company had 1,000 to 2,000 customers in a previous interview.
“I fully recognize that is a major inconvenience,” Beaubien said. “We, ourselves, lost all our emails, so we have a strong, desired interest in seeing that fixed. We are now working with someone who is at Google who doesn’t do this, but they’re working to get us in touch with the right people.”
Customers have also complained about long telephone wait times for customer service.
“In fact, it obviously stands to be improved,” Beaubien said. “We’re looking to have our customer service department put more resources at hand so that the wait times come down. The wait times at times do get long, and too long in my opinion, and obviously the opinions of our customers.”
Beaubien does not own the company, he says, and he is not listed as an owner or manager in documents obtained by VTDigger. Beaubien said he has made offers to Garza and Fraser to buy GAW High Speed Internet.
“I am totally committed to growing the business,” he said.
Someone claiming to be Garza called the Attorney General’s Office June 8, saying he does not own the company, and Beaubien was the new president and CEO, the office said. VTDigger has not independently confirmed ownership of the company, and the Attorney General says Beaubien does not have an official capacity. As of this week, the state of Vermont still claimed it was owed $18,018.
The company was awarded a $64,130 grant in 2014 from the Vermont Telecommunications Authority to build in 11 locations in Rutland County — mostly in Pittsford, Chittenden and Ira. The Vermont Telecommunications Authority, which dissolved into the Public Service Department on July 1, alleged the company never performed the work.
Communications records between the Vermont Telecommunications Authority and GAW show that the state had “serious concerns” dating back to nearly a year ago about whether GAW would ever complete the work called for in the grant. The documents were obtained through a public records request.
“According to information reported to the VTA by GAW, the required service has not been delivered by the completion date of the contract, and is not presently being offered,” executive director Chris Campbell wrote to the company on Aug. 14. “We consider GAW’s failure to perform its obligations in a timely manner to be a breach of the grant agreement.”
The VTA’s attorney sent another letter on Nov. 19. “This letter reiterates the VTA’s demand that GAW return $18,018 in grant funds and provides notice that return of the disbursed funds is more than 30 days overdue,” the letter says. “The VTA will proceed to engage the Vermont Attorney General’s Office to commence litigation against GAW for the return of funds.”
The attorney general then sent two letters in 2015 demanding the money again. The latest letter, dated May 15, said the state would “take whatever action it deems in its best interest” to recover the money if the company did not return it by July 1. The office has not yet disclosed any pending litigation, and phone calls were not returned Thursday.
Beaubien said he is committed to serving GAW customers, but the owners and officers of GAW are responsible for dealing with the company’s legal entanglements with the state.
