No phone service for a month: AT&T outage ‘killing’ Palm Springs business

Palm Beach Post (FL)

Dec. 12--PALM SPRINGS -- Nancy Beltran has been running an insurance business in Palm Springs for 28 years at 4290 10th Avenue.

Now, for the first time, she's running Dixie Specialty Risk without her AT&T phone service.

"It's killing my business," Beltran said.

In the afternoon on Nov. 19, the phones went dead when AT&T said there was damage to a cable in the area. Service won't be restored until Dec. 26, according to the multinational conglomerate holding company.

"It could have been somebody who was doing construction in the area, it could be a car hit one of our switch boxes," said Tim Brewer, a customer care manager in AT&T's repair call center. "There are several reasons it could be damaged."

Brewer said 43 customers were affected.

"But it could be more than that," he said. "We're working to restore the service as quickly as possible."

Beltran said AT&T told her the company had more than 1,000 reports from customers complaining about the outage.

Miguel Yero owns Yero Botanica, the company next door to Beltran's business. Yero said he disconnected his AT&T service several weeks ago.

"Service went out for two months once," he said. "I had AT&T for 30 years."

Wawa is building a new store on the corner of 10th Avenue North and Military Trail, but the company said it had no role in the cable being destroyed.

"AT&T was performing their own work with cabling relocations and splicing just prior to Wawa performing any excavation," the company wrote in an email to Beltran. "This is not the result of our new store construction."

Beltran said she went to Metro PCS and added a line to her personal cell phone. Then she had AT&T transfer her office phone to her personal cell phone. She said she's paying $107 a month for the service.

"We fax a lot of things here for places that don't have emails," Beltran said. "We fax bills, evidence of properties, proof of insurance and without a fax, that's really difficult. We're trying to get everybody's email address now and are trying to email documents we normally fax."

Jeanie Locy, a secretary for the company, said the problem is bad.

"It's really horrendous," she said. "We're working off our personal cell phones and we can't fax to any of our customers. How can they allow this to happen? We should not have to wait until Dec. 26."

Locy said not everybody goes on the internet to pay bills.

"Many use their phones to make payments," she said. "It's extremely sad we've been put on the back burner for a construction site."

April Taylor, a receptionist, said she spends most of her time on the phone.

"This is terrible," she said. "I can't take payments on an email. I need to talk to them and it's been really hard."

Beltran said she doesn't know if she's lost any business, but she wouldn't be surprised if she has.

"I've been here 28 years and we have referals all the time calling us and when people can't get through to you, then go someplace else," she said. "I could be losing potential business because of all of this. It's very frustrating."

kthompson@pbpost.com

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