Cuomo Releases Report Showing Verizon Fails To Make Timely Repairs 35% Of The Time

NEW YORK, NY (April 17, 2007) — In a filing yesterday at the New York State Public Service Commission (PSC), Attorney General Andrew M. Cuomo criticized Verizon for providing “chronically poor” telephone repair service in many parts of the State, and called for the PSC, which regulates Verizon, to set stricter standards and mandate customer rebates for inadequate service.

Currently, the PSC requires Verizon to repair 80% of phone lines within 24 hours of receiving a customer repair request. However, the Attorney General’s office analyzed five years of data (2002-2006) and found that Verizon had consistently failed to meet these regulatory standards. Specifically, 20 out of Verizon’s 35 “repair service bureaus” across the State chronically failed to meet the PSC’s standards. These repair bureaus serve a total of 4.8 million customer phone lines, about 62% of Verizon’s New York customers. In total, Verizon failed to comply with the standards 35% of the time, although in some individual bureaus the failure rate was as high as 82% of the time.

The Attorney General found that the bureaus with failing scores include seven areas where Verizon is aggressively building out its new fiber-optic internet, video, and telephone network, including Westchester, Northern Queens, parts of Rockland and Putnam counties, and all of Long Island. Other regions with poor service include Buffalo, Albany, the Bronx, the Hudson Valley, Syracuse and Utica. The Attorney General noted that Verizon appears to be neglecting to maintain its copper-wire telephone service in favor of dedicating resources to expand its fiber-optic services, and that it has no effective plan to address this problem.

Cuomo said, “Verizon’s customers pay for and deserve good quality phone service. Verizon cannot continue to short-change customers by failing to repair faulty lines in a timely manner. The PSC should immediately order rebates to frustrated customers, who rightly feel cheated by Verizon’s failure to abide by the PSC’s standards.”

Cuomo continued, “We should not accept Verizon’s empty promises for turning around its woefully inadequate repair service. The PSC needs to send a strong message to Verizon: hear us now. Clean up your act. Putting profits over minimally acceptable performance is no longer acceptable in New York State.”

Attachments:

• 20 Worst Performing Repair Bureaus of Verizon’s 35 in NY
• COMMENTSOF THE OFFICE OF THE ATTORNEY GENERAL OF THE STATE OF NEW YORK, ANDREW M. CUOMO

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