Internet ‘nightmare’ continues in Vernon

VERNON, Texas (KAUZ) - For almost an entire month in Vernon, residents can experience the horrors of the Nightmare on Main Street haunted house. But, there’s another nightmare in town that people experience on a daily basis: the internet connection.

“It is a big conversation here in Vernon about, you know, ‘Suddenlink is out again, Suddenlink is out again,” Suddenlink customer and Vernon resident Chris Barrows said.

Barrows says he’s had four different outages with Suddenlink over the past eight months and he’s not alone.

“You look all over Vernon and you hear about all these outages,” Barrows said.

We took to social media to ask the Vernon community about the problems and had over thirty different people reply that they had similar issues with outages and customer service, including one woman, Tonya Lucas, who was without internet for 24 days.

“It’s just unreal and people not getting responses or having appointments canceled, it’s just not right and I’m trying to stand up for this little town because I love it,” Vernon resident Judy Isbell said.

Isbell, who has now switched providers, works from home to look after her 83-year-old mother and had to use all of her PTO she says as a result of outages from Suddenlink.

“If I lost my job because of the internet, it would take that ability away and there’s no telling what would happen to her,” Isbell said.

Texas House Representative David Spiller has Vernon in his district. He said he and his staff have started reaching out to residents to try and find answers.

“We are working on that. We’re trying to find out the nature of the problem and what we can do to resolve it,” Spiller said.

But for now, the nightmare of connection continues in Vernon.

“Our community deserves so much better,” Isbell said.

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