CHERYL A. CLARKE/Sun-Gazette
Morris assistant fire Chief Galen Martin addresses the PUC and representatives of Frontier Communications at a public hearing Tuesday in Wellsboro.
WELLSBORO — From dropped calls, extended internet outages and slow internet speeds to no 911 service, at least 100 people showed up Tuesday at a public hearing to let Frontier Communications know exactly what they think of them and their “service” in Potter, Tioga and Bradford counties.
Being the only telephone company that still offers landlines, Frontier has the business here tied up, with the only alternative being HughesNet, which offers internet and phone via a satellite network.
Also there to listen were representatives of the Public Utility Commission (PUC) and the state offices of Consumer Advocate and Business Advocate.
Administrative law Judge Stephen Haas, one of two administrative judges in attendance from the PUC, said that the hearings “allow customers to express their opinions on the subject of the proceeding.”
“While we prepare a decision we will review all comments made tonight, and then prepare our decisions. If we determine the facilities caused the issues we can order the company to make repairs to those facilities, and impose monetary fines if we determine that they have violated codes,” he said in response to one man asking what would happen as a result of the hearings.
CHERYL A. CLARKE/Sun-Gazette Correspondent
Vice President and chief counsel for Frontier Communications Steven Seville addresses the crowd in Wellsboro at a public hearing Tuesday for Frontier Communications customers to air their grievances with ongoing service issues in the northern tier.
Kevin Seville, senior vice president for Frontier and general counsel for them for 22 years, apologized for the company’s failings.
“It’s a little disheartening to see all these faces because you wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t experienced some kind of service issue with the company. I apologize for all of this. We recognize as a company we have fallen short of performance particularly in the last six months,” he said.
Seville said staffing issues and overwhelming backlogs in the number of customer orders and service orders they couldn’t process created the problems.
OCA representative Barret Sheridan said after the Feb. 16 hearing in Wellsboro she had filed the informal complaints given at that meeting with the OCA to “put a little heat on the company. Also in attendance was Sharon Webb, of the Office of Small Business Advocate.
Galen Martin, of Landrus Road, Morris, assistant chief of Morris Township Volunteer Fire Department, who appeared in his fire department uniform, said he was there on behalf of first responders everywhere in Tioga County.
“We are already in crisis mode, we are stretched thin. If we get a tree down, we know it will be three, four hours at best for a Frontier rep to show up,” Martin said. “And they will tell us they don’t have any trucks or poles in Tioga County so we will wait another three to four hours.
“We recently had a motor vehicle accident on routes 414 and 287 in Morris that shut down the road completely,” he continued. “We called Frontier at 6:46 p.m. to come move a pole so we could reopen the road, but they couldn’t give me an ETA. Then at 10:07 I requested another ETA. They said it would be 10:46. We requested another utility company at that point and they came out to help us get the lines off the road and get the poles off the road. We had 34 trucks backed up waiting to get through. One was a wide load. At the same time, there was a medical emergency for an ambulance. The detours affected response time for paramedics to get the person an ambulance.
“By the time we cleared from this one call, we had 48-man hours logged,” Martin said. “It wasn’t until 5:30 a.m. that they showed up and the tow service was able to remove the car from the road. For weeks at a time there was a line held up by equipment to get the line out of the road to keep the road open. I counted 43 poles broken, some had been broken over a year, 37 trees on the line, some for close to a year. And just on the trip up here to Wellsboro, about 12 miles, there are 13 spots where trees or branches are affecting the lines, and it is our job to babysit them until Frontier can come out and take care of it.”
Katie Bly, of Arnot Road, Wellsboro, told panelists her issues are safety concerns because she lives so far out in the middle of a field, that if she stands in her yard and screams, no one will hear her. She also has severe asthma and a child with respiratory issues. She was out of internet and phone service one time for nine days.
“This was four years ago, not six months,” she added. “I still live surrounded by fields, so there will be mice and weather, and seldom do we see a Frontier truck to maintain the lines. My cell phone is as reliable as my landline and internet. I am paying for the service, and I am not getting what I am paying for, and in the meantime, my bill continues to rise. They don’t have any trouble with that.”
Bly said that the customer service department told her that they are not planning on fixing my problems.
“My last six months started about 10 years ago when my 90-year-old father and I moved up to my great grandparents’ land and built a house, and we started having problems almost immediately and one of them was with Penelec,” said David Scrimshaw, of Collum Road, Tioga. “Every time we’d lose the power, the phone would go out for days, and we live in a hollow that means for you city folk’s cellphone doesn’t get to it. I have to drive about a mile and a half to get to cell service.
