WETZEL COUNTY -- The Wetzel County Sheriff's Department is experiencing major phone issues. It has been that way ever since Verizon turned over its land line phone service to Frontier Communications at the beginning of July.

"People are calling in our direct line. People are being transferred to the 911 center. People weren't able to leave a message because it would say connecting to operator. That doesn't happen because we don't have office staff. It would ring because no one is answering the phone," Wetzel County Sheriff James Hoskins said.

Before the switch, the phone system used to asked a caller to enter an extension, but that is no longer the case.

The sheriff also said this is a serious problem because the public cannot call in and leave a voice mail to an officer's line if need be.

There is more. The sheriff said they can't even access old messages saved in their voice mail system from callers before the system went down, making the job twice as hard.

"We're a public safety agency and we're not getting a response. We need to have it in case of emergency. Right now they can have contact with 911 in case of emergency," Hoskins said.

Sheriff Hoskins said the problem began on July 1, when the sheriff's department phone service was switched over to Frontier Communications. Before Frontier, Verizon was the landline provider in the state of West Virginia, but now Frontier has control.

"We've been working with Frontier, and looking into problem. We talked to Mr. Moon, it's a tough fix," Hoskins stated.

However, Frontier Communications General Manager Bill Moon, said the problem stems from something else.

"Currently the problems experienced as result of customer premise equipment. In particular, they have a private branch exchange in the building and it doesn't belong to us nor our product and my understanding is they waiting on part to fix. You would have to ask the vendor to be sure, " Moon said.

Regardless of what the problem is, Sheriff Hoskins wants to stress that the department has made the public well aware of their issues through Facebook and their website. He said it is a frustrating situation, and said no one is being ignored.