Phone Problems

September 5, 2003

I used to be a telecommunications executive and am now a writer and consultant working out of my house.  My home phone line, internet connection, and fax machine are important.

Near 10 AM on Thursday morning my home phone went out.  A Comcast contractor, Mastec, was installing giant amplifier boxes in the air hanging from poles in the neighborhood.  My phone line is in the same place and around that time it went dead.  I found a workman on a pole two houses away and told him my phone was out; I could tell from his reaction he was probably the source of the problem.  He told me to call Qwest.  But when I said “Come on, you all are the ones that caused it,” he called a colleague on a nearby pole, asked him if he knew anything about telephone lines, and then told me there was a Qwest truck in the area.  The two of them then blamed my problem on Qwest.  I drove around and found a Qwest man; he said no, he wasn’t aware of any outages.  He wrote my phone number on his hand and assured me he would report it.  He said within five hours it will be up.  I went back and told the Comcast guy on the pole that the problem was not due to Qwest.

I didn’t trust him and after a half hour called Qwest; no outages had been reported.  They told me service would be restored by 5 PM tomorrow.

At 4:30 the same day I called Comcast.  I had already grown extremely suspicious of them, despite their brief ownership tenure here, and had names and phone numbers of some pretty powerful executives.  I called Bruce Lambert, Denver customer care director, and left a voice message; within a half hour he called back on my cellular.  He seemed as if he really wasn’t going to help but he listened to my situation; finally I said “Look, you have my phone numbers, if there is anything you can do, please have someone call me.”  Mr. Lambert has c-l-o-u-t.  A short time later Vernice, a fire-putter-outer supervisor type, called.  The first thing she said was “We haven’t had any workmen in your area,” but when I almost screamed, “I spoke with them, on top of a pole, in my backyard!” her demeanor changed markedly.  She sounded as if she was talking on about three different phones at the same time and something happened very fast; someone would call and be out to my house immediately.  She gave me her cellular number and said to call her back.

I received no calls but about an hour later Jeff Coon, with Mastec from Idaho Springs, showed up.  One of the first things he said was that they “knew who it was.”  He climbed several poles and checked the phone box at my house, pronouncing my phone “dead,” no further information available.  Why I wasn’t sure, it was awkward, but he had me speak with his boss, Mr. Moran, on his cellular phone.  It was now dark.  Nothing more was going to happen tonight.

While on the phone with Vernice or Mr. Lambert, around 5:30, I received a voice mail about the service ticket with Qwest.  It was a computer-generated message saying someone would be there tomorrow and it provided a number to call.  Later that evening I called the number.  “Yes, someone will be out tomorrow,” the woman told me.  I asked if she could provide any other information:  are there other outages, why hasn’t there been a faster response, and has there been any involvement from Comcast?  About all she said was:  “The problem is 150 feet from your house.”  I asked how she could know that but received no response.  The next day I asked the Qwest serviceman the same question and was told that there are sensors in the grid and outages can be easily traced.

Friday 9:45 AM

Exact Recall of the Post-Fix Conversation

“Can you tell me what Comcast did?”

“They just knocked some wires loose.  I did some cutting and resplicing.”  He said or implied that it was no big deal, it happens all the time.  He had climbed both the pole with the box, where he spent maybe ten minutes, and the pole nearest my house, where he did the cutting.

PCP:  “I’m surprised there isn’t some sort of arrangement, sharing, between Qwest and Comcast.  A line of contact, that they don’t call you all, pay overtime if necessary, and get things fixed right away.  It seems to happen frequently, you work with the same poles and wires.”

Young Workman:  “There is, but half the time it doesn’t get reported.  They don’t want to get credit for it, if you know what I mean.”

PCP:  “No, I don’t.”

Young Workman:  “If they report it then that way they know who it is, who did it.  If it is not reported they never know.”

I had watched him from my yard and from inside my house.  He covered a lot of very steep ground, he carried a large extension ladder, and the poles he climbed are tall.  He said they were very busy and that he had thirty such calls to make today.  When he finally explained it my understanding of the situation took me by surprise.  My dumb reply was:  “You guys are feisty.  Assuming you and the Comcast workers are the same, I mean, you climb on the same poles, work with similar wires.  I have heard stories like that before.  You guys are feisty.”

My favorite story was US West operators giving customers the phone number of a local Pizza Hut to call for customer service.

 The workman smiled and acknowledged my comment.  “Well I get along with them fine…  We work in the same ditches, the same rocks… ” and he cheerfully went on his way.

My most lasting impression of the telecon with Mr. Moran, Mastec manager, called via cellular by the Mastec driver who came to try and fix the problem, was correct.  I never expected anyone would be charging me anything, so when he said “I want you to send the Qwest bill directly to me, I have authority to write checks” my suspicion was that what he really wanted was to conceal the situation from Comcast.  My reply at the time was:  “Even the guy on top of the pole told me,” again, unsolicited, “that you all have a direct billing relationship.  I’d rather deal with Comcast, Comcast managers, they’re the ones I write checks to.  I don’t want to be put me in the middle with a contractor or subcontractor.”  They were both disappointed by my position.  They didn’t know right then how to cover their tracks.

What I recall most about my talks with Vernice is her saying “Someone is going to get a good talking to,” after I explained the situation.  I told her what Mastec was up to but her reply was nondescript.  I wonder what she knows?

From a customer standpoint, or otherwise, this is a serious offense.  It is virtually the same as leaving the scene of an accident.  It is very dishonest.

In addition, up the management chain, the cover-up continued.  Why didn’t someone say, ‘We have a system for that and it broke down?’  In charge of that system is a person.  I wrote this for Evergreen Living, but I am also sending it to Comcast.  I have had my writing distributed within companies before.  What would I really like from them?  I would like a note or a call from “the person.”

No, why?  Wouldn’t it just be another, maybe even smoother, more practiced denial?  The only real fun here is trying to figure out who lied when.

© 2003 Peter C. Pfeiffer