Suddenlink Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Lawsuit Filed Against Suddenlink One Month After State Fines

A class-action lawsuit was filed Monday against cable provider Suddenlink for failing to provide reliable cable TV and internet service.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court’s Southern District of West Virginia on behalf of a St. Albans resident, as well as all West Virginia Suddenlink customers from 2016 to the present day.

The suit names Suddenlink’s parent company, Altice, as a plaintiff in the case and argues that Altice’s cost-cutting practices have contributed to a decline in service.

On February 9, the company was fined more than $2 million dollars by the Public Service Commission of West Virginia for failing to provide reliable service. The Commission also ordered Suddenlink to locate a call center in West Virginia, amongst other requirements aimed at improving customer service.

The penalties stemmed from an investigation into what the Commission called, “a staggering number of quality of service complaints.” These included delays in service restoration and billing errors. The investigation found that the company had ignored thousands of customer complaints while intentionally reducing its maintenance work and budget.

The lawsuit makes repeated reference to PSC’s findings. The order specified Suddenlink’s cable services, but the suit argues to extend the order’s provisions for service improvements to Suddenlink’s internet and phone services as well.

The filing further accuses Suddenlink and its parent companies of binding customers by an unsigned agreement that the plaintiff argues is unenforceable in West Virginia.

The plaintiff is seeking an injunction to stop Suddenlink from doing several things, including hiring technicians from parent company Altice, routing customer calls out of the state, and utilizing outdated equipment.

Suddenlink Under Legislative Scrutiny During Interim Meeting

With increased emphasis on broadband internet access throughout the state, the West Virginia Legislature’s Joint Standing Committee on Technology and Infrastructure wanted to hear more about some of the problems facing the largest cable internet provider in the state — Suddenlink.

Linda Bouvette, a staff attorney for the Public Service Commission, said they compared complaints against Suddenlink to those the commission has received about Comcast. Comcast has about 15 percent fewer customers in West Virginia, mostly in the northern part of the state. In 2020, the PSC received 29 complaints about Comcast, but more than 1,000 about Suddenlink.

“Suddenlink tries to use bad weather and COVID as a defense,” Bouvette said. “Comcast had the same weather conditions, and they operated under COVID, too, and they didn’t have these types of complaints.”

Bouvette said most of the complaints deal with customer service calls. Many of the calls are received out of the country and that leads to some communication issues and language barriers. The other major complaint was long delays to get a technician to come to a residence or business and fix a problem.

Despite a request from the PSC that Suddenlink set up a customer service call center in West Virginia, a company representative said he had no knowledge of plans to bring one to the Mountain State.

Legislators in the committee indicated Suddenlink will be called back to testify during the regular session that begins in January.

W.Va. Regulators To Probe Complaints Over Suddenlink Service

West Virginia’s Public Service Commission said Thursday it has opened an investigation into customer service complaints about Suddenlink Communications.

The PSC ordered Suddenlink to file information within 30 days. It also scheduled two public comment hearings and an evidentiary hearing in August at its Charleston headquarters, the agency said in a statement.

Suddenlink, owned by New York-based Altice, provides cable, internet and telephone service through much of the state.

Among the information the PSC wants are details on customer complaint call logs, worker training, completed and projected improvement projects to cable service, specific outage information and the processes used to issue and track trouble tickets.

Last month state PSC chair Charlotte Lane met with Suddenlink representatives about more than 1,900 complaints the agency received about the company’s service. Among the complaints were service restoration delays, billing errors, customers being unable to place orders for service or contact workers over their service status.

After Lane directed Suddenlink to provide a correction plan within 30 days, Suddenlink replied with a June 7 letter that did not contain a correction plan or detail what steps the company has taken to improve cable television service, the statement said.

“Suddenlink’s response to our request for a corrective plan to its disastrous customer service problems was completely inadequate,” Lane said.

In its response to the PSC’s query last month, Altice said that it has resolved nearly all of the customer complaints cited by the agency, and that in many instances it issued credits “for customer inconvenience.”

