YOUR COMMENTS

Rob,Hartford,Ct ---- Wrote
Tom in Manchester, NH - YOU NAILED IT! The Union is killing FP.... and a bunch of other nonsense that does not make a bit of sense. First of all the Union has only been a part of FP for only about a year and few months. This company knew what the Union got in benefits before they promised everyone their lies. Secondly the Union has been a part of the company(VERIZON) that up and left the people of this region since it started many, many, many years ago. With VERIZON still a UNION company making money hands over fist. The Union were the workers of that company and got it to where they are today. So before you comment on something you might want to get you facts straight. FP knew exactly what it would cost them to purchase this region and knew they were biting off more than they could chew. But dished out lies to the public and the Unions. More than a few people seen right through there lies but were unsuccessful in stopping the sale. How can anyone be against an average person making a decent living for once, instead of these cooperate executives squeezing these company’s dry. Unless you are one of them or you are jealous?.........
- Steve, Auburn,Nh

Tom in Manchester, NH - YOU NAILED IT! The Union is killing FP. They have the most robust benefit plans and thanks to the Union whining, there is almost NO oversight or check and balance when people "claim" a disability or use FMLA time. Its sad. Much like the car companies, the Unions are so delusional and worried about "getting thiers" they overpay employees and dont realize they are draining the company dry while they take 3 breaks a day. Union mentality does not promote productivity or profitability. Its a very "small scope" view.
- Rob, Hartford, CT

On Sept 1 we moved our company from Manchester to Goffstown and had a date from FairPoint of Sept 11 to connect our new service. Well its now Oct 5 and we are still waiting and have heard every excuse in the book. Nice people to talk with if you don't care about phone service.
- William Mac Phee, Goffstown

An example of the utter incompetence of Fairpoint: When I finally gave up on them after my office internet was down for a month - Fairpoint gave multiple excuses until I finally ascertained from them that the problem was "DNS changeover related outage (changing over from Verizon)" - i.e. due to their incompetence - I cancelled my office phone and internet and moved over to Comcast. Around this time, I noticed that call volume into my office seemed low. It wasn't until 4 months later that I learned that because Fairpoint failed to make a disconnect order at time of port (i.e. my move over to Comcast) - many of my incoming calls were not being connected - they were being shunted over to the old Fairpoint voicemail that our office no longer used! Callers were still hearing our (old) office greeting on the voice mail, they left messages which were never returned, because we had no way of knowing that there were messages, and no way of accessing them even if we had known (after all, we were now Comcast customers!) This has caused
my business to suffer immeasurably, and now it appears that I may have no legal recourse as the comapany's solvency is in doubt.
I agree with the many others who blame the state - what were the regulators thinking when they allowed such a small time, ill equipped player to come into the region and take over for Verizon?
By the way, regarding Verizon FIOS...I had the service in MA, and it was no picnic. The FIOS tv service offered no discernible advantage over Comcast high def, it offfered no free movies at the time (unlike Comcast), and its menu navigation was impossible. Verizon's customer support was terrible.
- Peter, Peterborough

As a result of Corporate Business as usual heading the way it is in the US loyalty is scarce and the all mighty dollar prevails,stockholders and the general public driven.The US Consumer and a quality driven public for a cheaper price seems to be the norm today.To which here we have a multimillion dollar company,driven towards bankcruptcy by a weaken economy and unloyal customers.But don't blame them all,if I were having problems with my service I might drop them like a bad habit also.But I have not,so I still use Fairpoint as my phone carrier.
Many years ago people were loyal to the phone company,maybe because they were the only game in town,then deregulation happen,so we are not the only guys in town anymore.Note the Big Three Woes.Toyota is a thorn in there side as Comcast and Time Warner is to Fairpoint and Verizon.I feel saddened when the govt. regulators makes these poor decisions that affects our future ,economy and familys.It took 100 years to build up the MA BELL as we knew her in the United States and less than 100 days to bring Fairpoint Telephone to where it is today.The government had helped build it up with subsidies and then they cut it into little pieces.
So who do we blame,the PUC,Capgemini,Verizon,blame can go round and round.Wasting time and energy.We all must try to work together on resolving this mess we are in.Put the corrections in place where they are lacking,and NOW.And as an employee point of view ,spend more money to fix what needs repair.And Fast before we lose more and more customers.
As a local 2320 member I strive for quality and Teamwork.We need to spend our time and money to win back the infrastructure of what we had and our customers trust.
I would also like to see Fairpoints New CEO Davis Hauser not to accept his bonus until he can turn this company around and get the customers we lost back.And running smoothly again.And also get him on Public Television and apologize sincerely to our customers.
- Andrew Kniskern, Plymouth,NH

