MIDLAND, Texas — Phones are a common device for people to have these days, but they have a major impact on how businesses operate. King & I in Midland has had no phone service from AT&T for over two weeks now, and sales have dropped significantly in that time period. For Nopporn Leonard, operations manager of King & I, he hopes that AT&T will fix this issue soon.
"They assured me that they were going to try and get it back up this Friday. They’re gonna send a technician out here and it's probably the fifth time, but they told me that they're gonna send someone out there and they do. They come out here, but it seems like they're here for like half an hour and then they’re gone and the phones are still down so we’ll see what happens," Leonard said.
For a restaurant that gets a majority of its sales from takeout orders coming in over the phone, they need the lines back up.
"80 percent of our sales comes from takeout so it has affected our business and affected our employees. Also, when people call all they get is a busy signal so there’s no way of them knowing what’s going on," Leonard said.
While there are several other businesses nearby, many of them don't seem to be dealing with the same problem.
"I don’t know about the neighborhood, but I know Firestone is up which is next door but they’re on the other side of the street. It’s affecting the side right here but I know for a fact that the office behind us is down, and we’re the only restaurant that has been affected by it," Leonard said.
He said that business is down by 60 percent right now. The hope is that when the phones start working again, business jumps back up.
"Maybe after New Year’s. Right now, with Christmas, it's going slow because people are saving to go shopping and that’s understandable but it definitely has been down more than what it used to be compared to last year," Leonard said.