Verizon phone outage affects some LI businesses

<p>Business owners in both Nassau and Suffolk counties say a Verizon phone outage is hurting them.&nbsp;</p>

News 12 Staff

Oct 28, 2017, 2:21 AM

Updated 2,532 days ago

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Business owners in both Nassau and Suffolk counties say a Verizon phone outage is hurting them.
"Now I'm going on four days without a phone line, and 95 percent of my business depends on phone calls," says Stephen Dubinsky, who owns the K9 Clubhouse Dog Hotel in West Babylon.
When he contacted Verizon, he says a technician came to his business and told him Thursday that the problem was much bigger.
"He explained that in Deer Park and another town, which was ours, they have thousands of customers out of service because something happened in their home office," Dubinsky says.
People who dial victims' numbers hear a message that says, "Welcome to Verizon Wireless. The wireless customer you called is not available at this time. Please try your call again later."
It's apparently only affecting business lines.
"I have people away on vacation -- they're starting to come back to see what happened to their dogs," Dubinsky says. "They think we're out of business. This costs me thousands of dollars per day."
Frequent customers like Marie Polumbo have resorted to contacting Dubinsky through email or with Facebook.
"This is 2017," Dubinsky says. "You shouldn't have issues with phones for this long."
Verizon tells News 12 there was an outage out of Deer Park on Wednesday, but the company says service was restored that day.