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7/2/09
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FairPoint bankruptcy wouldn’t affect services, state officials say AUGUSTA, Maine — Representatives of FairPoint Communications and Maine’s Public Advocate’s Office sought to assure customers this week that phone and Internet services would not be affected if the beleaguered company is forced into bankruptcy.
FairPoint officials have said that filing for bankruptcy protection would only happen if other options for restructuring the company’s debt are unsuccessful.
Last week, FairPoint officials notified bondholders and federal regulators that due to financial troubles, the company essentially was seeking to delay interest payments due Oct. 1 on more than $500 million in debts.
If FairPoint fails to secure agreements to delay payments on 95 percent of that debt, the company said it would be forced to consider other restructuring options, including bankruptcy.
But Jeff Nevins, spokesman for FairPoint in Maine, stressed that it has not come to that point.
“We want to make sure people understand that we have not filed for bankruptcy,” Nevins said. “But regardless of what our financial situation is, we will continue to serve our customers. For most customers, they won’t really notice a difference.”
Representatives of Maine’s Public Advocate’s Office agreed. Because FairPoint is a regulated public utility, its customers will continue to receive service regardless of financial problems.
“There is no way the company is going to go out of business,” said Wayne Jortner, a senior counsel at the advocate’s office, which is charged with representing the interests of ratepayers in dealing with utilities. “The company is going to continue to operate.”
FairPoint has been struggling to fix technical and billing problems as well as fulfill service orders ever since the North Carolina company formally took over Verizon’s land lines earlier this year. Those widely publicized problems led many customers to leave FairPoint, exacerbating the company’s financial situation.
Nevins said the situation has improved significantly in recent months. Nearly all of the billing problems have been addressed, he said. And most customers phoning into FairPoint’s call center get a live person within one minute as opposed to the busy signals and seemingly endless waits that many customers encountered a few months back.
“We do have a backlog on orders, but we are making progress on that backlog,” Nevins said.
Jortner and William Black, the state’s deputy public advocate, agreed that complaints about the calling center have improved dramatically. But their office has seen an increase in other complaints after weeks of progress. Most complaints go directly to the Public Utilities Commission, however.
On Wednesday, a new face, David Hauser, took over as chairman and CEO of the Charlotte-based company. Hauser joined FairPoint after more than 35 years with Duke Energy, one of the nation’s largest electricity producers.
Hauser has pledged to address the problems.
“While it is gratifying to be named chairman and CEO of this longstanding organization, I am very aware of the operational and financial concerns surrounding the company,” he said in a statement accompanying last month’s announcement of his selection as chairman and CEO.
“My primary focus will be to address these concerns in quick succession and empower our team to seek and implement solutions.”
In the meantime, Jortner and Black said they hope customers will stick with FairPoint because additional losses will only make the company’s financial matters worse. The two men also hope that FairPoint’s bondholders will agree to some form of debt restructuring, thereby allowing all sides to focus on fixing the service problems rather than spending money on bankruptcy lawyers.
Should the company enter into bankruptcy, the Public Advocate’s Office would seek intervenor status to protect the rates that were negotiated with FairPoint, Jortner and Black said.
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Seems FairPoint has turned into FailPoint. Thankfully I do not use any of their services but I feel bad for those that do. FailPoint was supposed to make things better in Maine but things have gone downhill since they took over.
Verizon is TOTALLY to blame for all FairPoint's troubles. They are the most greedy bunch of crooks. Verizon bled Northern New England's landlines and NEVER invested ANYTHING into upgrading things that should have been addressed years ago. All Verizon did was outsourse jobs and charge us outrageous rates for substandard service. Verizon has no interest in landlines and they were looking for someone to dump this mess THEY made. FairPoint had NO choice but to switch over to new systems as Verizon had them over the barrel because they had to LEASE these old antique Verizon systems for MILLIONS every month. The PUC should have made Verizon pay FairPoint to take them over, not vise versa, and then this article would have never been written. I think FairPoint is trying their best with what they had to work with (which wasnt much). Now since Verizon has taken over Unicell, look at all the jobs right here in Bangor that are now gone. Verizon will never get another cent from me. I hope they go belly up
"Bankruptcy wouldn't affect services" Right and when Fairpoint bought Verizon we wasn't going to have much in the way of service problems and look what happened. What else could possibly get screwed up anyways if they filed for bankruptcy?
Verizon could have invested in the state, but as mentioned they are greedy, they felt they woudl not get revenue (or at least as fast as they would like) had they expanded broadband options. Greedy and Lazy, that is what Verizon was. Screwed up and clueless, that is Fairpoint.
Glad I do not use their services, I don't care if I share my cable connection....it hasn't failed on me.
