Yet again, CenturyLink failed to fix a long outage until Ars emailed the company.
Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Credit: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Telecom provider CenturyLink left a couple in Oregon without landline phone service for two months, then sent a bill for $239.
CenturyLink customer Kirstin Appel and her husband live in Banks, a city with fewer than 2,000 residents in Oregon's Tualatin Valley. They keep a landline for emergencies because their only Internet service is satellite, and cellular service in the area is poor. Appel said they pay $41 a month for CenturyLink phone service.
CenturyLink phone service became spotty and intermittent around January 20 when winter storms hit the area and then went out completely on January 27, Appel told us. She contacted Ars nearly two months after the outage began, desperate for a fix because her various chats with CenturyLink customer service led nowhere.
The service was only fixed after Ars contacted CenturyLink, and Appel had to spend hours chatting with the company's support to get bill credits. The surprise $239 bill had to do with phantom 411 calls made from her number during the outage (more on that later in this article).
"I've chatted with them multiple times and had two canceled repair tickets since then," Appel told us in late March when her service was still out. She said that customer service reps provided conflicting information on the status of the outage.
"I keep hearing different stories from representatives about how there is a widespread outage in my area—yet no outages are showing up on any outage map that I can find," Appel told us at the time. "One representative even told me that the outage was fixed, scheduled a tech to come out, and then that ticket was canceled without my knowledge. I reached out to CenturyLink today via chat, and they informed me that the outage is still affecting my area."
Not our first CenturyLink horror story
If this sounds familiar, you may have read our February 2024 article about CenturyLink leaving Oregon customers without Internet service for 39 days. In yet another case we wrote about last year, CenturyLink left 86-year-old Minnesota resident Helen Marie Plourde without home Internet and phone service for over a month. In both of those instances, CenturyLink only fixed the service after we emailed the company's public relations department.
We contacted CenturyLink about Appel's case on the afternoon of March 26, and the company fixed her phone service on March 27. CenturyLink told us at the time that it was "trying to get all customers back online as soon as possible."
A CenturyLink technician who fixed the service left a message for Appel saying that a line serving her house had nearly been severed. It's unclear why it took CenturyLink two months to fix the line or how much longer it would have taken if the company never received a message from a media outlet.
Repairs promised but not delivered
Appel provided us with transcripts of chats she had with CenturyLink customer support. On March 6, an agent told her the estimated time for a restoration was 8 pm on March 7.
In a subsequent chat on March 9, one company rep told her that "there is no outage reported." She was transferred to another agent who informed her that there was an outage but that "the outage was restored early this morning."
"I still have no dial tone," Appel responded to the agent. The agent then wrote, "I understand, I have run a line analysis on your line and a dispatch is recommended to fix the issue."
The agent scheduled an appointment for March 19, but that date passed without a repair. In another chat with customer support on March 20, Appel wrote, "I had a technician scheduled to come out yesterday. No one arrived and I got no notifications of an appointment change or cancellation. My phone line is dead—there is no dial tone."
The agent replied, "I can see you are facing the issue with phone line. I will certainly check and help you." About six minutes later, the agent confirmed that a "service outage is going on in your area" and said it would be fixed on March 22.
Of course, the fix didn't happen until March 27. Before Ars got involved, CenturyLink seemed to have "no intent to restore my service, or at least were not in any great hurry," Appel said.
Big charge for phantom 411 calls
Despite her service eventually being reconnected, that wasn't the end of the problems for Appel. She received a bill listing new phone service charges of $298.55, mostly due to 43 calls allegedly made to 411 directory assistance during the outage. The calls were billed at $5.49 each.
The amount due on the bill was $239.25 because of credits she had been receiving due to the outage. Appel had to contact customer service every time she needed a bill credit.
"CenturyLink never offered to cancel my bill or offered to give me credits directly whenever I explained my situation. To get credit or bill cancellations, I had to go through the customer service chat each time I wanted to do that," she said.
Appel said she had to spend over two hours in a chat with CenturyLink support to get the 411 call charges reversed. That's in addition to the time she spent earlier obtaining bill credits while the outage dragged on longer and longer. Appel said it was frustrating that she "had to personally ask for these charges to be canceled" given that "it was impossible for those calls to have been made by me while my line was out of service."
