Eircom Discussion on Liveline (now with mp3 link)

mike65 · 14-01-2004 2:47pm #1

Quick!

Mike.

Ronan|Raven · 14-01-2004 2:51pm

Listening to it now. Should be an interesting show.

sceptre · 14-01-2004 2:53pm

Contact details
http://www.rte.ie/radio1/afternoon/liveline/

Why not phone them or send them a quick (coherent) mail (I have)

dahamsta · 14-01-2004 2:56pm

Can't get a stream, which is encouraging.

mike65 · 14-01-2004 3:00pm

Good to hear that Joe Duffy is being competely biased!

When asked could Comreg stop the price hike you'd swear the interviewee had been challanged to deny he was a kiddie fiddler! Eircom have the regulator by the short and curlies.

Mike.

talla · 14-01-2004 3:01pm

Best quote i've ever heard from Joe Duffy.

"Its like reducing the price of milk but raising the price of the carton it comes in, yet the milk carton is still the same as last week"

shinzon · 14-01-2004 3:04pm

im listening to the recording now, at what part of the programme is the eircom thing, im listening to nuns at the mo

shin

Ronan|Raven · 14-01-2004 3:06pm

Originally posted by shinzon
im listening to the recording now, at what part of the programme is the eircom thing, im listening to nuns at the mo

shin

It is running since the beginning of the show...

parasite · 14-01-2004 3:07pm

shinzon, that's yesterdays show !
just turn on your radio ffs

Valentia · 14-01-2004 3:07pm

Originally posted by shinzon
im listening to the recording now, at what part of the programme is the eircom thing, im listening to nuns at the mo

shin

That's yesterdays show. Go to live stream.

Valentia

mike65 · 14-01-2004 3:09pm

http://www.rte.ie/rams/radio/latest/rte-liveline.smil live stream server crashed - using yesterdays show.

Mike.

Washout · 14-01-2004 3:11pm

Joe Duffy just made a great point

If milk companies reduce the cost of milk but then say they are gonna increase the cost of the carton even thought the carton is the same. then the increase is unjustifiable.

similarly if eircom reduce the price of calls and then say oops to offset to decrese in call costs we are gonna increase the line rental ...thats unjustifiable.

The probably will make more money between the differance.

robo · 14-01-2004 3:12pm

LOL at the milk carton pont!

Yeh have to give it to Joe, he is making great points!!!

And also, give back the old phones that we don't use!!!

shinzon · 14-01-2004 3:13pm

Originally posted by Valentia
That's yesterdays show. Go to live stream.

Valentia

shin turns on radio

:rolleyes:

robo · 14-01-2004 3:15pm

Protect consumers...my foot!!!
What the hell!!! That guy from Comreg is full of cr@p!!!

viking · 14-01-2004 3:18pm

info@comreg.ie

Let them know what you think...

viking

talla · 14-01-2004 3:19pm

The guy from comreg hasnt got a clue, he keeps waffling on about prices dropping on call costs, he just doesnt see a problem with eircom taking back the money with line rental.

Frank Grimes · 14-01-2004 3:25pm

Originally posted by talla
The guy from comreg hasnt got a clue, he keeps waffling on about prices dropping on call costs, he just doesnt see a problem with eircom taking back the money with line rental.

Was it brought up that not everyone uses Eircom for voice calls?
Surely they shouldn't be coming out with stuff like that as a defense?

talla · 14-01-2004 3:29pm

he just kept on referring to the fact that call costs had dropped 35% since 1997 due to competition, he cannot get into his head its not about call costs.

capistrano · 14-01-2004 3:34pm

A quick comparison with our nearest neighbours shows how high Eircom's line rental is.

The residential line rental from BT is £26.63 per quarter, which works out as about €12.62 per month - compare that with Eircom's approximately €25 per month.

Shame on ComReg for not looking after the consumer's interest!

lampsie · 14-01-2004 3:37pm

By the sounds of it, this could be the straw that broke the camels back for eircom consumers..
Sorry for pointless post, but I'm listening to the radio and cheering

- lamps

Valentia · 14-01-2004 3:38pm

Will someone ring in quick aboutb how they double their income by splitting the line. Quick. They wont let me on again!

shinzon · 14-01-2004 3:46pm

Very good show, theres a hell of a lot of anger over this issue and well done for joe for highlighting the problem

Shin

mike65 · 14-01-2004 3:47pm

Pity the line splitting did'nt get covered, still the calls and the fact thier live stream server crashed out show this is now a live issue....