At the end of the day, elected officials should be on the hook for this. Whether they were involved directly or through those they arranged to have appointed to the PUC, etc. Will the people call them on it!? (Of course, they may not be able to call if they have Fairpoint!)
- Steve, Manchester

Asleep at the wheel, Governor Harvard MBA watches while an undercapitalized, unqualified, poo dunk company gets taken to the cleaners by Verizon, thanks for the leadership, hello, opps can't hear you no dial tone, nice work, jobs gone, fiber optic gone, service gone, cable companies in control, thanks
- mike pucci, barnstead

Bankruptcy for Fairpoint? It couldn't happen to a more deserving group of people.
- Sam, Portsmouth

A lot of people saw this coming, just not so quickly. The real crime is that the PUC approved the deal, freezing fiber optic expansion in the southern part of the state forever. It breaks my heart to know that we'll never get FiOS TV, despite the presence of the fiber optic that VZ rolled out in many towns, and are now stuck with Comcast, which is the only winner in all this. VZ sold their land lines here to help them raise capital to bring fiber optic to other parts of the country, including our neighbor to the south. What suckers we were. Why isn't the PUC accountable for this fiasco? Where was the governor in all this?
- Alex, Portsmouth

With Fairpoint, the answer to any problem is always just around the corner. In reality, nothing changes. Or if something does, it's a change for the worse.
- Brian, Farmington

The writing was on the wall the minute that Fairpoint acquired Verizon's northern New England operation. They had not nearly enough capitalization to make the upgrades that they had to make to stay competitive with Comcast.

The real scandal here is why did Maine, NH and Vermont all approve the transaction? This definitely was not in the best interests of their citizens. As we move forward a high-speed fiberoptic infrastructure is vital to our region remaining competitive in the future information economy.

Everytime i see those FiOS ads on television I feel sold out by my state government.

An aside to Spike in Brentwood. Do you even bother to think through an issue anymore? Or do you have standard responses loaded up in your computer? You are so pro-business/anti-government you've become a joke. You bring nothing new to the table. Seriously...you're defending Fairpoint!?
- Bob, Bedford

The PUC should have been involved in the beginning making sure Fairpoint had the skills to run the operations. The government should force the PUC to be actively involved in any public utility takeover and make sure things go smoothly. If they don't within a certain length of time then get a company that CAN deal with it properly. Fairpoint is a mess and should not be allowed to continue doing business in this state nor VT or ME for that matter. I dumped Fairpoint for a much better plan with www.itpvoip.com. I get a LOT more for my money and wish I'd done it sooner. I definitely get way less hassle with VOIP service than I did fighting with Fairpoint every month to fix my screwed up bills. I'm just sitting back now watching for the day when Fairpoint crashes and burns for good. Our government does need a total overhaul on some issues though, this being one of them.
- ARIJANA, LITTLETON, NH

There are several factual errors in this article:
(1) FairPoint access lines are 1,354,000 at June 30 (as opposed to the 570,000 stated above). This is down from 1,525,000 at the close of the sale (11% drop).
(2) The math used to measure the drop to the shareholders is incorrect (the drop is not from the purchase price to the current equity value, because most of the original purchase price was debt). The actual equity drop is still substantial though at around 90%.
(3) The excuse that Mr. Hauser uses that systems issues drove customers away is not supported by facts - FairPoint's access line losses in the last two quarters (post cutover) were 72,084, as opposed to 99,546 in the two quarters before that (H2 2008), 90,276 in the two before that (H1 2008), and 87,258 before that (H2 2007). In fact, FairPoint's customer losses post cutover actually represent a decline from the losses they had pre-cutover.

