Get Gephardt: Salt Lake woman battles phone company to fix 12-year-old landline problem
Jan 23, 2023, 10:40 PM | Updated: 10:47 pm
SANDY, Utah — You pay for phone service, so you would expect to receive phone service. But when a Sandy woman’s landline kept going dead for over a decade, she decided it was time to Get Gephardt.
When we met Susan Lee Wilson, we heard her home phone line’s persistent and annoying hum that made it hard for her family to communicate with callers.
“It gets to where it will ring once or twice and totally cut off,” Wilson said of the problem she has been dealing with for 12 years.
When she loses her phone service, she also loses Internet access. And when the line does go dead, the Wilsons contact their phone company, CenturyLink, which sends out someone to repair it.
“It would work great for a while,” Wilson said of the usual fixes.
Susan Lee Wilson speaking to KSL-TV’s Matt Gephardt about the problems her family has been having. (KSL-TV)
But like clockwork, the hum returns, and the line eventually dies.
The most frustrating part, according to Wilson, is that despite the dozens of service calls, she can never seem to get past CenturyLink’s automated system to talk to someone who can maybe authorize a more permanent fix.
“So frustrating, very frustrating, because you cannot get through to a live person,” she expressed.
But before abandoning the line and number she has had for over three decades, Wilson decided to make one more call to KSL.
“We really doubt if they will ever fix the main problem,” she said.
So, this time, I reached out to CenturyLink on Susan Lee Wilson’s behalf, and we got past the automated system. As journalists, we were able to speak to the Global Issues Director for CenturyLink’s parent company, and just like that — good news for Wilson.
In an email, he wrote: “Thankfully, we were able to resolve this issue, and the problem was fixed.”
For more than a week now, the Wilsons have had no hum in their landline, and it has worked without any other issues. CenturyLink also gave them the direct phone number for one of CenturyLink’s managers so that if the problem does return, she can talk to a person rather than the scheduling bot.