Mike.

dahamsta · 14-01-2004 3:49pm

Heh, couldn't get through on the phone either, good work folks.

I was reduced to emailing my questions, which hadn't a hope of getting on the air, but here they are anyway:

Joe, John has mentioned LLU several time now, please ask him HOW MANY VOICE LINES HAVE BEEN UNBUNDLED You might find the answer interesting.

(As far as I'm aware the answer is none. Esat are only unbundling the data portion of the line, and of course Esat is the only company unbundling lines.)

Another very simple question for John Doherty: We have the highest line rental in Europe, how does Comreg propose to bring it down to at least a European average? Price rises in line with inflation will NOT do that.

adam

capistrano · 14-01-2004 4:02pm

Somebody on the phone-in said that if you made your Eircom account a business account then the line rental is cheaper. I don't think it is, it's just that they don't include VAT on the business price, but they do on the Resisdential price.

magick · 14-01-2004 4:07pm

just listened to it myself, it was a brillant show really highlights Eircons total disrespect for the customer.

capistrano · 14-01-2004 4:17pm

The basic line rental price in Germany (Deutsche Telekom) is €15.66 link
ISDN line rental is even cheaper than Eircom's standard analog line rental.

UK is €12.62 link

Just to put in context how much of a rip-off Eircom really is.

Ripwave · 14-01-2004 4:26pm

Originally posted by capistrano
UK is €12.62 link

Just to put in context how much of a rip-off Eircom really is.

Capistrano, that BT link is from 1997!!!! (The last time I checked, BT was something like €18 a month, but currency fluctuations have pushed that down since then).

Ripwave · 14-01-2004 4:27pm

Originally posted by mike65
the fact thier live stream server crashed out show this is now a live issue....

The server didn't crash - it reached it's capacity. I was listening to the stream until 2:30, without interruption. (I had to leave at 2:30, so I gave up my session so someone else could get on!).

mike65 · 14-01-2004 4:30pm

Crashed sounds better!

Mike.

capistrano · 14-01-2004 4:38pm

Originally posted by Ripwave
Capistrano, that BT link is from 1997!!!! (The last time I checked, BT was something like €18 a month, but currency fluctuations have pushed that down since then).

Well spotted! are the current prices Here, which I canculate works out as €15.20 per month incl. VAT(£32.59pq).

wexfordman · 14-01-2004 4:40pm

Did anyone heaar jeo reply to the one about returning the eircom phones ?

"Shure most of them would be in shi , in an awful state by now"

Wexfordman

The Brigadier · 14-01-2004 4:53pm

Did anyone capture this to post it up?

mike65 · 14-01-2004 4:58pm

You mean the audio?

Its here -
http://www.rte.ie/rams/radio/latest/rte-liveline.smil

edit. No its not, they'll have it up later today.

Mike.

Valentia · 14-01-2004 5:01pm

Originally posted by mike65
You mean the audio?

Its here -
http://www.rte.ie/rams/radio/latest/rte-liveline.smil

Mike.

Not yet but it should be online before the day is out.

Valentia.

eirebhoy · 14-01-2004 5:02pm

This excact subject was on NewsTalk 106 yesterday and David McRedmond from Eircom said that there is a low user scheme which will reduce the price of the line. He said you can find out about it on Eircom.ie, anyone heard about this???

Ripwave · 14-01-2004 5:19pm

Originally posted by eirebhoy
This excact subject was on NewsTalk 106 yesterday and David McRedmond from Eircom said that there is a low user scheme which will reduce the price of the line. He said you can find out about it on Eircom.ie, anyone heard about this???

It's called the "Vulnerable User Scheme" and it costs €22.50. Yup, that right, it costs exactly the same as ordinary line rental. The diference is that they get €5 of "free calls". (That's about an hour and a halfs worth of daytime local calls per month, at an effective rate of 22c per minute).

If you use more than €5 of calls, you pay twice the ordinary call rate, untill you're back up to €11 worth of calls, at which point the rate drops back down to the ordinary rate.