Appel's phone line somehow also called 911 a few times during the outage. This happened three times, including two "occasions resulting in a county officer knocking on my door in the middle of the night to make sure everything was OK," Appel said.
CenturyLink blames crossed lines
A spokesperson for CenturyLink, which also uses the corporate name Lumen, gave us an explanation for the phantom 411 and 911 calls. "Possible Line Taps or Crossed Lines are rare and may cause auto-dialing of 411 or 911 calls due to bad cables, shorts in the external wires that have been damaged, or wiring issues within the customer's home. Kristin's issue was caused by damaged cable in a nearby culvert," CenturyLink told Ars on April 17.
The company also said that "Kristin is located in an area of Oregon that had multiple storms repeatedly damage our service lines."
We passed that explanation on to Appel, who said that CenturyLink had never told her what caused the 411 and 911 calls despite her many inquiries. Frustrated by the lack of information coming from CenturyLink, Appel also submitted a complaint to the FCC shortly after she contacted Ars.
ISPs are required to respond to FCC complaints. On April 19, a "CenturyLink Customer Advocacy" case manager submitted a response, which said in part:
CenturyLink has been working with Ms. Appel regarding this matter because of a media inquiry received from Ars Technica. After investigation we found that Ms. Appel reported no dial tone on 01/29/2024. A repair ticket was entered at that time but was later cancelled and included in an outage that affected several customers. Cable was damaged and had to be repaired/replaced. Unfortunately, because of the damaged/crossed lines, Ms. Appel's phone autodialed 911 and 411. The cable issue was resolved, and service was restored on 03/27/2024.
We would like to take this opportunity to apologize for the service/billing trouble and that Ms. Appel's line automatically called 911/411 in error. One-time credits of $423.79 were provided to remove service charges that were billed during the outage and to refund Directory Assistance (411) calls that billed in error.
No Internet service from CenturyLink
CenturyLink doesn't offer Internet service where Appel lives. Entering her street address into the company's broadband-ordering website brings up a message, "CenturyLink may not be able to provide Internet service at your address," along with a recommendation to try Hughes satellite service.
Appel said she uses Viasat satellite for Internet access. "Starlink's satellites are in the wrong position for my location without having the receiver on a very, very tall tower," she said, recalling the message that Starlink's app provided her when she investigated the service.
Appel, who works at the front desk in a pediatric hospital unit, said her experience in customer service helped when she was pursuing refunds and seeking updates on the outage. "People need to know that these companies will try to get away with shady business whenever they can. I feel like if I didn't 'speak customer service,' and if I wasn't assertive, CenturyLink would have been able to get away with me paying for nothing," she said.
While she got credits for the phantom calls and the entire length of the two-month outage, Appel tried to get an additional month or two of service paid for due to the inconvenience. "Unfortunately, that request for compensation for inconvenience has only been met with a 'we have given you all the credit we are allowed to give' spiel from reps," she said.
Appel's experience is similar to what occurred after some Portland, Oregon, residents lost fiber Internet service in January. As we previously wrote, neighbors Nicholas Brown and Leonard Bentz lost Internet access on January 13 and couldn't get reconnected despite repeatedly calling the company for help. CenturyLink didn't reconnect those two homes until we contacted the ISP on the residents' behalf over a month after the outage began.
Brown said he contacted CenturyLink about once a week during the outage, and the company kept giving him new dates for service restoration but that each date passed without a fix. Similarly, Bentz said CenturyLink "kept putting me off and putting me off and putting me off."
Throughout her two-month ordeal, Appel was frustrated by the lack of accurate information about the outage and repair status. She was also disappointed that CenturyLink canceled repair tickets without any notice and that requesting refunds was so time-consuming.
Appel has been a CenturyLink customer since 2016 and said she didn't previously have any major troubles with the company. "I'm actively looking at other companies who might be able to fulfill my needs for a landline or something similar I can use in a power/Internet outage," Appel said. "CenturyLink has broken whatever trust or confidence I had in them, and I'm very wary of continuing to pay them my money."
Listing image: Aurich Lawson | Getty Images
Jon is a Senior IT Reporter for Ars Technica. He covers the telecom industry, Federal Communications Commission rulemakings, broadband consumer affairs, court cases, and government regulation of the tech industry.
