Governor Rell: AT&T, DPUC Must Make Major Improvements in Timely Customer Service

            Governor M. Jodi Rell today expressed her deep frustration with AT&T’s poor record of making timely repairs to out-of-service customers in Connecticut and called on both the company and state regulators to make major improvements.

            State regulations call for 90 percent of out-of-service calls to be resolved within 24 hours. AT&T has failed to meet this standard every month between April 2001 and March 2008, Governor Rell said in written testimony submitted today to the Department of Public Utility Control.

            Equally frustrating, the Governor said, is the fact that the DPUC has taken no action to enforce the 24-hour standard. The standard is especially critical because so many of the more than 1.6 million AT&T land-line customers in Connecticut are senior citizens who depend on their telephone service for contact with medical providers, emergency services, friends and family.

            “Connecticut customers are calling – and no one seems to be home,” Governor Rell said. “This is totally unacceptable and it must change. There is no excuse, in this day and age, for customers to be unable to count on their telecommunications company or their state regulators when their phone service is out. For many people it is more than a question of convenience, it is a potential matter of life and death.

            “Both AT&T and the DPUC need to work together, first to immediately start meeting the repair standard and second to establish and maintain a higher level of customer service,” the Governor said. “Currently customers seem to have an especially hard time even reaching AT&T: Of all reporting companies, AT&T has had the lowest percentage of calls answered within sixty seconds and the highest percentage of calls abandoned by customers. It is clear some changes are in order.”

            In October, Governor Rell strongly protested AT&T’s plans to close its repair dispatch center in Meriden and move it to Michigan, a move that would not only result in the loss of 60 jobs but would further erode the timeliness of AT&T’s customer service.