Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...

Washington Mayor Donald Sadler is requesting input from the public as he prepares to respond to the North Carolina Department of Justice’s request for updates on the quality of Suddenlink’s service in the city.

Last year, Sadler joined a group of other eastern North Carolina government officials in asking Attorney General Josh Stein to investigate Suddenlink’s business practices.

“The City of Washington receives constant complaints regarding poor service from this provider,” Sadler wrote in a letter dated Jan. 4, 2021. “Customers report to city officials a broad range of issues concerning Suddenlink, including: escalating costs, lack of access to service, excessively long outages, poor communications and response to outages, failure to keep equipment in good working condition, temporary fixes resulting in unburied/low hanging lines for extended periods of time, internet speeds substantially slower than advertised, etc.”

In February 2021, Sadler said the assistant attorney general contacted the mayors who filed complaints about Suddenlink. Sadler said Suddenlink had been given seven days “provide evidence of how they will resolve matters with its customers, including providing the attorney general with information on the age of their infrastructure.”

According to Sadler’s Facebook post Monday, the North Carolina Department of Justice’s Consumer Protection Division has been communicating with Suddenlink about how it is responding to concerns presented by local governments.

“I’m now preparing to respond to the NC Department of Justice’s request for updates on how (and if) Suddenlink is improving these five areas of service: reliability and quality of internet service; responsiveness in customer service; quality and timeliness of field service visits; assessment of late fees; addressing issues like unattended/unburied lines; communications to customers regarding changes or improvements in their services.

Sadler asked the public to submit input on those topics to him via Facebook or by email (dsadler@washingtonnc.gov). The deadline for submissions is 5 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 11.