Pac Bell’s Answer: The Rain Did It

Few companies in Southern California awaited a warm --and dry--spring as anxiously as Pacific Bell. This winter’s extraordinarily wet weather flooded our company with a tremendous increase in repair requests. In March alone, rain added 100,000 repair cases to our normal work load.

During and immediately after these repeated rainstorms, Pacific Bell was forced to extend both repair and installation appointments from under 48 hours to five days. Employees worked 12- and 14-hour shifts, seven days a week, to reduce the delays. We hated being forced by unusual weather conditions to alter our standard of fast customer service, knowing that many people would never know that the heavy and repeated rainstorms were the cause of the delays--or that when sunny skies returned, we would still be repairing underground cables and aerial lines for days and weeks to come.

Mr. Jacobson was one of several thousand Pacific Bell customers impacted by weather-related emergencies statewide. On behalf of my co-workers, I would like to thank him and all our customers for their patience and understanding.

Editor’s note: A reply was requested only from the phone company, as the lack of a phone compounded the writer’s other ills.