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Telecom company CenturyLink left a couple in Oregon without landline phone service for 2 months, then sent out a costs for $239.
CenturyLink client Kirstin Appel and her spouse reside in Banks, a city with less than 2,000 locals in Oregon’s Tualatin Valley. They keep a landline for emergency situations due to the fact that their only Internet service is satellite, and cellular service in the location is bad. Appel stated they pay $41 a month for CenturyLink phone service.
CenturyLink phone service ended up being spotty and periodic around January 20 when winter season storms struck the location and after that headed out entirely on January 27, Appel informed us. She called Ars almost 2 months after the blackout started, desperate for a repair since her different chats with CenturyLink customer support led no place.
The service was just repaired after Ars called CenturyLink, and Appel needed to invest hours talking with the business’s assistance to get expense credits. The surprise $239 costs related to phantom 411 calls made from her number throughout the failure (more on that later on in this post).
“I’ve talked with them numerous times and had actually 2 canceled repair work tickets ever since,” Appel informed us in late March when her service was still out. She stated that customer support associates offered contrasting info on the status of the interruption.
“I keep hearing various stories from agents about how there is a prevalent interruption in my location– yet no blackouts are appearing on any interruption map that I can discover,” Appel informed us at the time. “One agent even informed me that the blackout was repaired, arranged a tech to come out, and after that ticket was canceled without my understanding. I connected to CenturyLink today through chat, and they notified me that the failure is still impacting my location.”
Not our very first CenturyLink scary story
If this sounds familiar, you might have read our February 2024 post about CenturyLink leaving Oregon consumers without Internet service for 39 days. In yet another case we blogged about in 2015CenturyLink left 86-year-old Minnesota homeowner Helen Marie Plourde without home Internet and phone service for over a month. In both of those circumstances, CenturyLink just repaired the service after we emailed the business’s public relations department.
We called CenturyLink about Appel’s case on the afternoon of March 26, and the business repaired her phone service on March 27. CenturyLink informed us at the time that it was “attempting to get all consumers back online as quickly as possible.”
A CenturyLink professional who repaired the service left a message for Appel stating that a line serving her home had actually almost been severed. It’s uncertain why it took CenturyLink 2 months to repair the line or just how much longer it would have taken if the business never ever got a message from a media outlet.
Repair work assured however not provided
Appel supplied us with records of chats she had with CenturyLink client assistance. On March 6, a representative informed her the approximated time for a remediation was 8 pm on March 7.
In a subsequent chat on March 9, one business representative informed her that “there is no failure reported.” She was moved to another representative who notified her that there was a failure however that “the failure was brought back early today.”
“I still have no dial tone,” Appel reacted to the representative. The representative then composed, “I comprehend, I have actually run a line analysis on your line and a dispatch is advised to repair the concern.”
The representative set up a visit for March 19, however that date passed without a repair work. In another chat with client assistance on March 20, Appel composed, “I had actually a professional arranged to come out the other day. Nobody got here and I got no alerts of a consultation modification or cancellation. My phone line is dead– there is no dial tone.”
The representative responded, “I can see you are dealing with the concern with phone line. I will definitely examine and assist you.” About 6 minutes later on, the representative validated that a “service blackout is going on in your location” and stated it would be repaired on March 22.
Naturally, the repair didn’t take place till March 27. Before Ars got included, CenturyLink appeared to have “no intent to restore my service, or a minimum of were not in any terrific rush,” Appel stated.