New York Attorney General, CWA Still Worry About Verizon Service Quality

Verizon defended its service quality and work in New York over the last year. “The goals of Verizon and the Attorney General are the same -- to provide the best, most reliable telecommunications services for New Yorkers,” a Verizon spokesman covering the New York region told us in a statement. “After thoroughly review[ing] the filing, Verizon submitted its comments to the New York PSC, which aptly recognized the changing landscape of telecommunications in the state when it adopted the Service Quality Improvement Plan [SQIP] in 2010, in a proceeding that allowed full participation by interested parties.” The spokesman also said Verizon New York invested $1.5 billion in its landline service in 2011, about five times what was invested in wireless. Verizon’s service in 2012 has been good, the spokesman observed and cited a positive 2012 first-quarter PSC assessment from May (http://xrl.us/bniv2n) and noted that service quality performance in the second quarter has continued to be strong, although not yet reported by the PSC, he noted.

"Verizon’s investment in the network has been declining year after year,” Communications Workers of America (CWA) Research Economist Pete Sikora told us. The PSC has been “enabling that decline in service quality,” he said, and “the PSC did what Verizon wanted to game the numbers.” He spoke of “statistical games” meant “to cook the books” and described major changes in service quality numbers not matched by anything demonstrable in the field. The PSC needs to reverse the changes in its metrics, insist Verizon invest in its workforce and network, and institute “rigorous audits,” the researcher recommended. “The commission should act here,” he said.

The PSC declined to comment on the recent filings except to say the proceedings continue and that all comments are being reviewed, a PSC spokesman told us. The commission had leveled a $400,000 penalty against Verizon in spring of 2012, a fine it said was due to the company’s performance in 2011. The Verizon spokesman, however, pointed to the hurricane, storms and strike last fall and their lingering effects. Sikora called $400,000 a “meaningless sum” and “an inadequate form of punishment” when contrasted against the money Verizon’s executives earn.

The debate all goes back to the revised SQIP, which the PSC required of Verizon in 2010 due to service deemed unsatisfactory (http://xrl.us/bnivvs). The PSC’s chosen plan “drastically relaxed the service standards” for Verizon and even with such deregulation, “Verizon nevertheless failed to meet four repair service measurements in 2011, the first year of the plan,” the attorney general’s office judged in April (http://xrl.us/bnivvy). “The PSC should effect meaningful reforms of the SQIP designed to force Verizon to stop neglecting its customers’ repair needs,” the attorney general’s office said April 25, and recommended several steps the PSC should take in revising the plan, such as disaggregating performance measurements and ruling Verizon’s “ability to reduce the size of its repair-related work force” be restricted “until, at a minimum, the company has demonstrated the ability to consistently meet all service standards,” the office said. CWA’s Sikora submitted detailed comments in support of the attorney general May 18 (http://xrl.us/bniv6v). “The record establishes that the SQIP will not provide adequate service to all its New York customers,” Gordon asserted July 6 to the PSC, recommending the commissioners accept the changes its office proposed (http://xrl.us/bniqqs). The office’s April petition judged that “the basis for the Commission’s deregulatory decision relieving Verizon of providing adequate service to most of its customers was deeply flawed and has resulted in seriously diminished service quality for Verizon customers.” Verizon has stood by the plan and on July 16 said it is “rooted in sound and lawful policies that seek to adapt the Commission’s regulatory regime to the realities of a highly competitive market, and that encourage prioritization of repair service for vulnerable ‘core’ customers” (http://xrl.us/bnivwn).

CWA filed hundreds of comments Monday with the PSC objecting to the workforce practices of Verizon New York. The comments were from CWA workers and follow a form letter: “New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman recently intervened with the PSC’s Verizon Service Quality proceeding,” the letter said, repeated in total throughout the scores of comments and split across multiple bulk filings (http://xrl.us/bniv76). “I urge you to follow his recommendations, which CWA has argued for years ... Every day I see the negative effects of workforce reductions.” CWA, in these letters, asks the PSC to “make Verizon protect jobs, and thereby customer service as well.” CWA had arranged for a similar campaign with hundreds of essentially identical form letters in 17 batches on May 18 (http://xrl.us/bniqss).