As Connecticut residents continue to wrestle with a messy switch over from AT&T U-Verse to Frontier Communications, the state is asking questions and stepping in to address consumer complaints.
Frontier acquired the AT&T U-Verse voice and Internet accounts of about 1.3 million customers last year, and when the transition took effect late last month, thousands of customers began complaining of service outages.
Now the state attorney general and Office of the Consumer Counsel are requesting a meeting with the Public Utilities Regulatory Authority to look into the transition and what went wrong, according to a release from Frontier.
"Frontier Communications welcomes the opportunity to provide the OCC, the Office of the Connecticut Attorney General, PURA, and the public with information about the recent transition," company officials said in a statement Thursday.
Frontier is providing an automatic $50 credit to all Frontier TV customers and an estimated 3,000 customers who experienced Internet outages will receive one month of service free or a $50 credit, whichever is greater, according to the company.
A top company executive who oversees Connecticut operations apologized to customers in an exclusive interview on Monday.
“We apologize for anything that occurred that was not what our customers expected,” said Paul Quick, Connecticut general manager for Frontier Communications. "We take customer service very seriously at Frontier and I will share with you if someone calls me, if someone calls our CEO, if someone calls our area president, we don't delegate that. We take the phone call and stick with that customer until it's resolved."
He said at this point, service should be restored for most customers, but complaints have still been filtering into the NBC Connecticut newsroom.
"While service interruptions have been isolated, we know it is frustrating to deal with these issues, and we apologize,” Frontier said in a statement released Thursday. “Our staff has literally been working around the clock to address each and every customer’s concern to their satisfaction and we have incorporated changes to our process to improve the overall customer experience."
The state Department of Consumer Protection has created a system to coordinate customer complaints.
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"We want to ensure that all customers are protected and adequately receiving the services for which they are paying. With that in mind, we’re encouraging anyone who is experiencing any problems to report their complaints through the state, and we will coordinate them together to ensure that these situations are being handled appropriately," Malloy said in a statement.
You can submit a complaint by filling out a form posted to the state website or sending an email to dcp.frauds@ct.gov.
Complaints should include your contact information (email, home address and phone number), the billing information for your account and a description of the specific problem you have encountered, according to the DCP.
"We've certainly received a fair number [of complaints],” said Deputy Commissioner of Consumer Protection Michelle Seagull. “I don't know the exact number to date, so have other agencies but certainly enough where we thought it made sense to have a centralized process and to work directly with the company and the process we've worked out with them to work through these complaints."
