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County to AT&T:
Cable service stinks
By DAVE HAMRICK
dhamrick@thecitizennews.com
MediaOne/AT&T is on the outs with Fayette County again.
Steve White, MediaOne/AT&T senior vice president, has promised to
schedule a meeting with Chris Cofty, Fayette’s interim county administrator,
to discuss the county’s complaints about how the company is going
about rebuilding its system, and how the company handles local customers’
service complaints.
“Customer service had gotten a lot better,” Cofty said, following
a series of discussions between the county and MediaOne about a year and
a half ago. But then the firm was purchased by giant communications company
AT&T, and things changed, he said.
“Nobody at AT&T is aware of the process we used to go through”
to handle customer complaints, Cofty said. “They suggested we try
a different method.”
Whereas county workers used to take complaints to a special governmental
affairs vice president by phone, now they are encouraged to use e-mail,
Cofty said.
“Now we’re being contacted repeatedly by the same customers
saying they have yet to be contacted by MediaOne to resolve their complaints,”
he said. “Their customers and our citizens deserve more than that.
“The e-mails we get back are quite condescending to our employees
here,” Cofty added. “It’s almost like they’re put
out by us telling them that they have a customer that has a complaint.”
Meanwhile, the county’s own complaint is that MediaOne/AT&T construction
crews, who are replacing more than 800 miles of antiquated cable with
new, state-of-the-art fiber optic lines, often dig up county right of
way to bury the new cable without first getting the proper permits.
“We’ve been forced to shut them down in several areas,”
said Cofty. Crews are installing cable improperly, he said, often in ways
that may damage county roads. In other cases, he said, the lines are buried
in areas designated for future turn lanes or other improvements, and when
those improvements are made, the cable will have to be dug up and reinstalled,
interrupting service to local customers.
“If they had applied for their permit, we would have told them what
they needed to know,” he added.
Cofty said much of the problem having to do with construction is due to
procrastination. The county’s franchise agreement with MediaOne calls
for completion of the upgrade by this November, and when transfer of the
franchise to AT&T was negotiated last year, the deadline was moved
up to October.
“What they have chosen to do is wait until the 13th hour to start
this rebuild,” said Cofty. “They’ve tried to shove 8-900
miles of construction into a two- to three-month period.”
Cofty wrote to MediaOne Vice President White last week, asking for a meeting.
“Please be advised that MediaOne/AT&T continues to bury cables
in Fayette County without the necessary permits from Fayette County. Notifications
regarding this issue... have gone unheeded... This disregard by MediaOne/AT&T
has caused and will cause further damage to the Fayette County infrastructure
that is currently in place,” Cofty’s letter stated.
Cofty said White called him later in the week, promising to schedule a
meeting and try to resolve the problems.
“I feel a little bit better than I did before,” he said.
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