WAYNE COUNTY, W.Va. (WSAZ) – In an emergency situation, you pick up the phone and dial 911. But, for some families along Dry Branch Road in Kiahsville, calling for help hasn’t been that simple.
Tabatha Harper said her family has been dealing with no phone service from Frontier for nearly two months.
This is part of the message they get when they try to call and speak with someone about the outage: “Our team is working hard to restore service, and will update you when we have more details on restoration.”
She said the cell phone service in the area is unreliable, making their landline, their lifeline.
So when an emergency happened this past week, they had no choice but to call from a cell phone.
“The operator couldn’t even hardly hear us. My husband like had to walk in different areas so she could actually hear us,” Harper said.
She said they’re frustrated with the ongoing issue and unable to get answers from Frontier.
“When you do call them, they won’t even talk to you now,” Harper said.
Harper said they reached out to WSAZ, hoping for help.
“We called Frontier, and we kept calling Frontier, and a couple people said ‘hey, you’re going to have to go somewhere, somewhere higher … one of my mom’s friends suggested that they’ve reached out to you all, and Frontier got the ball rolling to get their phones back on when they called WSAZ,” Harper said.
On Wednesday, we reached out to Frontier asking:
- When they learned of the outage?
- Why service hasn’t been restored?
- When will work to fix it get underway?
On Thursday, Frontier responded to us, acknowledging the outage. They said it was due to tree-damaged cables in the area and they planned to have the issue fixed by the end of the day Friday but, they never answered how long the have known about the outage or why it’s taken so long to get repairs made.
“Seven weeks, we’ve always, we’ve always call it. My mom would say ‘would you call?’ and then I’ll call,” Harper said.
So we followed up and asked again:
- How long has the company been aware of the damage and the resulting outage?
- When were crews notified they needed to make these repairs?
Frontier did not respond to our follow-up questions, except to say they could not comment on specific customer accounts
Meanwhile, Harper’s family is left waiting, hoping to see a fix, and hear a dial tone as promised.
“It’s sad that they have people that are over the age of 80 to 90 years old that are without phones, without internet,” Harper said.
We will continue reaching out to Frontier with our follow-up questions and will update you here and on air when they get back to us.
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