To the editor: I’ve had three energy outages over 4 years, and the one manner I might report them was by way of my landline (“Even in the heart of L.A., they still rely on old-fashioned landlines and don’t want to lose them,” July 10). Throughout a high-wind storm in December, the Division of Water and Energy didn’t even know our complete avenue in Los Feliz was out of energy. Due to the winds, I couldn’t have a fireplace in my fire and couldn’t entry my heating system nor open my storage door. It was 53 levels in my home and I’m 87. It took three days for the DWP to reach.
After I obtained the letter from AT&T that landlines can be stopped, I phoned the corporate and a person defined that I’d be given an emergency telephone for $1, and that it might have 24-hour battery life. I might purchase a second battery for $90, which might even be good for twenty-four hours, however I couldn’t purchase any past that.
I’ve macular degeneration and might use the push buttons on my outdated telephone with out mild. No actual emergency — earthquake, hearth, and so on. — will probably be solved in 24 or 48 hours. For that matter, how would we attain AT&T to inform them the telephone not works?
Till AT&T can give you a telephone that has a battery usable for at the very least every week, for gratis, it isn’t serving the general public.
Meg Quinn Coulter, Los Angeles
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To the editor: We began shedding AT&T landline service final summer season after greater than 41 years of service. It was briefly restored in October, however went out once more late November and has not been restored.
AT&T has by no means reached out to us, so after a number of calls to its service heart, we began getting a credit score on our month-to-month invoice. As we’ve got no mobile protection in our Woodland Hills dwelling (neither Verizon nor T-Cell work inside), we now solely use Wi-Fi to make and obtain calls. I’ve been taking a look at costly conversion to Wi-Fi for our dwelling safety system, together with smoke detectors, communications panels, and so on. For sure, I’m apprehensive it gained’t be dependable in an emergency.
Janice Lee, Woodland Hills
