undefined | Better HN

0 pointstechnothrasher5y ago0 comments

Sometimes the regulatory route works in the US. We had our main business phone line go down and Verizon customer service basically shrugged their shoulders and said there was nothing they could do and no way to escalate. One call to the state regulator and not only did they fix the phone line within a couple hours, they begged us to tell them what they could do to make the regulatory complaint go away. We told them we'd like access to FIOS but had always been told fiber wasn't on our street and wasn't going to be. Three weeks later, fiber was run down the entire street and we were hooked up to gigabit internet. That roll out can't have been cheap for them.

0 comments

owenmarshall5y ago

When I was a youngster growing up with dialup internet we had a problem: when it rained, static filled the line and the internet died.

The repair tech sympathetically said that he was trying, but their policy at the time said the interference was at acceptable levels for voice and he wasn’t able to convince his management to trace the problem upstream and replace the line to fix one rural customer’s service.

On his fourth trip out he slipped dad a post it note with a phone number. It was the state public utility commission. My dad called on Thursday.

That Saturday, the district manager knocks on our door. He informs us of how sorry the entire Bell family is for the trouble we’ve had, that they have teams tracing lines from the central office to our house and will have the problem identified and fixed by Sunday, and that we will receive a rather significant discount to our bill over the next year to help “make it right”. His only ask was that we call the PSC and let them know if AT&T had solved the problem to our satisfaction.

everybodyknows5y ago

A state regulatory responsibility, IIUC. What state are you in?

et2o5y ago

What regulator did you call?

twunde5y ago

It was almost certainly the state public utilities commission PUC, which depending on the state may have a different acronym (PSC is also common). These regulate telecom, water, and energy companies including ESCOs (companies that in theory reduce your energy bill by charging you a different rate than the local monopoly). For companies regulated this way, PSC complaints are extremely effective.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse