N.S. campground slams Bell for ‘jeopardizing our livelihood’ with restoration delay

The owner of the LaHave River Campground in Nova Scotia’s Lunenburg County is slamming Bell following a lengthy service outage.

Despite having power restored within four days of the recent storm, the same can’t be said for WiFi and business phone services.

“It’s not like the hurricane ravaged the province this time around and there were a bunch of vital other services missing,” Jamie Lee Arseneau said in an interview. “People have had their services restored. We have been blatantly ignored. And as a small business, it’s not OK. You’re jeopardizing our livelihood.”

Post-tropical storm Lee made landfall almost two weeks ago. Ever since, Arseneau and her partner were trying to get WiFi and business phone services reconnected.

“We didn’t see anyone on site for five days and when they did arrive, it was the wrong type of crew, despite our really clear descriptions that it was a road crew needed and a wire down across the road,” she said.

Arseneau and her partner bought the campground two years ago, sight unseen, trying to make a go of it. They’ve poured all their time into improving the area and maintaining it.

But her attention has been focused elsewhere the last two weeks.

When the first technician was unable to complete the repairs, she says they were told a supervisor would be in touch, with someone on site the next day. But that didn’t happen.

“Then we were just ghosted from there,” she said. “So, on day 11 of just pure and utter frustration that there’s no plan in place — our customers aren’t able to get a hold of us, we’re not able to run our business without internet — we blew it up on social media.”

Only then did it get repaired.

A Bell Aliant spokesperson tells Global News in an email that a crew arrived last Wednesday.

“(It) determined there was additional fibre damage that required specialized cable technicians to repair. This team repaired the service yesterday and a customer service representative was in touch to provide account credits and apologize for the interruption,” says Katie Hatfield, a senior manager of communications for Bell Aliant.

Arseneau said Bell offered to cover their latest bill, but didn’t compensate the campground for nearly two weeks of  business disruptions.

And there are only three weeks left in the camping season.

“To end our season with this, and not be able to even reach our customer base, for just under two weeks is just not acceptable,” Arseneau said. “They truly have jeopardized our livelihood.”