Frontier Troubles Concern Minnesota Lawmakers, Upset Customers, Don't Surprise Workers

Two who complained told us they canceled Frontier for non-wired alternatives due to the phone company not resolving their problems. Representatives for union workers said the consumer complaints track with what they've seen. A state telecom industry association for competitors sought to distance its members from Frontier.

The Commerce report flagged network plant and equipment problems, poor customer service, including long wait times and lost repair tickets, and incorrect billing, including charges after cancellation and no credits for outages. “Consumers reported broken pedestals, unburied lines, and other damaged or deteriorated plant and equipment laying out in the open,” and the carrier has run temporary lines “through the woods, over creeks, across decks, on branches, or over a propane gas tank,” the department said. Some consumers complained about buzzing and crackling on landline phones, exacerbated by bad weather or electrical interference.

Customers’ experiences with the company are “outrageous and unacceptable,” said Senate Energy and Utilities Finance and Policy Committee Ranking Minority Member John Marty (D). The report “provides numerous illustrations of Frontier’s failure to provide service to its customers, resulting in real hardship for people and increased risk of harm by people who are unable to contact others, including a loss of access to 911,” he said. Marty is “pleased that state regulators are recommending tough sanctions for the company” and hopes “the PUC moves quickly to have Frontier refund money for services not received and force the company to make prompt improvements in service.”

“I am sure enforcement will be swift and reasonable" if violations are found, said the Senate committee’s Republican chair, David Osmek. If statutory changes are needed, he "would be ready to listen."

“Frontier takes this matter very seriously and we are taking steps to address the concerns raised by our Minnesota customers and expect these efforts to result in improved services for our customers," said Chief Operations Officer Ken Arndt in a statement. "Rural areas face unique infrastructure challenges and Frontier nevertheless serves rural areas where other service providers choose not to invest to deliver service." The company "strongly" disagrees with many Commerce Department assertions and will respond at the PUC.

Dissatisfied

The Hoyt Lakes Golf Course faced many phone and internet outages with Frontier, including two internet outages that lasted 30 days each, said clubhouse owner Dan Darbo in an interview.

Outages were “sporadic” for the first couple years but worsened two years ago and “last year was absolutely ridiculous,” Darbo said. When the internet went out, the business couldn’t accept credit cards, which most of his customers use to pay, he said. Darbo allowed some to pay later when the system was working, and others to go downtown to get cash from an ATM, he said. Darbo said he has heard similar stories from other businesses.

Minnesota should require Frontier to credit customers for lost service, said Darbo. “We had to fight to get a credit,” he said. “They were sending us bills for the month we weren’t even operating.” After a month of no service last year, Darbo canceled and signed up for Hughes satellite internet, which he said is “leaps beyond” the service and “has never went out yet.”

“The service was so slow all the time that it made it realistically impossible to use,” emailed Linda Splettstoeszer, an Edina Realty agent in Delano, Minnesota. “It would kick out of service in the middle of use. It was frequently not available at all. It continually got worse until it was unusable completely by the time I cancelled.” The telco promised to credit her for time without service, but she didn’t get a check until much later, after complaining to the PUC, she said. Splettstoeszer switched to Verizon Wireless for home internet, but service fluctuates between 4G and 3G, she said.

Labor Upset

Customer complaints line up with reports of technicians represented by the Communications Workers for America, said CWA District 7 Organizer Jeff Lacher. CWA, representing Frontier technicians and call center workers in parts of Minnesota, have long raised such concerns with the company, he said.

Frontier opts for “makeshift,” temporary fixes to bad equipment rather than paying for replacements, and “will never authorize overtime for a repair,” Lacher said. “If you’re out trying to do a repair and you don’t finish it by the end of the business day, you’re instructed to leave it rather than finish.” Customers sometimes wait weeks for technicians because Frontier doesn’t have enough, especially in remote areas, with the company promising but never delivering more hires, he said.

Lacher said he’s a dissatisfied customer himself. He asked Frontier multiple times, to no avail, to bury a cable lying on the ground at his Lakeville home, he said. “I lifted it off of the ground and dangled it from the gutter simply because I don’t want it sitting in the puddles.”

Cables don’t always get buried right away, and if a car runs over a pedestal, Frontier might put a trash bag over it rather than replace it, said a CWA-represented Frontier technician in Minnesota who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retribution. The company tells workers to “keep putting up Band-Aids,” though it promises “light at end of the tunnel,” he said. Much of the company’s plain old telephone service equipment hasn’t received an upgrade in 15 years, he said. “We’re stretched thin,” with times last summer where the customer repair queue was nearly two weeks long, the technician said.

Other Minnesota telecom companies aren’t like this, said Minnesota Telecom Alliance CEO Brent Christensen: MTA members, including CenturyLink and many smaller phone companies, “are dedicated to providing good, quality service.” Christensen has heard “many complaints” about Frontier, which isn’t a member, he said. MTA is monitoring the PUC probe but doesn’t plan to file comments on the Commerce report, though it earlier asked the commission to keep its focus on switch-based landline telephone service, he said.

“Everyone is better” than Frontier, agreed Lacher, whose union also represents CenturyLink Minnesota workers. Smaller phone cooperatives get few customer complaints, he said. CenturyLink gets complaints, but that carrier’s problems don’t seem “systemic” like they do at Frontier, he said. CenturyLink declined comment.

"Frontier values its partnership with CWA and will continue to proactively take steps to provide adequate, reliable and affordable service," said Arndt.

The PUC plans to vote Jan. 24 on a Frontier request for 30-day extension until March 5 to comment on the Commerce report, said a meeting agenda released Friday. The carrier said in docket 18-122 that “the volume and complexity of the Department Report make it impossible to provide even a sufficient and meaningful initial response within 30 days.”