"Nevins said the situation has improved significantly in recent months. Nearly all of the billing problems have been addressed, he said. And most customers phoning into FairPoint’s call center get a live person within one minute as opposed to the busy signals and seemingly endless waits that many customers encountered a few months back."
What a crock. Just yesterday I called Fairpoint to pay my bill with a credit card and listened to their recording telling me how important I am, and that " a representative would be with me in a minute". That minute turned into 25+ minutes before a representative finally answered my call. He said that because I was a "Fairpoint Classic" customer (I was with Fairpoint prior to their purchase of the Verrizon business) he'd have to transfer me to another Fairpoint office. About 5 seconds later, while he supposedly was transferring me, the call was disconnected. I can't believe our Public Utilities Commission has stepped in on this mess yet. It just keeps going on and on.
It's all about cash flow and FairPoint didn't have the numbers to support the expansion into New England. The PUC failed the citizens of Maine on this deal.
Surprise surprise, I can't get a rep out here to help me with my phone service and I have no other choices no cable service either. If Maine wants to be at the forefront of business the state will need to invest in an infrastructure that can handle it.
The State is to blame here. THey should have guarnteed certain protections, upgrades, etc. before they allowed the switch. SHould have forced Verizon to do upgrades prior. People need to start calling and writing Augusta in a BIG way.
"FairPoint bankruptcy wouldn’t affect services, state officials say"
Is that compared to the craptastic service they have been giving us or is that compared to the service they said they would give us?
No wonder NYNEX left no wonder Bell Atlantic merged no wonder verizon left, Maine is the WORST state to do business in! High taxes, big regulatory bodies, and most of all, little money even without a bad economy! it costs more that its worth for these companies to do business here! I wouldnt be surprised if FailPointless left too! then where would we be? no phone service at all, no DSL.
Wireless is the way to the future! shortly after the switchover i tried to have my phone disconnected, first they said call back next week, then they said call back in the middle of the night when it was less busy, finally a month later i was able to disconnect, i put the family on my verizon plan, i had been a unicel customer for three years so they didnt even charge me a deposit (and my credit sucks!)
I am glad I never switched to them...HOW can a company start such a huge venture and fail so quickly?? Bad planning.
We are an internet provider and have worked very hard to straghten out our bills with Fairpoint and have been very unsuccessful. We have bills coming to us that we shouldn't have and it has taken way too long to straigten out and it's very frustrating as a business person to have to take the time to deal with such a simple issue that should have already been resolved. If we ran our business like that we wouldn't be in business for long.
Somebody from the PUC should comment on this situation. How could they let this happen?
All I have to say about Failpoint is that I have been waiting for them to return the $7.00, that I over paid when I terminated my services with them, for over 6 months. Man they must be desperate for cash!
This just in:
State officials say that if the moon fell to earth, it would not affect peoples lives.
We should all be thankful that they're not Comcast :p
8street-
I just searched for a headline or other source that backs up your claim that the moon has fallen to earth but I couldn't find anything. Please provide a reference.
Thank you, Mr. Deschain.
I cancelled my services with Fairpoint in Feb- and went with Time Warner- Fairpoint is still billing me each month! I keep calling, they keep telling me I show as disconnected- but the bills keep coming------- I wonder what happens when they start threatening collection proceedings?
Donnelly...that has happened to a lot of people who I have talked to recently. Then when you try to call to straighten it out they keep you on hold forever and keep transferring you to different people. I am tempted to send them a bill for my time!!!
fairpoint is going threw bankruptcy. good cause they suck anyways. i switched over to gwi and they are geat. fairpoint keeps sendin me bills i have nothing but problems with them from day one ever since i had my phone and internet hooked up threw them i have had nothing but problems they have gone down hill
HomeinMaine, I have also canceled with them, in March, they send me a bill we spend half an hour on the phone they tell us there is a record we canceled and to ignore the bill, they refuse to send confirmation in email or writtiing, (our phone is still on). We send them a letter to cancel (our phone is still on). Next month we'll probably play again, next fall when I check my annual credit score they better not have reported my failure to pay or I will sue them in small claims!
donnelly- I have the same problem, they think I owe them over 6 months of service. Calls I gave up on, I tried letters but that won't work either. In fact 3 months ago they threatened to disconnect my service on me for non payment, I wanted them to do it, I thought I might finally be able to get someones attention when they call me to ask for payment or have a collection agency come after me (which they probably can't afford to hire one). But nope, they just keep sending me a bill, asking for money that they will never see.
HomeinMaine- Hopefully they won't touch your credit score, I have monthly monitoring and to date they haven't put anything on it, hopefully when you check yours again, they didn't touch your credit report either.
Sorry meant to include lrancourt on the second part....I will blame Fairpoint for my failure at multitasking.
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