Only $25, but still unnecessary fee

This is one of those stories where the stakes may be small but the issues raised are large, reflecting how difficult it can be for consumers to navigate customer-service obstacle courses.

Huntington Beach residents Robin Gross, 69, and her husband, James Brown, 68, are longtime phone customers of Frontier Communications and before that Verizon Communications. Frontier acquired Verizon’s California landline business in 2016.

Gross and Brown recently decided to transfer their phone service to Spectrum and bundle it with their Spectrum internet service. (Spectrum partners with the Los Angeles Times for a nightly TV show).

Normally this wouldn’t be a hassle. Federal regulations allow telecom customers to switch their phone number at no cost from one service provider to another, a procedure known as “porting.”

“I’ve had this number since 1976,” Gross told me. “It’s older than my kids. I wanted to keep it.”

As you’ve no doubt surmised, this turned out to be easier said than done.

When the couple upgraded with Spectrum, the company said it would handle everything. It gave them a temporary phone number until the porting process could be completed. Days passed. The old number was AWOL. “I kept calling Spectrum to ask what was going on,” Gross said. “They kept saying Frontier wasn’t releasing our number.”

Brown called as well. He said Frontier eventually acknowledged it closed down the couple’s account before the number was confirmed to have been transferred.

“They said that if we wanted our old number, we’d have to reopen our account for a month and pay a $25 fee,” he recalled.

“I told them they were holding our number hostage,” Brown said. “But they wouldn’t budge. I finally had to hang up because I was frustrated.”

Well, that’s no good. But why not pay the $25 fee and get the matter done with?

“No!” replied Gross. “It’s the principle of the thing!”

Added her husband: “It’s a shady business practice. We’re not going to give them more money.”

Brown’s anger, however, may be misplaced. Or not.

Although Gross and Brown said they were told by Spectrum Frontier messed things up, Frontier says Spectrum was actually the one that let them down.

Javier Mendoza, a Frontier spokesman, said an investigation into the situation revealed Frontier transferred the couple’s number to Spectrum the same day they requested the change.

“It appears the new carrier did not activate the telephone number and canceled the port request, thus leaving the phone number in Frontier’s pool,” he told me.

Putting the number back in the pool meant it no longer belonged to Gross and Brown. It was at that point available to anyone.

“As a courtesy, Frontier will temporarily reestablish the account at no charge and coordinate with the other carrier to complete the transfer of the phone number,” Mendoza said. Spectrum is telling a different story. Dennis Johnson, a company spokesman, said Spectrum didn’t cancel the port request, regardless of what Frontier says. And he said Spectrum, not Frontier, stepped up to make things right after I got in touch.

“We contacted Frontier and worked with them to transfer the phone number to Spectrum Voice without additional charges,” Johnson said.

More than a few readers, I’m sure, are shaking their heads at the spectacle of two huge companies pointing fingers at each other and vying to take credit for fixing a problem that shouldn’t have existed in the first place.

And we, as consumers, are supposed to deal with that?

Moreover, it’s pretty obvious in hindsight you don’t hit people with a nickel-and-dime fee just to fix a problem not of the customer’s making.

Like I said up top, the stakes here are small — 25 bucks.

But Gross was correct: It’s the principle of the thing.

“Whoever dropped the ball, this just never should have happened,” she said after her phone number was restored last Friday.

“I just hope it doesn’t happen to anyone else,” Gross said.