Verizon Wireless Botches The DST Change In Hawaii

March 10, 2013 6:30 AM (give or take)

“It seems awfully dark for 6:45”, I thought, when the alarm went off. But it had been raining and cloudy last night, so I took it in stride. I got up and answered the Cat’s call for breakfast, set the coffee maker into production, and told my wife it was time to get up.

It took me a few minutes to notice the clock in the living room, which said it was 5:48. Having just woken up, I was skeptical that anything was amiss. It must be me. I looked at my Verizon smart phone, which had served as the alarm that woke me. It said 6:48. I decided that since Hawaii does not observe daylight savings time, I needed to consult a dumb clock, one that had no notion of DST. The bedroom alarm clock said 5:48, the kitchen range and microwave and coffee maker said 5:48.

Maybe I messed with the time setting on my phone, I thought. When I looked, it was set to “Automatic – use network provided values”, and time zone “GMT-10:00, GMT-9:00”. I took it off automatic, and set the time to to match the other clocks, and the time zone to Hawaii/Aleutian. Then I clicked on automatic again. It went right back to DST and zone “GMT-10:00, GMT-9:00”. I am now annoyed that some Verizon engineer, who is probably fast asleep, has made this horrific mistake and left me without an hour of Sunday morning sleep. Or perhaps, even worse, some idiot in California, who clicked (or failed to unclick) the DST setting on a CDMA base station somewhere. Thankfully, my multiple CDMA-disciplined clocks on the UH network do not use time zones, and appear to be OK. (BTW: My wife’s T-Mobile phone says agrees with the coffee maker.)