A community meeting over Suddenlink’s cable service in the city of Charleston was held last month. The company’s cable franchise agreement with the city ends in December, WCHS-TV reported.

“I’m the 80-something-year-old lady who writes ‘I hate this company’ on every check I send to you,” resident Shawna Steadman said at the meeting.

Altice has more than 5 million residential and business customers in 21 states through its Suddenlink and Optimum brands.

Public Service Commission Directs Suddenlink to Create Improvement Plan Amid Hundreds of Complaints

Following a long list of complaints about Suddenlink Communications, the West Virginia Public Service Commission has directed the company to submit a plan to fix the problems by June 7.

Public Service Commission Chairman Charlotte Lane met Wednesday with Suddenlink representatives to discuss a long list of complaints customers are experiencing.

The Commission has received nearly 1,900 complaints from West Virginia customers regarding Suddenlink’s telephone and cable television service since 2019.

“The recurring problems with Suddenlink’s telephone and cable television service have gone on long enough,” Lane said. “Customers deserve to receive the service they are paying for.”

At the conclusion of the meeting Lane directed Suddenlink to file a plan that includes:

how and when the company will open a call center in West Virginia
how and when the company will hire technicians and various other employees in West Virginia to service state customers
how the company will fix problems with incorrect 911 fees being billed to customers
how the company will accurately and timely process payments and credits to customer accounts
how the company will fix billing errors
how the company will ensure late fees are accurately assessed
And identify who is doing the billing for the company

Suddenlink serves up to 350,000 customers in 31 counties in West Virginia.
A statement from Altice, the parent company of Suddenlink says:

“Altice USA is proud to serve our Suddenlink customers in West Virginia and we are committed to providing high-quality service and support throughout the state. We understand that some of our customers may have experienced some frustration particularly during the pandemic as the company adapted operations to ensure the safety of customers and employees. We continue to make major investments in our network, products and services, including the recent launch of our Smart WiFi 6 product and the roll out of our advanced Altice One entertainment platform. Our teams continue to work diligently to continuously enhance the service experience for our customers in West Virginia, and we will continue to communicate with the Public Service Commission about our ongoing investments in the State that benefit our customers.”

Cable Company Call Center Closing in Parkersburg

A telecommunications call center in Parkersburg will be closing this summer, putting nearly 170 people out of work.

Altice USA is shutting down the Suddenlink Communications call center this summer. Altice purchased Suddenlink more than a year ago.

Altice USA spokeswoman Lisa Anselmo says investments in technology, tools and other resources have resulted in a 20 percent drop in customer call volume over the past year.

She says customers will notice no changes from the move.

The company says other operations will remain in Parkersburg, including a customer walk-in center. Technical support will continue to operate locally.

Some of the affected employees will have an opportunity to apply for other positions within Altice USA.

Suddenlink Cable Subscribers in Charleston Get Improved WV PBS Service

Charleston, W.Va. — March 27, 2014 — West Virginia Public Broadcasting made significant improvements to how Suddenlink Cable subscribers in Charleston will receive the WV PBS signal.

Until this past week, Suddenlink picked up West Virginia PBS programming “off-air,” meaning the cable company used a receiver and antenna to deliver the signal to customers. This type of delivery is fragile and prone to signal interruptions, causing outages and pixelation.

To alleviate this problem, West Virginia Public Broadcasting engineers designed and installed a direct feed from the station’s headquarters in Charleston to the Suddenlink facility. In addition, there are now two backup delivery options in place that will automatically kick in should the primary signal feed fail.

“Our testing of failure modes demonstrates a slight pause of approximately one second during a switch,” said Scott Finn, executive director of West Virginia Public Broadcasting. “Many viewers will not even be aware of it occurring. This is in contrast to outages of many minutes or hours of glitching and audio static bursts.

“We invite our Suddenlink cable viewers who have tuned away because of these problems to try again and, please, provide your feedback,” Finn said.

To provide feedback to West Virginia Public Broadcasting e-mail feedback@wvpublic.org

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