Susan from Toms River: Verizon forced me to switch to FIOS

Over 9,000 attend AARP forum on the need to preserve access to affordable, reliable, regulated traditional telephone service  

Yesterday, over 9,000 AARP members joined a TeleTown Hall forum that was focused on a range of topics, including the need to preserve access to affordable, reliable, and regulated landline telephone service in the state of New Jersey. Dozens of concerned AARP members took the time to share their stories. 

One of these AARP members was Susan Shaw of Toms River. Susan says that Verizon’s pressure to have her switch from traditional copper landline to service to its FIOS service involved repeated calls, knocks on her door, and even having her traditional service turned off.

“When I called to report an outage, they sent a repairman to my home who said he was unable to repair my copper lines and that the only way to get my phone service back was to migrate to fiber…I filed a complaint after the first time they did this with the Board of Public Utilities and miraculously my phone went back on.”

However, Verizon persisted, continuing to press her to switch to FIOS over the coming months.

 “Another time they turned my phone off and again I called for repair, and they came to my door, pressuring me that I would have to migrate to fiber or I would not have a phone. I again contacted the BPU who assisted me….miraculously my phone went back on again.”

Eventually, despite her continuous protests to transitioning, she eventually had no choice but to relent to the pressure of Verizon. 

“The last time they shut my phone off was when I was just about getting ready to go out of town for Thanksgiving. I have an alarm system that would not work without a phone. Everyone was dragging their feet about putting my phone back on and this time I did not feel that I was going to get any help in getting it put back on before I had to leave, and unfortunately relented and had to take the fiber.”

Now that she has switched to FIOS, she feels she is getting inferior service, and her costs are higher due to the cost of equipment that she will be footing the bill for.

In addition to Susan’s story, we also heard from a number of other New Jersey residents who expressed a wide range of concerns regarding their telephone services. These include:

Natalie from Brick who had her copper line removed following Sandy. It was never replaced. Despite that, she began being billed again for service by Verizon in September of this year, despite her line never being replaced. She complained several times, and the line was never fixed.

Dale from Eatontown called to remind people of the importance to get names and operator ID numbers from anyone that they speak to when they call Verizon. He emphasized how critical copper landlines are for him.

When asked during the call, over 84% of respondents indicated that they still had a traditional copper landline phone. It is believed that over 1 million NJ residents still depend on traditional copper line telephone service for a range of reasons, including their reliability during power outages.