HawTel glitches slow to clear
By Sean Hao
Advertiser Staff Writer
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By the end of this week Hawaiian Telcom's customer service woes will have dragged on for three months.
That means the company has only three more months to fix things before the state Public Utilities Commission launches a scheduled investigation into customer service issues in the wake of the $1.6 billion sale of Hawai'i's major phone company. The final transition from Verizon Hawaii to new owner Hawaiian Telcom occurred on April 1 and since then customers have had to deal with inaccurate bills and long waits for customer service.
Glitches were expected when Hawaiian Telcom took over. However the scale of problems has exceeded expectations, said state Consumer Advocate John Cole, who fields several calls a day from unhappy Hawaiian Telcom customers.
"We knew it would be a challenge to get they're systems up and running," he said. "Some of (the problems) seem like they should have been avoidable."
Meanwhile the Consumer Advocate and the PUC said there's little they can do other than monitor the situation and handle complaints on a case by case basis.
"We are aware of the situation and we are monitoring it," said Lisa Kikuta, a spokeswoman for the state Public Utilities Commission, which has regulatory authority over the company.
The PUC approved of the sale of Verizon Hawaii last year. At the same time the agency said it would conduct an investigation into customer service levels six-months after the separation from Verizon Communications.
Hawaiian Telcom had at least a year to prepare for the official split from Verizon Communications Inc. The company, which is owned by The Carlyle Group, also said it would spend $100 million moving jobs to Hawai'i to improve customer satisfaction.
However, the change in ownership has been marred by several problems including:
Customer service call volumes appear to have peaked last week and have fallen somewhat this week, said Hawaiian Telcom spokeswoman Ann Nishida. The company hopes to have its billing issues resolved in July.
Among the Hawaiian Telcom customers who have had problems contacting the company is Dorothy Yamauchi of Honolulu. Yamauchi, who pays her bill automatically, wants to know why the company now debits her account 10 days before her bill is due. Before April, her account was debited on the bill's due date.
"If they're going to change the dates I want to know," Yamauchi said. "I have to budget my money like everybody else."
Nishida said the change was made to allow added time to resolve billing issues, if there's insufficient money in a customer's bank account or some other glitch in the auto-payment process.
Reach Sean Hao at shao@honoluluadvertiser.com.
