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Three Month Wait for Basic Phone Service ?
Q. Were the delays to merely "turning on" phone service with a new number to an existing house? Were the delays adding a second line to a house with one line? At the phone company -- why did the delays occur? Insufficient capacity at a CO to accomodate new subscribers? Insufficient manpower to do outside wire stringing? Bogdown in paperwork processing? When NY Telephone suffering serious problems in the 1970s, one cause was the increased "churning" from customer moves. In those days of distributor frames with long jumper wires manually strung each time a phone line was connected, the frames got overloaded. Further, things like cable assignment were all done manually and would bottle neck up. Lastly, NY Telephone had a lot of employee turnover and the newly hired employees were slow to pick up job skills. I wonder if any of those conditions are the current problems at US West. I would assume computerized order processing and ESS offices would eliminate a lot of problems. Anyone know any more details?
A. I spent a few days in Montevideo, Uruguay, once, back in January 1983. Nice, quaint city, capital of the country, with very friendly people. I remember reading in the phone book, where it lists the information on how to order service, that your order would be placed in one of three categories: a. You were a member of law enforcement, doctor, judge, or any other profession for whom the telephone service was critical. b. Your order had 20 or more years of waiting. c. Your order had 10 to 19 years of waiting. It didn't say whether moving to a new place reset the counter or not ... I guess if you had been waiting for your phone 9 years or less, you'd keep on waiting until you entered (c), wait for another ten years, and enter (b), at which point, if you still wanted telephone service, you would get it. Or, if you got lucky, the phone company would expand facilities in your area and you would get service sooner. US West Communications spent $1 million on cellular phone vouchers last year for Colorado customers who waited almost three months, on average, for basic dial-tone service, according to records from the Baby Bell. The information, released by US West at the request of {The Denver Post}, highlights the phone company's "held order" problem in Colorado, which is among the worst in the United States at a time when competition looms for local phone markets. The standard for new phone service across the country is five days from the date of order. US West claims that 95 percent of its customers receive that level of service, but population growth, demand for second phone lines and an acknowledged lack of planning by the phone company have led to at least 2,400 fuming customers who waited months last year. "I'm not happy about this problem," said Bob McGinnis, director of marketing for US West's consumer division. "We're always going to have pockets of held orders. But those entities that have superior customer service will succeed in the marketplace." To address the problem, US West began a cellular voucher program last spring, which has been made permanent by the state agency that regulates local telephone service, the Public Utilities Commission. Customers who wait more than 30 days for basic dial-tone are eligible for a $150-per-month voucher to use a cellular phone until their line is connected. The total number of held orders in a year's time -- no matter how long the wait -- is in the thousands, but US West declines to publicly release that number, claiming the information is proprietary. However, the cellular voucher program profiles those that wait the longest in Colorado. Between April 14, when the program started, and the end of the year, 2,257 residential customers applied for cellular vouchers and were paid a total of $947,550. Those customers waited an average of 2.8 months for service.
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