Time Warner customers around the country, including in Maine, experienced times this week when they were unable to access their Road Runner email accounts.

Time Warner officials said Thursday that the email outages were “intermittent” and affected less than 10 percent of accounts. Scott Pryzwansky, a Time Warner spokesman, said Thursday afternoon that engineers were working to resolve the issues “as soon as possible.”

He declined to say what might have caused the problems or how long they’ve been going on. But customers in Maine and people posting complaints online say the spotty service had been going on for at least two days, as of Thursday.

The problem only affected Road Runner email customers, Pryzwansky said. People who have Time Warner Internet service but use a different email service have not been affected, nor were Road Runner business customers, Pryzwansky said. But some Maine business owners dispute that claim, saying they have have been unable to access their Road Runner  accounts for days.

For people who have only a Road Runner account, which is free to Time Warner customers, being without email access for a day or more can be a major headache.

Joyce Lovely, a retired educator from Wells, said Thursday that she had not been able to send or receive emails for most of Wednesday and Thursday. Neither she nor her husband have other email accounts besides Road Runner, she said.

She said a friend had spent an hour and half on the phone with Time Warner’s customer service to get the problem fixed, but she had not taken that route. Instead, she said she may spend time changing to another email service.

“I think it might be a good idea for me to switch. I feel like companies like Time Warner get so big, it’s hard for them to provide effective service,” said Lovely.

Comcast announced in February its intention to buy Time Warner. If the deal is approved, the combined company will service about 40 percent of the country’s wired high-speed Internet customers.

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