May 16, 2016 · by Ilya Marritz
More than a month after tens of thousands of Verizon workers went on strike, customers seem to be feeling the consequences.
New Jersey's Board of Public Utilities reports a 56 percent increase in complaints relating to Verizon's copper wire phone service. From the beginning of the strike last month up until last Friday, there were 75 complaints, compared with 48 for the same period last year.
The number of complaints submitted to the BPU probably may not reflect the true extent of service problems, and not every complaint necessarily relates to an outage.
One very unhappy customer is Jay's Freeway Collision, an auto body shop in the town of Orange, which has been without phone or DSL internet since May 7th.
“We don't have fax, so we can't fax insurance companies, we can't reach out to our clients when their car is ready, or if they need to reach out to us for any reason. We have absolutely no communication,” said marketing manager Aixa Diaz. “If there's one more week of outages, we're going to have to close up shop. That's how much business we've lost.”
Diaz said Verizon replacement workers have occasionally visited but have not made the needed repairs.
A Verizon spokesman, Rich Young, conceded there has been a "minor uptick" in outages but would not give specific numbers.
The company and the unions representing striking workers will sit down to negotiate again on Tuesday in Washington.
New Jersey customers with complaints about their telephone service can call BPU Customers Assistance (toll free inside NJ) at 800-624-0241.