Frontier Communications Epic Fail: How to Screw Up a Telecommunications Takeover and then Make it Even Worse

Ever since Frontier Communications officially took over regions in California, Florida and Texas formerly served by Verizon on April 1, thousands of residential and business customers have found themselves not only without service, but without a clue as to when service will resume.

My husband's business in Santa Monica, California and his staff have also been caught in this Twilight Zone of staggering incompetence, misinformation, stupidity, and wholesale arrogance on the part of management. As of today, the company has been without their main phone line for three weeks. Callers get either a fast busy signal or a recording that says the number is no longer in service. The company has admitted that it has "lost" the number. Hey, that inspires confidence!

How much business are we losing and have we lost with our main phone line dead? We'll never know. Without a phone line, we also cannot fax back and forth (very useful to us) nor process credit card payments in the usual way. Instead, our administrator has to call in each transaction to Merchant Services, a time-consuming process that also incurs additional service charges to us.

Our administrator's Herculean yet hapless efforts to get our phone back online with the Three Thousand Stooges at Frontier Communications has a resulted in a record-keeping log that begins like this:

"Friday 4/8 at 9:30 am. I called and after navigating through their phone tree and voice recordings I eventually spoke to Karen, but she was not able to help me other than to apologize. She transferred me to Jason who apologized more and assured me that a tech would definitely be out that day sometime between 2-5 pm so I asked to speak to a manager, Ian, who narrowed it down to 1 pm - 3pm and provided me with ticket #002431739. Ian assured me that we would be credited for the lost service so I asked to confirm that and spoke with another supervisor named Stan who said he was the wrong department and transferred me to billing where I spoke to Gabby, but she was not the right person either so she transferred me to Daneara who provided me with a number to contact once the tech had come out until then no credit would be provided.  I was on the phone 90 minutes in the morning between hold time and conversation."   

The rest of the log, which goes on for many, many paragraphs, pretty much reads similarly. Occasionally, a tech has come out, (usually not when scheduled), poked around, and failed to diagnose, let alone fix the problem. And this is where we remain today. 

As a consumer, I'm shocked at this level of staggering incompetence. As a former public relations professional, I'm not shocked at epic failure of management to be more forthright about these problems with their core audience: their customers. I'm also not surprised that they are taking no steps to show the public that they are concerned, aside from an empty chorus of empty apologies.  

In fact, Frontier's facebook page still has a cheery "We're excited!" post about their takeover of Verizon accounts, which has invited thousands of irresistibly snarky replies from outraged customers with service outages. And despite a blizzard of news stories about the roll-out that made the Obamacare exchange roll-out appear as smooth as silk, a Frontier spokesman told the Tampa Bay Times on April 15 that despite the service fails and appalling "customer service," they will not release customers from their contracts signed with Verizon. Worse, they will only offer credit for lapsed service if a customer requests it.

Memo to the Big Cheeses at Frontier Communications: If you truly want to "earn the trust" of your customers as you claim, you'd be working overtime not only to get the blasted phones-internet service back on, but you'd be working with PR professionals to help you craft messages that don't just apologize, but include a specific plan of action of what the company is doing to restore service, including a promise for appropriate refunds (without making customers beg) and other steps to ensure smooth service going forward. Short of that grown-up, responsible behavior, Frontier fully owns the scorn and resentment it has reaped by a customer base cheated of even a baseline of competence.  

The company's website should feature a message from executives in the C suite about the situation. Instead, it offers an insipid "interview" with a buffalo named Frank -- Frontier's "spokesman." For inquiring minds, Frank reveals answers to such riveting questions as: If you had a party at your house, what kind of host would you be? And: What would your dream job be? (You'll never guess that Frank would love to work for Frontier because he wants to "benefit society.")

I'm guessing that a buffalo is meant to underscore the concept of the Frontier. But based on how this company has mismanaged this takeover, their truer spokesanimal should be an ass.

POSTSCRIPT: We finally got an email from Frontier today regarding the new services. It was a bill, for more than $290.00, payable now.