The Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission confirmed with KIRO 7′s investigative team that its formal investigation into landline issues involving CenturyLink is expected to wrap up in a couple of months.
After KIRO 7′s recent investigations into the company, we were able to help two families find answers who had been dealing with issues with their landlines and internet service for months.
The families said the company had canceled dozens of appointments last minute to fix their problems without any explanation.
Following our initial two reports, nearly 100 people across the Puget Sound – King, Pierce, Thurston, and Snohomish counties - reached out to us sharing similar concerns, including Laurence Johnson, who lives in Renton.
Laurence’s daughter, Taunna Johnson, said CenturyLink canceled more than 20 of her father’s appointments to fix his landline, with no explanation, which stopped working in November.
“It means nothing to them. Nothing. We still don’t have a fixed phone. That’s every phone call I share with them, ‘Please my father is a senior. He’s very sick. Please,’” Taunna Johnson, daughter, said.
Laurence has a cell phone, but he told KIRO 7 News that he has a landline because his cell service in his neighborhood is spotty, and he’s more comfortable with the landline due to his age.
On January 1, Laurence said he had a health emergency and couldn’t call for help on his CenturyLink landline because it wasn’t working.
“An emotional thing, but I just really don’t want to die alone if I don’t have to,” he said. “Brain was literally shutting down.”
Johnson said he almost died, however, he was able to call his daughter on a cell phone for help.
“If my dad’s cell phone, which has poor connectivity, had not connected to me, my dad would be dead,” Taunna said. “That (landline) is something that was embedded in his brain and at a moment of a crisis, it was not there for him.”
After KIRO 7 News called CenturyLink to get its response, a spokesperson shared a written statement with us blaming most of the issues on copper cable thefts.
“The majority of the customer concerns you raised are copper theft related. CenturyLink has seen outages due to an unprecedented spree of copper cable thefts. These incidents, which are still ongoing, have been numerous and have caused extensive damage. In some cases, thieves return to the same location and steal the copper we just replaced. We have been working with law enforcement to identify the thieves. We recognize the inconvenience this causes and appreciate our customers’ patience,” the company wrote.
KIRO 7 News didn’t stop here. We took all of the concerns we had received and went to the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission (WUTC), which aims to ensure that services of regulated companies are safe, available, reliable and fairly priced, according to its website.
“It’s disappointing to hear that service hasn’t been available as it should be for those consumers. We take those complaints very seriously,” said Amy Reynolds, communications director for WUTC.
Reynolds said her team looks into every complaint filed by consumers and her team started to see a trend.
“If we start to see trends, we consider opening a formal investigation, and that is what happened in this case. We saw a large number of complaints, and in March of 2024, we opened a formal investigation about these problems. I can’t comment, obviously, on the investigation or the status of the investigation, but I can say is that we expect to wrap that investigation up in a month or two,” she said.
A hearing is expected to follow where three commissioners will hear about the WUTC’s investigation results and from CenturyLink.
According to the WUTC’s website, the telecommunications industry as a whole in Washington saw more than 38,000 violations in 2024 -- far more than any other industry that the WUTC regulates. The solid waste industry followed behind with 318 violations.
CenturyLink was responsible for more than 37,000 violations last year, according to the WUTC’s records. The website showed that CenturyLink faced its first violation in 2020, which totaled more than 800 violations four years ago.
Reynolds said the state agency only regulates CenturyLink’s landline service.
“We only regulate the landline part of CenturyLink so please reach out to the Attorney General’s Office if you have concerns about CenturyLink as your internet provider,” she said.
KIRO 7 News also reached out to the Attorney General’s Office to get answers. A spokesperson declined to talk with us on camera, stating that they do not talk about consumer protection investigations publicly.
If you have any issues with your landline, officials with the WUTC are asking you to send an email to consumer@utc.wa.gov or send a letter to P.O. Box 47250 Olympia, WA 98504.
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