First, let's get into a little history. Waitsfield-Champlain Valley
Telecom began well over a hundred years ago as Waitsfield-Fayston
Telephone Co. In that time, there have of course been outages, some
preventable I'm sure, and some not. A case in point is the flood of
1927, during which, I've been told by some old-timers, Alton Farr and
crew traveled up and down the Mad River in boats to fix things. These
are not the actions of an uncaring corporate entity.
More recently, the response to these interruptions in service -- few and
far between, in my experience -- have always, again in my own
experience, been dealt with in a timely fashion and with appropriate
concern for customer service. In addition, during those times when
weather conditions have resulted in interruption of electrical service, I
can remember precious few times when my phone also went out.
Second, they have expanded into the cable and internet markets in a
responsible and fair manner. I recall when the options for cable TV were
being discussed; the choices were narrowed down to Adelphia and the
Waitsfield-Fayston Telephone Co. Since Adelphia planned to provide
service only to the villages and Sugarbush Village, and
Waitsfield-Fayston Telephone Co. intended to offer service to everyone
in The Valley, a petition was circulated and presented to the Vermont
Public Service Board to give the contract to the local guys.
Luckily, that is what happened. Now, I have heard people complain about
the price of our local cable service, but please remember that this is a
small company which expended considerable resources to establish a
largely rural network of lines -- thus with not a huge amount of revenue
per line-foot -- in order to provide the most households with the best
product, equipment and service possible. When your cable box goes on the
fritz, you get a new one, no questions asked.
The same can be said of their foray into the internet market -- everyone
in their expanded customer base now has access to high-speed internet,
and when your modem goes south, you have only to bring it down to the
local office and one of their friendly and accommodating staff will
cheerfully provide you with a new one.
To address Mr. Klofach's contention that Waitsfield-Champlain Valley
Telecom exhibits a callous disregard for their customers; that has never
been my experience. It makes me wonder if perhaps he was a bit emphatic
and elicited a response in kind. Customer service reps are expected to
deal rationally and calmly, with often angry customers, but everyone has
his/her limits. Our humanity precludes perfection. Which brings me to
my last point -- Mr. Klofach avers that his phone company in PA would
reimburse customers for an extended outage. I would agree that this is
appropriate when the interruption in service is the result of company
error/equipment malfunction and the problem was a prolonged one. I
experienced that same phone/internet outage, and it was resolved within a
few hours (at least at my house in E. Warren). That was, in my opinion,
a darned swift response. If you divide those three hours by an average
of 720 hours in a month, that comes to about 5/1000ths of a percent; if
you then multiply that by an average of $100/month for phone/internet
service, that comes to approximately 50 cents -- even though the outage
appears to have been a technical glitch and thus their fault, they can
keep my 50 cents. And, in my 37 years here, I bet I could count on my
fingers (maybe both hands) the number of times that similar outages have
happened, and only once has one lasted more than a few hours.
Remember the big, wet snow dump of Nov 1990? We still had phone service
lo-o-ong before we had electricity restored. Oh, and even though they
had no responsibility for that weather-related phenomenon, we were
reimbursed for our lack of cable service for three days.
As an aside, over many years I have heard my parents, brother and
friends in many different areas of the country complain of the numerous
times their phone/cable/internet service was interrupted, while mine was
not. I guess the answer to Mr. Klofach's question is that it comes down
to your perspective -- if one takes a zero-tolerance approach to phone
outages, then there will undoubtedly never be reliable phone service
anywhere.
Finally, Waitsfield-Champlain Valley Telecom is not a huge conglomerate,
raking in excessive amounts of money, yet they continually give back to
the community, supporting local fund-raising and charitable
organizations.
Sharon Dwinell lives in Warren.
