VILLA HILLS, Ky. — Three weeks ago, Elaine Duras was tethered to her back deck "talking chair," the only spot where she could consistently keep a signal strong enough to hold a phone call.
But gone are the days of asking, "Can you hear me now?" The Villa Hills grandmother said it took a few weeks but she can now finally tell her callers she hears them loud and clear.
"I'm feeling very satisfied. I mean beyond satisfied," she said. "Honestly, I didn't expect to feel this satisfied."
Duras' glee on Thursday was a far cry from the frustration she felt at the beginning of August when she first spoke with WCPO about her phone issues. In that first interview, she said her years-long reliable Verizon service had plummeted to spotty at best.
"Suddenly the voice communications became very distorted," Duras said at the time. "It was robotic. It was like underwater and it was on either side so I could sound that way to a caller and a caller could sound that way to me and then the sound would just disappear."
She wasn't the only one facing cell service woes.
"There are at least several houses in (Villa Hills) who are having major issues which we're trying to get resolved," Duras's neighbor Sally Raash said then in a Nextdoor post. "It's way past being annoying and inconvenient. There are times the phones are not able to be used. You cannot be heard on a call and the other party is often garbled and unable to be heard also. I worry about trying to make an emergency call under those circumstances."
At the time, a regional Verizon spokesperson provided a statement explaining they were upgrading the network in the area.
But after seeing the initial report, the spokesperson reached back out to WCPO, saying while those upgrades can cause interruptions, what was happening to Duras and other customers was out of the norm. They asked us for names and numbers, so they could find a solution.
Duras said Verizon stuck to their word.
She kept us updated, informing us of progress along the way. That meant days of technicians stopping on her street, running diagnostic tests, installing signal boosters and even contacting technicians in other states for input, she said.
"Until they left no stone unturned," Duras said. "They did a great job. It was truly a team effort."
Raasch also noticed Verizon's efforts, heading back to Nextdoor to update other neighbors.
"Verizon became aware of the issue and stepped up very quickly. They sent engineers to the neighborhood to check signals and informed us of a couple of possibilities for poor reception," she said in the post. "We received information gathering calls from Verizon technicians in other states. It's amazing what they can figure out. They've offered special equipment where it might help and corrected issues occurring locally. It's still a work in progress but we're noticing considerable improvement already. I'm so pleased at the action taken to this point and thought anyone affected should know of Verizon's excellent response."
Last week, Duras said her service finally returned to normal.
WCPO notified Verizon of the apparent success of their efforts on Thursday and as luck would have it, Andy Brady, president of the Great Lakes Market which includes the Greater Cincinnati area, happened to be on his way from Louisville to the Queen City.
He decided to stop in Villa Hills and make a house call.
"I saw the story on the front end. I saw her 'talking chair,'" Brady said. "I wanted to make sure I saw the 'talking chair' for myself and, more importantly, to make sure that she has the ability to talk inside and outside her home."
He explained technicians determined the issue was a private home network from a neighborhood house that had been interfering with their network, and interference techs "addressed" it. Brady wouldn't divulge what that meant.
Brady said interference issues caused by private home networks aren't uncommon, but diagnosing them can be difficult without customers like Duras speaking up.
"Feedback is that gift and I really appreciate Elaine doing that for us," he said. "Sometimes when you get the feedback, it always isn't great on the front end. But to follow up and to make sure that we follow up and then for (WCPO) to follow up again, I really appreciate that."
Brady explained he makes an effort to meet customers face-to-face, wanting to ensure any issues they have may be resolved.
"At the end of the day, we invest a lot of money into our network so they can use it. We don't build it just for the sake of saying we have the best network out there even though metrics say we do," he said. "At the end of the day, we want you to be able to use it."
While the issue in Villa Hills seems to have been fixed, other Verizon customers from across the Tri-State shared their own woes earlier this month.
"We're having the same issues in our neighborhood in Anderson Township — just in the last few weeks," Peg Browning Fenner had said. "I've had three conversations with Verizon, but no change in our signal strength yet."
Verizon did however put in a work order to look into what is going on in her area, Fenner said.
"My daughter lives in Anderson Township and I’ve been having that problem talking with her in the last couple weeks," Linda Reiter had said. "But we never dreamed it was a tower or that it was that vast of a problem. I hope people stay on them to fix it."
Brady is encouraging anyone with service issues to let Verizon know, providing as many specifics as possible to help technicians pinpoint the cause.
Meanwhile, Duras said she can relax now, knowing her long-distance calls to her grandchildren will be answered and heard. Though she no longer needs her back deck spot to make those calls, she said it won't lose its famed identity.
"Talking chair I think is always going to remain talking chair. It was a story to be told and a story to be remembered," said Duras. "Nostalgia and affection."
