One Year on the Frontier

Recently, retired aerospace manager Raman Visishth, 55, posted on NextDoor the results of an informal survey he conducted of landline and FIOS users who had experience with Frontier Communications, which took over from Verizon on April Fool’s Day 2016. His survey received 700 responses and according to Visishth, “over 90 percent were dissatisfied.”

“Many of you may recall I took a poll on NextDoor that indicated roughly 94 percent of 900 Frontier customers in council district five were dissatisfied with service they were receiving. During that time I began communicating with the top Frontier executives with complaints district five residents were experiencing. I also recommended customers that were dissatisfied to file FCC complaint forms to help Frontier prioritize the changes they were making. Filing FCC complaints dramatically improved service to Frontier customers as the company upgraded their equipment and executives were replaced.”

In fact, the top dog, Frontier Western Region President Melinda White left the company, though the exact date cannot be pinpointed. According to local Frontier spokesman Javier Mendoza, “In April, Frontier reorganized its operation to focus on customer service. It’s no longer a state or regional operation,” but is nationwide for better service.

White was present during the August 10, 2015 Public Utilities Commission meeting during which both Verizon and Frontier executives took questions from customers in a crowded conference room at the Airport Marriott.

White also presided over a mid-May 2016 meeting in Long Beach, in which customers expressed outrage over alleged poor service, resulted in some shoving and implied threats were made against a reporter covering the event.

According to Visishth, he was informed by a Frontier employee, that “Verizon software designed to carry customer data and contract over from Verizon to Frontier was offered Frontier for purchase at $1.7 million,” however Frontier decided against the purchaser.

“Had they done that purchase, the problems that came about by customers not having contracts in the system would have been solved,” said Visishth. “Problems with people getting misbilled would have been solved. With idiosyncrasies in the software, managers kept the problems to themselves.

“Some of these managers were laid off. With system issues related to people holding back information,” Visishth texted Frontier managers who did not know the process needed. “Once the contract expired, there was no record.”

According to local Frontier spokesman Mendoza, he had no knowledge of such software being offered to Frontier, but stated he would look into whether that offer occurred.

At the time of the PUC hearing, there was a total of 99,100 landline customers at the seven Verizon switching stations in Long Beach, which had been recently inspected. The PUC reported the poor condition of some Verizon stations. “During the tour, they found several cable facilities not properly maintained. Some violations were noted. There were power poles with equipment strung on the wrong side, preventing access.”

The number of FIOS customers was and is a well-guarded secret because of competitive reasons with Charter, now renamed Spectrum, after the merger with Time-Warner. However, according to a March 31, 2017 article in the Dallas Morning News, since the acquisition, Frontier has lost 322,000 customers in California, 180,000 in Florida and 110,000 in Texas, for a grand total of 612,000 customers who jumped ship.

“We currently serve five million customers across the country,” said Mendoza, who would not offer more local numbers or verify similar customer information “The company’s business is strong,” Mendoza said, “with an annual capital investment of a billion dollars.”

“Frontier is much different from a year ago,” said Mendoza, referring to the acquisition of Verizon landline and FIOS properties in California, Texas and Florida. “That doubled the company size and taught us valuable lessons. Acquisition presented operational issues. We’ve learned through the transition to resolve the issues.”

Visishth said employees with deep institutional knowledge were laid off just when their background was most needed.

“People at Frontier are humble and service oriented. Our neighbors, college and the community. Every organization faces workplace transitions, we’re monitoring and transferring knowledge,” Mendoza responded.

“We are well resourced in Long Beach. People are still here. Long Beach has one of the most extensive fiber optic networks. We have 25 facilities in the Long Beach area, yards, trucks and a multilingual call center.”

An early customer complaint was that of off-shore call centers, though Frontier had promised not to use them. “A year ago, there was some offshore,” Mendoza said, who added they no longer use offshore call centers.

Visishth agreed with many of Mendoza’s claims. “Frontier employees live in Long Beach in council district five and take great pride in their work. As of now, it now looks like much of their service issues are resolved. I hope Frontier can regain some of the customer base they’ve lost to keep up the competition.”

steve@beachcomber.news