Simply put, FairPoint overpaid dramatically for the assets they received from Verizon and poorly planned their cutover. Their constant excuse making does nothing to change these facts.
- Ryan Herbster, Portland ME

Go back and over your reader comments from the beginning on this company. Readers knew what the PUC failed to acknowledge, this company was headed for BK from the get go. Can we get people on the PUC who understand how to read a balance sheet? Recession or not, FP was only able to secure business financing at rates higher than the average credit card customer...why? because the street knew this company was a HIGH credit risk. Please get people on the PUC who have experience in the businesses they regulate.
- Cathy, Derry

The NH customer wants 21st century internet and voice service for a fair price. Fairpoint with the lack of financial capital and the lack of will to provide anything more than 7 mps DSL isn't going tot survive for long. Even if they fix all their billing problems and run some expensive ads they are still selling an out dated product.
Chapter 7 with receivership is the only way to go. It is time to start over.
- Chris, Merrimack

It is truly a shame to see the company in it's current state. I was an employee and have since moved on to other opportunities because of the way this company is being run by FairPoint. From day one of working for FairPoint there was a common theme. The Verizon management employees who were part of the transaction were never really part of the decision making. All the decisions(bad ones) were made by FairPoint Classic. Gene Johnson is gone but Peter Nixon is still there. Until you get rid of Peter Nixon, the recovery will be long and painful. Mr. Hauser still believes FairPoint has state of the art systems...Must be coming from Mr. Nixon as he was involved in making the decision to go to these system instead of isolating the current ones from Verizon. Gene and Peter had no clue as to what they were taking on and it is evident with where FairPoint is today. Capegemini should be fined for their lack of competence in getting the issues resolved with the systems and have that go to the creditors. Peter Nixon should have his salary go to the creditors to do his part in helping out with the bankruptcy woes he has created instead of leaning on the Ex-Verizon management employees who have been working way too many long hours (salary)with no additional compensation or thanks, and are rewarded with no raises for 2009. Yet Peter and Gene were well compensated for their non productive role in making something out of this transaction. I really do hope things get better sooner then later as there are many excellent Ex-Verizon employees getting a bad rap for something that they had very little control over. My heart goes out to these people and I wish only the best for these employees.
- Serge Laprise, Manchester, NH

The writing is on the wall: Bankruptcy.

"I think the debt comes to a head one way or another in the next couple of months.... the debt is it won't affect operations."

If you have autodebit from your bank account or bills charged to a credit card, STOP. If they overbill or claim they never got your money, you'll never see the refund once they are in bankruptcy.

Start sending payments by check, certified mail, and write 'void after 60 days' while you find a new carrier.

In hindsight, everyone knew this deal was doomed to fail. The question at this point should be, did Fairpoint?

Was this the plan all along... to use junk bonds to finance this deal only to go bankrupt and start all over again w/ a clean balance sheet and the northern new England system under its belt?

Sure looks like it to me.

What a colossal fraud to its investors and the people of New England. When will the attorney general do their job and start investigating the PUC's role in all this?
- Chris, Bow

Just re-read this article .. I'm asking myself "would I lend money to a company with so much debt, with no growth potential, led by a delusional CEO such as Hauser"? The answer is NO.
FP is a horse and buggy company in the age of the high tech cell/wireless/internet/info era. Hauser speaks about debt, refinancing, restructuring, equity, but little more. How about Hauser addressing the exorbitant labor agreements FP signed? Has Hauser ever driven past one of FP's manholes and witnessed two or three of his FP employees laughing it up with a detail cop? I bet FP could save thousands just by signing a contract with a private flagger company to handle the manhole joke patrol. What we really have here is a guy, Hauser, who is plugging the leaks until another company purchases FP, or FP goes into bankruptcy
- tom, manchester,nh

If the numbers of lines in the article are correct, FairPoint has lost more than 64% of it's business since the acquisition. Verison appears to have known what they were doing when they divested.
- John, Manchester

The teaser sentence on the home page--In a "What? Me worry?" interview--makes Hauser seem unconcerned. Unless he has a front tooth missing, it was adversarial for you to compare him to Alfred E. Neuman of Mad Magazine.
- Spike, Brentwood NH