Michelle Plombon’s landline in St. Paul has gone silent since last November, the day before Thanksgiving.

Nearly three months and counting.

“There’s my phone, deader than a doornail,” she explains. “Incredibly frustrating and then the bill went up.”  

Plombon says she received a third monthly bill from CenturyLink for nearly $58, paying for service she isn’t getting.

“What I don’t get is how they’re treating the customers that have been out of service for months, and then continuing to charge them for service,” she says.

Plombon isn’t alone.

The Minnesota Public Utilities Commission (PUC) says it’s received 388 CenturyLink outage complaints in the last four months.

The PUC says the numbers have fluctuated from 58 in November to 107 in December, 182 in January and 41 so far in February.

In a letter to the commission, the state Commerce Department says, “Customers continue to lack access to their landline service. They continue to be charged monthly service fees.”  

“It’s not acceptable,” PUC member John Tuma told 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS in January. “They are supposed to be able to get service up and get it up quickly.”

CenturyLink is blaming copper thefts for cutting service to hundreds of landlines in the metro.

“You have to understand this criminal element is extremely different from anything I’ve dealt with in my 43 years of doing this,” says Dan Chason, head of corporate security at Lumen Technologies, CenturyLink’s parent company.

Chason explained to 5 EYEWITNESS NEWS reporter Renée Cooper about the process.  

“We had an aerial cut that they were repairing, and on the other end, around the curve,” he says. “While they’re repairing the cut, they’re cutting it again. It’s just a brazen, you know, ‘Katie bar the door, I’m going to get this copper.’“

Under state law, phone carriers are required to fix problems quickly, with the goal of one day.

They must also adjust a customer’s bill so they’re not charged for outages exceeding 24 hours.

Plombon says she spoke to a CenturyLink representative, looking for answers.

“You should be reimbursed after 24 hours of non-service,” she says the rep told her. “We automatically reimburse you, and I said, ‘That has never happened.’”

Non-compliance can mean fines imposed by the Attorney General’s Office.

RELATED: Minnesota AG’s office getting involved in landline issues in the Twin Cities

The PUC could also pull CenturyLink’s Minnesota operating certificate.

“That is a draconian step we could take, but I don’t know if that helps everybody, knocking everybody off their phone system,” Tuma explained. “It would knock everybody off.”

Then there’s Wendy Khabie, a CenturyLink customer in Minneapolis.

After receiving a $128 bill from the carrier, with no service since mid-December, she kept calling the carrier.

“I said, ‘I’m the one who’s been calling and complaining, I still do not have a landline and you’re billing me for this service that I’m not getting,’” Khabie recalls. “After a little bit of back and forth, they said, ‘Correct, do not pay the bill, you will not be held in arrears, or you will not be penalized for this.'”

CenturyLink says it’s reviewing each case individually and that customers who are being billed without service will receive credits to their account once an outage has been resolved.

The carrier says it’s connecting with state regulators to document copper theft incidents and their impact.

Meanwhile, the PUC has ordered CenturyLink to file a report on how it’s resolving these issues by March 17.

Khabie says if she gets another bill, she’ll call the carrier again.

“I’m not interested in canceling my landline,” she explains. “I’m interested in getting my service restored.”

Plombon says she’d like to be reimbursed for the money she’s spent, but she plans to keep paying her phone bill.

“I would rather pay it and stay current and then fight the fight on the other side of it,” she declares. “It’s so frustrating. It’s 57 bucks I could be spending on something else.”