Far fewer landline telephone complaints to county government

What a di erence a year or more makes.

It wasn’t terribly long ago that dozens of ustered Rappahannock residents turned to the county government for help with landline telephone service and repair — or lack thereof.

Often it would take months on end — literally — for telephone repairmen to show up in various pockets of the county, delays that put lives at risk.

Rappahannock Administrator Garrey Curry, who was new to the county government at the time, began looking into residents’ complaints and realized all too often citizens were interacting with automated call centers who didn’t know Washington, Virginia from Washington, D.C.

“A big amorphous blob o shore service center massive database computer system,” is how Curry creatively described the all-too-prevalent telco black holes.

Newly elected to the county’s board of supervisors at the time was Christine Smith, who Curry gave credit for taking the bull by the horns during her rst ever public safety meeting.

“Coming out of that meeting were several recommendations, including letters sent to the telephone companies, as well as to the SCC [Virginia State Corporation Commission], as well as to our elected representatives, delegate and senator,” Curry recalled at the time.

It would take several months, but through that process the county government cultivated new human contacts with both Verizon and CenturyLink, two landline service providers.

“And we met with Verizon and CenturyLink, we sat down and laid it out, and said your service is su ering and we’re really concerned because in a community like ours there are pockets that have no cell phone communication. So that landline is the last resort and only resort for communication, for 911.

“It’s really a public safety issue,” Curry noted.

While the county government stood by as a “conduit to the humans,” those county residents with landline issues were soon speaking to humans again — and not in far away Florida or Texas.

“It’s the man in Front Royal who’s in charge of the CenturyLink group, and the man in Culpeper who’s in charge of the Verizon group, who really have the ability to create change here,” Curry observed.

Fast forward to this month, May 2020.

“There were two complaints reported to county administration regarding landline telephone service during the month of April,” Curry commented in recent days.

One was a Rappahannock resident who simply had a billing dispute with Verizon. The customer was referred by Curry’s o ce to the SCC and told to recontact the county government absent a resolution to the issue.

The other complainant was a Bean Hollow Road resident who had grown tired of having temporary telephone lines stretching along the ground.

“CenturyLink reported that they lost track of the temporary repair and would dispatch a crew to install permanent buried lines,” Curry relayed.