For over a month now, Fairpoint telephone service on Vinalhaven has been bad, in some cases nonexistent. Calls to Fairpoint have been routinely met with empty promises to have whatever problem is being reported repaired within 48 hours. I had occasion recently to attend to an elderly man in distress at the same time our own Jennifer Desmond, FNP and the Clinical Director of the Islands Community Medical Center, was administering to the patient.

Cell phone reception on Vinalhaven is iffy but in this case it’s better than nothing which was our current alternative and a fractured call to her cell phone alerted her to the needs of this patient.

Had she not been in one of the receptive spots on the island where cell phones sometimes work, she’d have not known of this man’s condition, at all. A medical professional upon whom we have all come to rely, Dr. Jen has been without telephone service since before the first of the year.

Over the last month or two, she has repeatedly called Fairpoint only to get the empty promise of 48-hour repair. She’s also called the Maine Public Utilities Commission, whose response was tepid.

Many other islanders were experiencing the same lack of response and had similarly been without telephone service for as long as she. I contacted Fairpoint, spoke with a public relations person there, who was very pleasant but, when I revealed my intention to write this piece, equally adept at circumventing the issues I was trying to bring to her attention.

Noticing my phone ID, I guess, I found her steering the conversation again and again to Vinalhaven and its idyllic features and away from Fairpoint’s failures. The next morning a report on MPBN described the Maine Public Utilities Commission as having little recourse in addressing those service issues because — their reasoning according to the report — by imposing a fine, apparently their only recourse, they would only further handicap Fairpoint’s ability to provide service, an ability already stressed because of the ongoing strike.

I called the Commission myself and told the nice lady who answered that I was writing an article about the poor Fairpoint service and about the MPUC’s singular and unsatisfactory response to related consumer complaints.

I was told quite without qualification that there was only one person authorized to speak to me about Fairpoint and, after leaving a message, an individual returned my call. I described circumstances here on the island, in particular the difficulty, often impossibility, of reaching our medical care providers.

I also asked about the report I’d heard describing the PUC’s unwillingness to bring pressure to bear on Fairpoint and the commission’s lack of other resources with which to influence that utility’s service or lack of it. He alluded to there being other resources, including the Commission’s likely reluctance to view future requests for rate increases favorably.

He was clearly distressed, though, by the difficulties I’d described having to do with reaching the medical provider. The next day he called to say a technician was on island and a few hours later Dr. Jen called me to report her service had been restored. At the same time I received an email from Fairpoint assuring me that service to their customers and communities is Fairpoint’s top priority.

While certainly grateful for the restoration of service, the impression we’re left with is that the prospect of publicity is more likely to prompt action than a routine and less threatening consumer complaint.

Phil Crossman lives on Vinalhaven