A trade secret no one wants

FairPoint Communications has presented a plan to address a long list of customer complaints. But pieces of that plan are being kept from the public because, according to the company, they are trade secrets.

Which begs the question:

Why would anyone want a trade secret from a company that, so far, has performed so poorly? It's not like they're doing so well that any of their practices would be copied anytime soon.

FairPoint fiiled a plan last week with the New Hampshire Public Utilities Commission on how in the next 10 weeks it will correct a number of problem areas, including incomplete orders, late orders, orders still pending from before Feb. 9, billing errors and call center wait time.

In a status report filed with the PUC April 1 that is available to the public, FairPoint acknowledged:

"Given the length of time it will take to achieve normalcy and the current significant adverse impact on customers, FairPoint needs to develop and implement interim steps to mitigate the impact on customers while working to fix the systems and processes."

Judging from the self-examination provided in the status report, FairPoint will focus in part on management.

According to the company, its leadership has been "extremely slow to identify problem breadth and root causes, to recognize the nature and level of required response, and to develop coherent, comprehensive plans and schedules."

FairPoint management, it said, has focused on managing operations and reacting to problems, not creating a comprehensive plan to address persistent customer problems.

"These problems may result from the lack of unified executive oversight," said the status report.

"FairPoint senior leadership in northern New England has been focused mainly on the management of the operations and reacting to many problems that have arisen. There have been insufficient resources and attention to guiding the analysis, planning, and execution of structured, programmatic actions to expedite FairPoint’s return to a normal business operating environment."

FairPoint took over telecommunications in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont from Verizon a year ago and in January started the troubled cut-over of phone and internet services to its own systems. Complaints started almost immediately among customers in the three states.

New Hampshire's Office of Consumer Affairs received 1,400 complaints about FairPoint in March alone.