About ten days ago, I finally got around to the task of changing my late mother’s telephone service. Yes, there’s still a Hawaiian Telcom landline installed in the Kahala house, and it’s well past time to do something about it. For now, I just want to change the account and billing into my name. Then we’ll decide whether to keep it in the longer term.
It’s turning out to be more difficult than expected.
First I thought I would just walk into one of their offices with all the estate paperwork and find out just what they might need to see. That’s when it dawned on me that Hawaiian Telcom no longer has any sales offices where customers can actually talk to people who know about their services.
So I phoned customer service. The person I spoke with said it would not be possible to change the billing without legal authorization. But instead of telling me what is required, he said I would get instructions in the mail. So I started watching the mail, and finally received their instructions about a week later.
The documents they need are straight forward, at least they seemed to be. And they provided a fax number for easy delivery.
That seemed quite reasonable. So yesterday I wrote a cover letter and scanned the documents. Today I went to send the fax….no answer. It seems that Hawaiian Telcom shuts down its business fax, along with the business offices, for the weekend. I’ll have to wait until Monday to see if the fax line really works.
So no sales offices. No way to deliver documents in person in order to avoid any problems. No access to their office fax over the weekend, when I have a bit more free time.
I’m beginning to see why Hawaiian Tel is struggling to compete. I had been thinking about moving to their services as an alternative to Oceanic, since it appears that you can save a few bucks, but now I’m not sure whether to even explore that option further. It isn’t necessarily easy to do business with them, or so it seems from my small sample.
Should I stick with it and seriously consider a Hawaiian Tel package with phone, Internet, and television? Or is Oceanic still the best bet? If you’ve got experience with their services and how they compare to Oceanic, please share!
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As a survivor after my brother’s death in 2007, and as sponsor of his lousy a t @ t service, I attempted to cancel is service following his celebration of life and an ending event of placing his ashes into Hilo Bay per his request.
Imagine my surprise when lousy a t & t refused, suggesting he should reconsider his cancelation.
As one who witnessed his death at Hilo Medical Center I was stunned and emotionally disturbed. I talked with an idiot in Texas by phone who said he would speak only with my deceased sibling.
I have hated a t & t ever since and will forever.
The fact that they only provided a fax # in the year 2013 is baffling for a tele communications company
In my experience, the quality of customer service at both Oceanic and Hawaiian Tel is heavily influenced by the person with whom you interact. I’ve been thoroughly frustrated and also flawlessly helped by representatives of both companies.
Whichever course you choose, keep notes of helpful and less-helpful by name and number both when shopping and when calling about service issues. A couple of times, we only got a solution to a longstanding problem when we contacted one of those helpful folks, even if the issue was not within their department.
Don’t be shy about shopping for bundles or introductory pricing. When shuffling some things around, I found it helpful to speak to several entities saying, “We want A, B, C and don’t need D. What do you suggest? Is that your best price?”
As for whether to keep a landline, we do so solely in case of emergency, even as we grumble at the layers of surcharges. When there are power and weather issues, a cellphone or VOIP or a cable phone (not sure what you call those) may not work.
I have landline phone with HawTel, and no cell. About a year ago my phone line went dead for no apparent reason. Tried to reach HawTel by sending an email through HawTel’s website (using my Oceanic Roadrunner connection), but HawTel website was extremely clunky and I was not able to see that my message had been received. Had to borrow a cell from a neighbor to call HawTel. They said a repairman would come 5 days later, between 8 AM and noon. Meantime, no way for me to reach the outside world except by email. Thank goodness I didn’t have a medical or police emergency. 5 days later, I suddenly got a phone call! Repairman, outside on the street, had used an electronic device to discover that a piece of equipment outside my building had broken. He had fixed it, and everything turned out OK. My next HawTel bill had an adjustment for the days of service I had not received.
I have Oceanic roadrunner for internet. Saturday night turned off the computer at bedtime, everything fine. Sunday morning was unable to get on the internet. Phoned Oceanic; no systemwide problems. Technician on phone did some checks of my modem from wherever they are, and concluded I need a new modem; repairman to come Wednesday sometime between 8 AM and 4:40 PM (stay by phone all day, don’t go get the mail, don’t use the bathroom, because that might be the magic moment!) But Sunday noon I noticed that my modem lights looked normal, tried internet, and everything is now OK. So what happened? We’ll never know. Now I’ll cancel my Wednesday repairman. Why didn’t they diagnose my problem more accurately, and fix it by remote control, when I phoned on Sunday morning? I’ll never know. Thank goodness I’m back online (although I know there are some folks who lament that fact). I seem to have this sort of problem once every year or two; no explanation; and never a discount for unavailable service if the outage lasts a couple of days.
Bottom line: I’m staying with HawTel for landline phone, and Oceanic for internet; but NOT a happy camper with either one.
Next installment of the soap opera. Sunday afternoon I received a call from Oceanic. Technician said there had been some sort of area problem, which they realized because at least three people in my area had called to report the same outage. That’s their rule — wait for 3 complaints to distinguish an area problem from an individual modem problem (moral to the story — inspired by Hilary — it takes a threesome to raise a techie, so if you have a problem, phone promptly with your complaint, so Oceanic will get its quota of 3 complaints to send a techie). He said they had sent a technician to my area to investigate. But by the time the technician arrived in the area, the problem had gone away all by itself! Technician said such an area problem, at a “node” in the system, could be caused by any one individual whose equipment is wrecking the system at that particular node; and if that individual stops doing whatever caused the trouble, then everyone gets back to normal. Reminds me of those old Christmas tree lights when I was a little boy, where, if one bulb went bad, the whole string would go out and you had to check each bulb individually to find out which was the bad one. Anyway, the technician was glad my service was back to normal, and said he would cancel my Wednesday appointment. Hopefully he also called the other customers on my node who had complained. Hopefully the unknown saboteur of the node will stop doing whatever bad thing caused the trouble. Maybe I’d better not shut down my computer overnight anymore, for fear I’ll lose the internet again at startup.
