Hawaiian Telcom filed for voluntary Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection today.This is not a surprising turn of events. Especially since they were unable to pay a 26 million dollar interest payment due at the beginning of November.
I really believe that the Hawaii PUC and the Division of Consumer Advocacy failed Hawaii consumers and businesses by approving this purchase by the Carlyle Group in 2005. It left Hawaiian Telcom as a over leveraged company unable to upgrade their network to compete effectively with Oceanic Time Warner Cable and the wireless providers.If that wasn’t enough they had eons of customer service problems.
I chalk up the latter to the Carlyle Group’s lack of experience in running a telephone company and their selection of Bearing Point to build the back office infrastructure. A lot of these concerns were brought up during the public hearings about this purchase. Nonetheless, the Hawaii PUC and the Division of Consumer Advocacy largely ignored these concerns and rubber stamped this acquisition of Hawaiian Telcom by the Carlyle Group.
However hopefully Hawaiian Telcom can emerge from bankruptcy a much stronger company. We definitely need a viable competitor to Oceanic Time Warner Cable.
General Growth Properties was able to get a two week reprieve on their outstanding debt obligations. But in my opinion this extension is just forestalling an inevitable Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing.
Lastly, it is unbelievable how politically correct the University of Hawaii had to be when explaining this new agreement with Taiwan. Which may lead to a new small telescope to be built on the Big Island. Hawaii desperately needs to diversify its economy. The telescopes on Mauna Kea bring good well paying jobs here and reduce our dangerous dependence on tourism,construction,real estate and the military. But unfortunately there is a lot of shortsighted people in our community opposed to practically anything to be built here. If these same people continue to with their CAVE agenda,Hawaii will continue its path towards becoming a third world country.
I finally put em out of business!
I swore a couple years ago that when they screwed me for about 2-3 months on my phone bill that I would put them out of service!
Seriously… they were never the same after acquiring the Verizon accounts here in Hawaii.
I’m glad this company has failed and gone bankrupt.
SCREW HawaiiTelcom!
(To be repeated on every blog I see posting about HawaiiTelcom today!)
Thank you for the immature and ignorant comment Damon Tucker. Name one company that you’ve worked for that has never made a mistake or had a complaint filed against them and then feel free to leave such idiotic comments. There may be someone you know or are connected to that currently works for Hawaiian Telcom. Can you honestly say that you’re glad that other people’s jobs are being affected? Next time you should think before openly voicing your opinions.
Yet I hear this story repeated by many people across the island. There is something more here than a few isolated mistakes, but a systemic problem within the company with respect to billing and customer service.
Read the back articles here on Aaron’s blog and you might find some of the reasons for this. The results are understandable, real damage to the reputation of HT and disaffected customers who have flocked to the competition.
AC -
I have never worked for a “private” company that I know of that has had a complaint lodged against them.
Jobs are being affected across this entire Island because of reasons that have nothing to do with more poor customer service.
Had HawaiianTelcom treated me fairly… they might have had one customer more still.
Glad to know that you think my comment is ignorant.
If you would care to discuss this further, you are welcome to email me at damontucker@yahoo.com.
So much billing problems at HT for last few years. This time we got charges for international calls from may 08 to Dec 08 on our Feb 09 bill. So stupid. and we have not been any mainland calls yet. We are on automatic payment and it is like open checking for them to withdraw any amounts they want. They gotta clean up their billing problems and treat us fair. No wonder the number of customers going to 500K only.