Spectrum internet outages cause headaches for Upstate businesses

GREER, S.C. (WSPA) – Michelle Taylor is the CEO of a small marketing agency called Taylor Brand Consulting in Greer. With a staff of 16 people, she doesn’t have the deep coffers other larger companies have to keep her business afloat in the event of an unforeseen circumstance.

“⁠We lost internet on Friday morning when Helene hit and we just got it back this past Wednesday,” said Taylor referring to Hurricane Helene knocking out power for millions of Carolinians last month.

Taylor said without internet access, she couldn’t run her business and not because she couldn’t accept credit card payments.

“Everything we do is 100% digital,” said Taylor. “We had deadlines, we had business that really was contractually obligated, we had no idea how we could deliver it or when we would be able to.”

Taylor explained her team sat outside gas stations parking lots and knocked on coffee shop doors to try and get online for more than a week until her internet was restored.

“Our clients in California and Nevada and New York, they still had campaigns launching, they still had deadlines to meet and they still needed their marketing campaigns,” said Taylor.

Taylor’s agency managed to make it through Helene’s aftermath without losing customers but now she said she’s considering dropping her internet service provider, Spectrum.

“On the Spectrum side, there was no communication. There was no estimated restoration time,” said Taylor. “No one could have predicted what happened with Helene but that level of communication; if I didn’t communicate with my clients if they didn’t get their service as expected, our doors would be closed within a week.”

Taylor explained she was unable to talk to a human support specialist from Spectrum about her frustrations.

“When you go onto the outage map; you type in your zip code and login to your account, it says, ‘You’re currently in an outage, there is currently no estimated time of restoration,’ and because you’re in an outage, you’re not eligible for customer support,” said Taylor. “So because you’re in an outage, you can’t get support which doesn’t make any sense to me at all, so I have been completely unsuccessful at getting a human on the phone.”

7NEWS reached out to Spectrum for comment about the delayed restoration times and we were sent back this response by Patti Brakie Michel, Director of Regional Communications in the Mid-South region:

“We continue to make progress in our restoration after the devastating impact of Hurricane Helene. We are repairing over 300 miles of network and more than 2500 damaged locations. In addition, as other organizations work to restore poles, lines, roadways and clear debris additional damage is being identified and Spectrum crews are responding to make necessary repairs. Restoring connectivity to emergency services, government and public safety locations and telecommunications infrastructure is a top priority.

At the peak of the storm, Spectrum had 395,000 customers offline in South Carolina. To date, we have restored service to nearly 80% of impacted customers. In total, those impacted were located in more than 40 counties. 32 of those counties are fully restored. We are focused on those areas with the highest number of impacted customers and where power has been restored including Greenville and Spartanburg. We continue to bring in additional teams from other regions to help expedite repair. More customers are seeing services restored every day and we expect to complete restoration to all accessible locations with power restored by October 16 ^th . We have heard our customers and will be providing more timely updates and county specific restoration details until services are restored. We appreciate our customers feedback and their patience. For updates customers should visit Hurricane Helene .”

Taylor said she is now offering her office space for businesses in the communities to use while they wait for their internet service to be restored. You can find more information by clicking or tapping here.

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