Feb 1, 2022 4 min read

A lengthy telephone outage in Bentleyville over the weekend is irking local business owners who are concerned about the reliability of their landline phone service provider.

Several businesses using Consolidated Communications telephone services reported a brief outage last Tuesday that eventually resolved itself, but they once again lost services from Friday until Monday morning as customers were not able to call in for appointments or to make orders.

Jason Walker, owner of Complete Service Center on at 932 Main St., said he thinks his auto repair shop lost business this week because people weren’t able to call last week and over weekend to schedule appointments.

“Pretty much all last week it was touch and go,” Walker said. “Didn’t know when (the phone lines) were on or off. … It affects everybody. I don’t know how many appointments we lost because people can’t get a hold of us. I think it’s one of the reasons our schedule is short this week.”

Walker said workers used their cellphones call to customers, but they weren’t able to accept phone calls on their landline at the shop. He complained to Consolidated Communications, but was given no reason for the disruption or when the service would return.

“We’ve had a couple issues at a time, but it would only last a couple hours, but nothing significant until now,” he said.

The situation apparently centered on landline phone numbers that use the 239 exchange. Since many residents now use cellphones, the lengthy outages weren’t noticed as much at homes. But many businesses on Main Street that still rely on hard-wired phone lines to stay connected were effectively cut off from communicating with customers.

Tim Marodi of Thompson-Marodi Funeral Home at 809 Main St. was concerned that anyone whose loved one may have died over the weekend would’ve struggled to get in touch with them.

“If somebody passes and (the relative) gets excited or can’t reach the funeral home, would they be in a frame of mind to search or find a funeral home?” Marodi asked rhetorically.

He posted his personal cellphone number on the funeral home’s Facebook page to notify the community that their landline service had been down for several days. Their phone service finally returned about 9 a.m. Monday, but he was disappointed Consolidated did not alert them to the outage or how long it would take for it to be restored. He used his cellphone to call the phone company’s customer support line Sunday, but was given few answers, so he filed a complaint with the state Public Utility Commission.

“It’s not worth my time to call Consolidated because I’m not going to get a straight answer,” Marodi said.

It was not known how many customers in the Bentleyville area were out of service over the weekend. There was no response Monday to a media inquiry sent to Consolidated Communications asking about the disruption.

It was also unclear whether the outage caused any issues with public safety, although it did impact incoming calls to District Judge Curtis Thompson’s magisterial office. A phone call to Washington County Public Safety Director Gerry Coleman was not returned Monday.

Bentleyville Mayor Tim Jansante said the borough received complaints from residents experiencing problems with their internet services around the same time, but he did not know if the two problems were connected. Jansante said they’ve had periodic issues in recent weeks ever since Atlantic Broadband rebranded itself as BreezeLine in early January. He said they would look into the issue involving the landline phone services with Consolidated.

“We’ll have to get in touch with them and find out what the situation is and whether they think they’ve resolved the problem,” Jansante said.