A manager at Sea-Pac Transportation Services LLC said his company lost millions of dollars because its phone lines were out of service for three weeks.
SEATTLE — Employees at Sea-Pac Transportation Services LLC arrived at work June 12 to find their phone lines down. Three weeks later, they still have no service.
“We rely heavily on these phones to get containers shipped, exported, imported and out of the country. We’re talking about millions of dollars lost every day,” said George, the company’s chief operating officer. He asked KING 5 not to use his last name for privacy reasons.
“When Century Link sent their representative out to look at our phone lines, they informed us that someone had stolen all the phone lines and the copper and the fiber optic cables,” he said. “They also informed us that this had affected 900 businesses in the West Seattle area and it’s incomprehensible. It’s insane.”
After a few weeks of waiting, George shared what was happening on Reddit. KING 5 reached out to CenturyLink about the situation. A spokesperson said on June 29 that they are “still looking into these outage reports affecting customers in the West Seattle area. Our technicians are currently investigating the issue.”
CenturyLink did not respond to requests for updates as of this writing.
George said CenturyLink informed his company that it planned to repair the phone lines by July 10. He added that this was the third date they had been given.
George said Seattle police told him they had arrested the man responsible for knocking out their phone lines. Seattle police did not respond to a request for further information.
Preventing copper theft
Despite regulations on buying and selling metals, there is still a market for stolen metal. A few months ago, KING 5 reported on the problem electric vehicle drivers are facing because thieves are cutting off chargers to steal copper. A recent article from GeekWire highlighted how the problem is getting worse.
Jonathan Howe, owner of West Seattle Recycling, said any reputable company works hard to avoid buying stolen metal.
“We check IDs, cash limits, we know our customers, we ask questions, we check what’s reported stolen. We have a website called scraptheftalert.com and we check it every day. We’re on the lookout for any major thefts,” he said. “We always ask questions about where the item came from and if they don’t give us the right answer, we reject it.”
Howe said he encourages people to report all metal thefts to police and to scraptheftalert.com so there is a paper trail. If police ask him for customer records to help solve a crime, he hands them over immediately.
“I’ve been in this business for 40 years and I’m near the end of my career. I don’t want my career to be tarnished,” Howe said. “I want to leave an honest legacy.”
George said his company often uses West Seattle Recycling and can attest to the rigorous measures they take to ensure they are not purchasing stolen metal.
