Businesses Impacted After Roughly 87,000 Verizon Landlines Experience Service Disruption
SANTA MONICA (CBSLA.com) — A busy signal.
That's the sound customers are hearing at Fred Segal Salon in Santa Monica.
This comes after roughly 87,000 Verizon phone lines in the area stopped working correctly, creating problems for local businesses.
"Every day counts in this economy," said Matthew Preece, the salon's owner, who explains that the problem started Wednesday afternoon.
His credit card machines are down since they require phone lines to operate.
Preece estimates he's taken about a $4,000 hit, but other shops could be taking it harder.
"Revenue can be anything from $5, $6, $7,000 a say, you know, in some of these businesses," he said.
Verizon says the problem spot runs from the Pacific Coast Highway to 20th Street and from Montana Avenue to Pico Boulevard. It happened after water damaged a local call routing center.
Sam Berryman is the manager at the nearby Vans store.
"It's been annoying for sure because all day we could be getting calls about putting shoes on hold or finding shoes for different people but we haven't been able to," she said.
Both she and Preece say nobody with Verizon notified them of the disruption.
Part of a statement from Verizon reads:
"Our technicians are working to repair the damage and restore the service as quickly as possible. We expect to complete repairs later today. We apologize for any inconvenience our customers experience with this situation."
Verizon says 911 calls are not affected. The company originally thought this could take until Saturday to fix, but are hopeful service will be restored by Thursday night.
Verizon currently has no plans to compensate customers.
