Goodbye, Hawaiian Telcom

Enough is enough. For most of the past two years we’ve endured an endless stream of billing mishaps from Hawaiian Telcom. We were not alone. Tens of thousands of phone company customers had billing problems.

Not only could Hawaiian Telcom’s billing system not figure out what to charge us for monthly phone service and long distance, it became a family guessing game each month as to what the final charge would be on the statement. It was never accurate.

Finally, after plenty of bad press, bad customer service, and millions of dollars spent on revamping their billing system, Hawaiian Telcom got the bill right. It was good news that didn’t last very long. Today’s statement from the phone company came with an extra charge of over $90. For what?

Good question. It appears that the phone company had not been charging us enough over the past two years, and now they get to make it up their under charges in one swell foop.

Not so fast. It used to be that we suffered with the phone company’s inept service and countless billing problems with no recourse. Where else could you go for phone service. These days there is such a thing as competition in telecommunications. Oceanic Time-Warner has phone service. Cell phones are ubiquitous and reliable. Maybe the competitors and options are not better than Hawaiian Telcom, but they’re certainly not worse.

So, goodbye, Hawaiian Telcom. You’ve had your day. Improve your service and customer support or continue to lose good paying customers to your competition.