CenturyLink outage leads to lost business for Collier store

NORTH NAPLES, Fla. Six hours on hold.

That’s the amount of time M.J. Vandewerken and her husband, Tyler, spent trying to speak with a CenturyLink representative this weekend while they waited for service to be restored to The Barrier Reef, the store they own at the corner of Livingston and Pine Ridge roads.

They didn’t get to talk to anyone until Monday, when the company sent out a technician who restored their service. In the meantime, they watched potentially robust Father’s Day business slip away.

The store’s phone, internet, credit card terminal and cable were all inoperative. Many would-be customers left without making a purchase because they didn’t have enough cash on them.

“The people that come to us directly come to us just because of our reputation and the service we provide them,” M.J. Vandewerken said. “For us to tell them we that we unfortunately cannot give them service or they cannot continue a purchase without cash transactions, it was very unacceptable.”

It’s unclear what caused the outage at The Barrier Reef, though many CenturyLink customers in Southwest Florida also said they lost service this weekend.

The company issued a statement in response to the Vandewerkens’ trouble:

“CenturyLink values our customers and strives to provide the best possible experience and customer service at all times. After learning of our customer’s concerns, we dispatched a technician to our customer’s location and confirmed her service is now working. We apologize for the issue experienced by our customer.”

Another CenturyLink statement addressed outages that affected others:

“Over the weekend, CenturyLink experienced intermittent service issues with our Prism TV and High-Speed Internet service. We did receive some calls locally. All related services were restored Sunday morning and if customers are still experiencing issues, we ask them to call the repair number on their bill.  We sincerely apologize for the inconvenience.”