Editor’s note: This story has been updated with a response from FirstLight.
[F]rank Duffy’s email was set to switch providers last Tuesday as part of a merger between Sovernet Communications and FirstLight Fiber.
But instead of the seamless transition that he was promised, the physician ended up locked out of his email for six days — unable to communicate with his coworkers and patients.
The technical difficulty wasn’t what bothered Duffy most — it was the fact that it took multiple calls and nearly five hours on the phone for him to get some help. And even that didn’t come until he finally got through to a vice president at the company.
“It was really quite a disaster,” Duffy said.
Vermont’s Department of Public Service said they’ve gotten nine calls from people just like Duffy in the last week, all of whom were locked out of their emails, sometimes for more than a week, and unable to find help getting back in.
“The complaints were all circling around same basic issue,” said Carol Flint, consumer affairs director at the department. “They complained about long delays accessing tech support — specifically the long wait times on hold.”
FirstLight uses an Interactive Voice Response system, an automated tool that supposedly helps connect callers to the right department. But when customers called about problems with the switch, they found it nearly impossible to find a human on the other line.
“From the amount of effort it took to get someone, they were either massively understaffed or made a major mistake,” Duffy said.
Maura Mahoney, FirstLight’s vice president of marketing and product management, said the migration itself didn’t have any problem — rather, she said the calls from customers were largely about forgotten passwords or trouble with password resets on an iPad or smartphone as they navigated what was an otherwise “smooth transition.”
According to Mahoney, of the 5,000 accounts they migrated, just 200 called FirstLight reporting problems — and for those who called, the average wait time was 33 minutes.
Flint said because the internet is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission, not the state, there isn’t much her department can do to help Vermonters when these types of problems arise with their providers. What it did do with the FirstLight complaints was alert the company each time a customer submitted a complaint.
“We’ve heard back from FirstLight about nearly every complaint with additional updates,” Flint said. “They acknowledged that the high call volume and high wait times weren’t what customers were typically used to, and mentioned that they were adding agents to their customer service center.”
The company told the department that the migration of the email server was to move to a new platform that improves basic functioning and meets modern security standards. FirstLight said they advised their customers of the situation before the switch.
“It’s great example of a company making a mistake and being unable to marshal their forces to solve it,” Duffy said. “If they had a couple more lines — they are a phone business after all — and few more people, they could have cut down on the hours I wasted trying to get a hold of them.”
