Associated Press
NEW YORK — Residents and business owners without telephone service in lower Manhattan since the Sept. 11 attacks are still receiving monthly bills, according to a published report.
Verizon, normally required to offer rebates for service outages exceeding 24 hours, successfully lobbied the New York State Public Service Commission for a suspension of such regulations, The New York Times reported Saturday. Verizon said that any customer who complained would be given a rebate for the number of days that service was out.
Attorney General Eliot Spitzer told the Times that the burden of arranging refunds shouldn’t be placed on customers.
"It makes no sense that when you can’t reach out and touch them, they can reach out and bill you," Spitzer said.
Although he said 90 percent of the lines are back in service, Verizon spokesman John Bonomo said he didn’t know how many customers were affected.
Verizon dealt with the disruption of 200,000 telephone lines and 3.5 million data circuits along with revenue losses during service outages in the wake of the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center.
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