Some customers of Verizon Communications Inc. have been bumped off e-mail.
The New York-based telecommunications giant has received complaints from e-mail users who can’t access their accounts.
Fran Grant of Fort Wayne is one.
“I’m upset,” said Grant, who can’t receive e-mail. “They notified us about a changeover in our e-mail accounts and sent us instructions on how to transfer our accounts. I followed the instructions and still had problems.”
Grant, a retiree, said that when she phoned customer support, she got bounced around for more than two hours before “hanging up.”
Verizon spokesman Harry Mitchell is aware that some customers are having trouble, but he recommends they hang in there.
“In advance of a planned systems conversion over the weekend of March 27-28, Verizon online users who maintain e-mail accounts with Yahoo were notified that a customer-initiated service change would be required following the systems conversion in order to maintain their e-mail service,” he said in an e-mail.
“Customers were given instructions to use a ‘Trueswitch’ service to migrate their existing e-mail and contact information from Verizon Yahoo to Verizon servers in order to maintain e-mail access. Some customers have experienced difficulty when trying to initiate the service change. We’re working to address this as quickly as possible with those customers.”
Mitchell stressed that customers should make sure they validate their passwords in both the Verizon.net e-mail system and the Verizon Yahoo e-mail system. And they should “take extra care to write down those passwords so that, if they want to migrate their old e-mail and contact information, it will go smoothly through the Trueswitch process.”
Verizon is in talks to finalize a deal to sell its landline division to Frontier Communications Corp. in Stamford, Conn., and that is playing a part in the trouble some customers are having.
“The systems realignment will facilitate the closing of the transaction with Frontier, which we expect at the end of the second quarter, subject to conditions including regulatory approval,” Mitchell said.
The proposed $8.6 billion plan to sell the landline business to Frontier has met opposition from unions and consumer advocates. The Federal Trade Commission has given the deal its blessing, but the Federal Communications Commission and regulators in Illinois, Washington state and West Virginia also must approve it if the sale is to take place in June as planned.
