So why is the Board of Water Supply’s customer service so swamped?
I walked into the BWS office downtown last week to switch the billing for my parents’ house over to us. I had to wait about an hour, and everyone was very apologetic about the long waits, commenting on how busy it was.
Then by coincidence, there was an issue on our latest bill, so I called customer service Thursday morning. After waiting on hold for half an hour, I decided to try later. I tried again later in the morning, and after another 30+ minutes on hold, got a message saying I could leave my name and phone number, and would get a call back before the end of the day.
I left name and number. No call back. Not Thursday, and not on Friday.
I tried calling several more times, waiting on hold for long periods each time, without success.
Are they really unusually busy? Or have there been staff cuts or vacancies making it harder to respond to the public?
When rates go up at the pace we’ve had here in Honolulu, people expect a little service.
Anybody else run into this problem?
Hello, BWS! What’s up over there?
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Under-staffed,in my opinion. When I go to pay the bill,there is only one (of three) window open. Ever. And that one person like talk story.They’re stuck in the 20th century.As is most of their infrastructure. Their on-line bill payment system is a joke: credit cards only,no debit cards. And full payments only. And no changes to account,etc.Considering how much I pay each month,I would certainly expect better.
This is part of the reason a resolution has been introduced to audit the BWS. It’s on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting.
Oh yes, I’ve had 0n-going e-mails for awhile with
them. You can’t get them on the phone and e-mails are only answered occasionally. I have 10
bills of debits and credits … which makes no sense
considering I always pay my water bills as received. In the meantime, I am asking them to
give me an amount I can understand because what
they are sending me could only be understood by
a Board of Water employee. The excuse is – they
changed their accounting system in January and
billed for estimated amounts which have been
deducted (amounts I paid) and now are billing for meter reading amounts. The numbers don’t match
up, the account numbers have changed, so all I am
asking is for someone capable to go over my billings and give me an amount that makes sense.
I do not appreciate the threat of them turning off
my water during the process.
An audit is long overdue. It’s sad how the BOWS has gone from being one of the most efficiently run public agencies in the entire state to the shameful mess that we see today. The rot started when Kazu Hayashida left the water works nearly 20 years ago, and its been all downhill ever since. Employee morale is poor, customer service has been abysmal, and all that’s left is for an audit to reveal just how much waste and inefficiency is taking place at the BOWS.
I was at the Nanakuli neighborhood board meeting in June or July. A Board of Water Supply engineer was there to explain the change in billing. He seemed like a very earnest public servant but he was a terrible communicator and shouldn’t have been given that responsibility. Given the problems the BWS has had over the last year, they would do well to consider a total communications overhaul — customer service, outreach to neighborhood boards, news media relations, and more.
Somebody should look up the newspaper clippings from the last 10 or so years. I remember one year where top BOWS execs were given big fat bonuses for their great sales performance. Think about that a moment …. they sell water. To everybody on the rock. Where people have no other alternative water source. At the time, there were press releases full of the usual ridiculous business jargon that is at least slightly relevant to normal businesses … growing the franchise, market penetration, etc etc.
Below is a link to a 2006 Advertiser article.
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Jul/27/ln/FP607270344.html
Note that the justification given for the bonuses was to reward “meeting performance goals” and “to get and keep skilled and experienced executives in the vital city jobs.”
I can’t imagine anyone from the BWS publicly praising an executive for “great sales performance.” For as long as I can remember, it is taboo for BWS personnel to refer to drinking water as a commodity that is sold. Residents are billed for expenses associated with operating the department and maintaining the system that delivers water to the faucet taps in their homes.
At least, that is the politically correct language that the BWS uses with the public. Feel free to respond with any cynical skepticism.
As a volunteer at a local consumer service agency, we have received numerous complaints about the billing and service at the BWS. In many of those cases, consumers are suddenly hit with bills of several thousand dollars apparently due to the BWS’s “estimated billing” practices and a computer change-over.
Personally, we have a situation where multiple renditions of the same bill all with different amounts have been received. Trying to contact BWS is a futile waste of calories.
An audit is certainly in order and there should be, at the least a “claw-back” of those bonuses.
Even though the BWS is supposed to be semi-autonomous, there should be City Council involvement. Things are so bad that I could think that greater oversight would be welcomed by the electorate.
There was a desalination facility that was paid for, but the contractor passed away, and as far as I know, it was not completed.
If our water reserves are in such great shape we can put up 22 new condos and pave prime ag land, how come we needed desalination plant? And how come it’s such a secret?
Transparency would be very helpful!
If i recall correctly, we are projected to have enough fresh water to accommodate us for another 20 years of anticipated population growth; after that we’ll need to turn to alternative sources of drinking water such as desalination. As a result, living here will become less affordable for many current residents. I’m not sure how large or small the individual impacts will be, however.
For whatever reason, it seems that very few people are aware of how close we are to exceeding our natural water resources.
I should make clear that the 20 years before we run short of fresh water is not written in stone. If, for instance, charging higher prices lowers water use among current residents, we will be able to accommodate more newcomers over a longer period of time before we need to turn to desalination or drinking one another’s treated toilet water, which is what some mainland areas are doing because it is cheaper than desalination. For more on this, google “toilet to tap.”
I needed to do something with our water account in summer 2012. I called about 2 weeks earlier than recommended, so I could be sure I understood the process. There was no wait, and the person who answered my call encouraged me to pre-do what I’d been planning, and she would post-date it. She suggested this because of an impending backoffice change (not sure whether it was hardware, software or both). I am very grateful for her advice.
More recently, the phone-time wait to get a refund for my auto-deducted overpayment has been an average of 45 minutes per call. I did have better luck than you with the call-back.
Equally worrisome, though, was encountering a relatively long wait time to report a BWS leak. Surely the doubling of the billing fee that was part of the switch to monthly billing should be helping with staffing and other back-office expenses.
Basically, Ian, multiply your problem (basic service request to change a billing plus questions about errors on billings) by hundreds of people. My understanding is that the number of residents who have had problems with billing due to a poor billing system rollout is overwhelming staff accustomed to a fraction of the current call volume.
BWS has been struggling to get the situation under control, but apparently they are far from the optimal based on your experience.
BWS staff who regularly make presentations at Neighborhood Board meetings were getting an earful at meetings I attended earlier this summer.
There also have been several Council committee sessions devoted to discussion of the issues which probably only got glancing coverage in the regular media. I saw them because I regularly read minutes of several Council Committees.
unrelated to the gripes but a thought i’ve had none-the-less: do those living in dry areas pay more than those living in wet areas? and therefore subsidize more of the overall system than their fair share. what if they did away with the blanket 20% for irrigation factor and based it on actual data, such as this: http://rainfall.geography.hawaii.edu/
does anyone know if a FOIA request could get get billing info in some aggregate form by geography, say a 9 digit zip?
what is the 20% factor based on, and when was that factor created? is it still relevant or have attitudes/behaviors changed over time? not that an audit would answer these questions, but obviously some other tough ones need some serious answers!