“I explained to Frontier the line would go dead when the power went out,” Scrimshaw continued. “A technician told me that the phones would still be dead after the power came back on because ‘Frontier was too cheap to replace the batteries in the office.’ Last summer, the folks were telling us that, ‘You are going to have to take it when we can get it to you.’ In the February meeting, they said you know you are on copper wire. And they said they have no intention of replacing the copper wire, so what you get is what you’ve got. I’ve heard the same stories about Frontier circling the drain, but there is one thing we can take comfort in: Our whole country is circling the drain. My recommendation is you all get a satellite phone for everyone here who is having a problem, and that would take care of it.”
“I have been dealing with Frontier for a long time, but my complaint is not just the phone and not just the internet,” said Debora Clark, of Pine Bark Lane, Mansfield. “I love the technician who comes to our house, a nice man and works very hard, and he tries to give the best service he can give. There have been times I have lost my phone for five, six, seven, eight days, sometimes 10 days. It’s mainly the internet.
“Your service department is rude, and they lie,” she continued. “When I was without internet for 18 days last year, July 26, 2022, I spoke with Ken who told me there were only two people without service, me and one other person. I was told they were working on the issue right then, that moment, and you will have your internet back by 5 p.m. I called back, and the person told me the previous person I talked to didn’t fill out a ticket so I had to wait till July 29.”
When the trucks do come up her road, Clark said they do a lot of damage.
“My hill is very steep. And the big trenches they put down destroyed my road,” she said. “My husband is 74 years old, and he shouldn’t have to go out there and repair what you have done to our property. I have health issues. I need a phone, and I need internet service.”
Denise Gee, of Park Road, Wellsboro, said her husband is a heart patient, and they depend on a landline because cell service is not dependable in their area.
“We started to have problems — first, a loud, ear-shattering busy signal, other times one long continuous ring that could not be answered,” Gee said. “Other times, we answered, but people cannot hear us. I called Nov. 12 to be told we would not see anyone until Dec. 2, and I told them that is unacceptable. I need to know I can call an ambulance. He said that is the best we can do. Our phone still crackles from time to time, but is better. Frontier has no sense of loyalty and cannot meet our community’s needs. They should bow out.”
“We are apparently lucky. We were able to get Blue Ridge, so I jumped from Frontier years ago,” said Bryn Hammerstrom, of Chatham Valley Lane, Middlebury Center. “I just want to recount two: one for me personally, and one for my wife who has bronchitis. My wife within the same year, was talking to customer service, who said, ‘Frontier isn’t putting money in Tioga County; why don’t you go to someone else?’ The staff knows your company doesn’t care.”
Gary Miller, of Bottom Hill Road, Lawrenceville, told the panel that the landline provided spotty service at best for about a year.
“Then in October, you couldn’t hear anyone, there was so much background noise,” Miller said. “We reported it several times and got appointments. Not one time did anyone show up or call us to reschedule. On Feb. 22, I called to cancel the service and spoke to a representative from West Virginia. He said he was going to make sure we got a refund because we had paid the bill right along, even though the phone was completely dead during much of that time. I said I didn’t want a refund. He insisted.
“A couple months later, instead of a refund, we got another bill, which we paid,” he said.
David Cohick, who is the emergency management director for the county, confirmed much of what he had heard.
“There are multiple places in this county that have trees down, trees on lines,” Cohick said. “Last May, a truck hit a line that now has plastic bags over it and electrical tape, and that was a year ago. Last year, 117 customers were out of 911 service. When a line goes down for two to three weeks, I have no way for them to get to me. The fire chief from Morris hit the nail on the head when he said (there are) four-hour waits or more spent waiting for a line truck from Bradford County because there are no line trucks in Tioga County.”
Maxine Spencer, of Red Oak Lane, Troy, reported that she has had trouble with Frontier most of her life.
“My sisters call me and tell me my phone is disconnected, but it’s not,” she said. “They tell me it must be my line. Someone on Frontier’s end had my phone disconnected because they did it wrong.
“We are people; talk to us,” Spencer said. “If you can’t send a truck out, call us and let us know. You told me you care about my issues. They said they were sorry, but they weren’t. It was a matter of seeing that my phone was wrongfully disconnected.”