I am owed $360 from Hawaiian Telcom for services I never received. After making 8 phone calls, being transferred from person to person, and sending THREE certified letters in between (they never even responded to a single one), I finally threw in the towel.
I had similar problems with HTel, dbl, trpl billing for 5 years. File a PUC complaint. That’ll get their attention.
When arriving on island seven years ago I considered getting a landline. In conversations at work I found tales of woe were abundant over HT service, or lack thereof. There are always issues, but this surprised me. At this point it comes as no surprise seeing your article and the responses.
Never have been an HT customer, cell phones only. Almost no trouble with them.
I agree with Ken above; they both have terrible service. EXCEPT with Oceanic you get bounced around for a while in mainland call centers getting nothing done BUT if you can get get them to transfer you to the call center in Mililani, suddenly the doors open up. You can tell because after they transfer you the 3rd or 4th time, you’ll hear a pleasant young girl with a local accent. You might still have to wait at your house from 8:30a-1:00 pm but she will be helpful and apologetic about it and you won’t have to spell your street name out loud AGAIN. I still haven’t figured out how to dial directly into the local call center.
One of the Oceanic guys once gave me his personal cell phone number after a service call. The next two years were awesome, because if anything ever went wrong, I’d call him, he’d tell me what time he’d be over to fix it. He eventually changed numbers and I lost him. Drats!
Oceanic has some great people working for them, but it seems like with their computer system, they can’t talk to each other.
Similar story – auto claim w GEICO and a local call center making the day better. When I was describing where I smashed out the front bumper (oops) in the unpaved overflow lot at Makapuu beach park, she knew just where I talking about, having almost done the same the day before.
Have had a landline after 30+ years & have had HT’s internet for going on 2 years after firing Oceanic over the modem “rental charge” added for a modem we’d already had for several years. Have HT’s basic internet service, which seems to be plenty fast enough for our purposes. HT’s service and support have generally been fine for both landline & dsl.
HT adopted the slogan “Alway On” a couple of years ago, immediately after I had lost both phone and internet service for 10 days over the Christmas/New Year’s holidays! I did get reimbursed for lost service, but not for loss of contact with friends and family.
Something to consider: a landline cannot be tapped without a warrant, or conversations recorded without notice. The same is not true for cell phones. Remember that Google recently was found to have recorded phone conversations as they filmed the streets for Google maps? You can believe or not believe their protestations that it was an accident, but the more important point is THEY WERE NOT BREAKING ANY LAW BY RECORDING CELL PHONE CONVERSATIONS! My understanding is that anything that is “broadcast”, including conversations on the old wireless phones and on current cell phones, is in the public domain and available to anyone.
I think you are mistaken on this. They were not recording cell phone conversations while recording the street view for Google maps. They were recording the characteristics and availability of Wi-Fi networks as they passed by. Wi-Fi networks provide pretty good location data because they are stationary. Cell phones are useless for that since they are moving around all the time.
Here’s the scoop:
http://www.zdnet.com/google-explains-why-street-view-cars-record-wi-fi-data-3040088799/
We have had “my choice bundles” which includes land line phone and basic internet services with a free wifi modem provided by HT for $52.50 a month. Works just fine for us and haven’t had a problem with HT for years.
Life of the Land also had a nightmare trying to end our service. We went to their office and we phoned in. We were subjected to repeated advertisements about new services, long delays, and plenty of hassles.
Ian,
I’d recommend keeping a landline for disaster preparedness reasons. When the power grid shut down in 2006, 2009 and 2012 on the windward side, I had no cell phone service, but the landline worked.
Flora
I have a bundled “for life” package with Telco for internet and landline service. Have been extremely satisfied and in fact waiting for Telco to service my neighborhood with a TV line.
Have not had the challenge with oceanic described above by kalaheo1 – calling and getting a mainland call center. I always get local folks – maybe just lucky? – and good service.
We signed up for one of their ‘specials’ about six or seven months ago – decent selection of channels and a reasonable (well . . . at least not too bad) price. The ‘special’ expires in April.
Last time the deal we had was expiring I called oceanic and asked what the new charge would be when the ‘special’ expires – it was about $30 more per month. I told him I wouldn’t be able to afford that and would go shopping around. He immediately said, “well, we have a current promotion . . .” and signed us up for another year at the previous low price.
They do not want to lose customers!
Our neighbor works for Hawaiian Tel and was pitching their TV service to us – I took the brochure, and even did some follow up calling. The price for the service that included the channels we ‘usually’ watch or want to have available was more than what we have with oceanic. If I recall, the basic difference between the oceanic deal and the HawTelcom service seemed to be that HT obviously does not offer OC16 and similar locally-produced content.
As for internet, very happy with HawaiianTel dsl – I have the ‘lifetime’ price bob jones describes – landline and dsl for just over $50. We keep the landline because our monitored alarm system (not oceanic) is tied into the landline – would not work in the event of a power outage with a cell service.