HESPERIA, Mich. — There's positive progress tied to a 13 Help Team story published Tuesday.
A number of Hesperia-area Frontier Communications customers said their phone service had been down for nearly two weeks after an accident shattered a nearby telephone pole.
They accused the utility of failing to undertake repairs in a timely fashion.
Terry LeBaron, the customer who tipped us off, said Wednesday he spotted Frontier crews repairing the damaged pole south of Hesperia village limits, snapping several photos.
Amid what he viewed as an unacceptable delay, Terry was just about at the end of his rope during our initial interview Tuesday when he put it this way:
“For $170 or $180 a month, if you're 10 minutes late with your payment, they're shutting it off, but we can't get it back on after 12 days,” he said. “There's something wrong there.”
“Maybe they don't have kids out there. I do. That's my lifeline and other people's lifelines… if they need an ambulance or something, if you don't have cell service, someone's going to die.”
13 ON YOUR SIDE found a portion of the damaged pole still suspended by the remaining lines, hardware and all.
Terry’s phone line, he said, went down on Sept. 8 and even though the utility had acknowledged the outage, Frontier had made a habit out of hanging up on him. He said it had also repeatedly pushed-back the time frame for restoration.
Many of his neighbors, Terry said, were likely in the same boat.
The series of photos received Wednesday showed what appeared to be a number of Frontier trucks in the area performing necessary repairs.
Terry credited the 13 Help Team’s involvement in bringing about the recent progress.
The utility has yet to respond to 13 ON YOUR SIDE’s request for clarity at the time of publication.
It remained unclear Wednesday when service would be restored.
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