WOOD COUNTY (KYTX) -- Land-line phones are ringing again in Alba and Lake Fork after a nearly a month of silence because of a technical problem. But a lot of people are still mad at Verizon.
At the beginning of September, Verizon told CBS 19 it would take one more week to fix the problem, and it did. But Wood County businesses who rely on customers being able to call had to take drastic measures. Now they want Verizon to make it right.
At Steve's Custom Props, Steve and Donna Glenn had their business land line forwarded to a personal cell phone so they would miss fewer calls during the outage. But Thursday a bill came in the mail for their land line.
It includes a mysterious section labeled "change in service" and the Glenns suspect that was for forwarding calls -- $7 added to the bill even though they had no choice. Even worse, they said, was the $3.81 pro-rated credit meant to make up for a basically useless phone line.
Donna called it an insult -- when the company should be doing a lot more.
"They should be compensating the residential and commercial properties out here for the loss of service that we've had," she said. "We've lost business revenue. This is pretty much a busy season coming up and there's no compensation from their end from the customers and stuff that we've lost."
The Glenns said it gets worse. The land line bill that came Thursday, after a month of problematic service, is higher than ever. They showed us previous bills that range from $10 to $15 cheaper from months where the phone was actually working.
Meanwhile their cell phone bill hasn't come but they've used more than double their usual minutes. They hope Verizon wipes those extra minutes clean.
Other businesses and people around lake fork told CBS 19 they're just as angry.
Reached by email, Verizon spokesperson Jarryd Gonzales said he was working on an answer for our questions about billing related to this incident, but that the split between the company's land-line and wireless services made sharing information difficult.