It'll come as little surprise that only 400 users (out of 1.6 million phone lines) have opted for this sick joke. Even oreillycom are too embarrassed to publicise it, and you won't find any reference to it on theyr website, no matter what Fibber McRedmond says.

parasite · 14-01-2004 5:21pm

wow, i thought i heard it all
/mind boggles

eirebhoy · 14-01-2004 5:23pm

Originally posted by Ripwave
It's called the "Vulnerable User Scheme" and it costs €22.50. Yup, that right, it costs exactly the same as ordinary line rental. The diference is that they get €5 of "free calls". (That's about an hour and a halfs worth of daytime local calls per month, at an effective rate of 22c per minute).

If you use more than €5 of calls, you pay twice the ordinary call rate, untill you're back up to €11 worth of calls, at which point the rate drops back down to the ordinary rate.

It'll come as little surprise that only 400 users (out of 1.6 million phone lines) have opted for this sick joke. Even oreillycom are too embarrassed to publicise it, and you won't find any reference to it on theyr website, no matter what Fibber McRedmond says.

I'd absolutely love to get my hands on that McRedmond fella, every time I hear him he makes my head boil. He never stopped mentionibg this "vulnerable user" scheme on Newstalk making it out to be a great service.
AAHHHHHHH :mad: :mad: :mad:

Ripwave · 14-01-2004 5:26pm

Originally posted by capistrano
Well spotted! are the current prices Here, which I canculate works out as €15.20 per month incl. VAT(£32.59pq).

Those are wholesale rates.

BT have a range of options, starting from £9.50 (including a call allowance of £2.15) up to £28.50 with free local calls.

For the £9.50 deal, BT charges more for local calls than oreillycom.

(BT use the same braindead session crap as eircom do on their site, so I can give a direct link. But if you go to www.bt.co.uk and click on Site Search, and use line rental as the serach query, you'll find those numbers.

Choice is the key ingredient that's missing for irish consumers.

viking · 14-01-2004 5:27pm

They give some with the left and take more with the right...

From eircom site.

viking

Ripwave · 14-01-2004 5:33pm

Originally posted by eirebhoy
I'd absolutely love to get my hands on that McRedmond fella, every time I hear him he makes my head boil. He never stopped mentionibg this "vulnerable user" scheme on Newstalk making it out to be a great service.
AAHHHHHHH :mad: :mad: :mad:

Well, when you contact NewsTalk to complain about this, feel free to quote me.

The full description of this "scheme" is on the ComReg site http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/ComReg0348.pdf

Eurorunner · 14-01-2004 5:46pm

Nice to see the masses vent their fury. We need more of this - people need to be reminded that they're being ripped off every month -> so that the politicians/comreg/etc get grief about it ->pressurising them into doing something about it.

Mossy Monk · 14-01-2004 5:55pm

i recorded it on the Sky earlier and am listening to it now. Mr COMREG got a nice welcome

"waste of space"

Ripwave · 14-01-2004 6:28pm

Originally posted by Mossy Monk
i recorded it on the Sky earlier and am listening to it now. Mr COMREG got a nice welcome

"waste of space"

It would have been hard to tell that he didn't work for oreillycom until the discussion got around to returning handsets. He was the one who suggested that "eircom delivered it, they can come and collect it".

If you're like that guy in Cork who's still paying "comfort rental" because he couldn't find an office in Cork that would take his old handset back, make sure you get on to ComReg about it!!!

(I don't think that they guy knew that you can just call 1901 and tell them to cancel it, you don't have to cancel it in person).

dahamsta · 14-01-2004 6:38pm

14th January 2004

John Doherty
Commission for Communications Regulation
Block DEF, Abbey Court
Irish Life Centre
Lower Abbey Street
Dublin 1

Dear John,

You’re not off to a good start, are you? I listened to the discussion you took part in on RTE's Liveline today and although I was impressed with some of the things you said - encouraging Eircom customers to cancel/dispose of Eircom CPE, for example - I actually found myself laughing out loud at some of your answers on the key issue, another price rise in Eircom’s line rental fee.

Your suggestion that LLU and wholesale line provisioning will answer a lot of these problems, for example, is entirely disingenuous. Unbundling on the data channel has been available for some time now, yet EsatBT has been the only operator in a position to take advantage of it; and even then only with massive subsidies from the Government to fund it. The same will happen with wholesale lines if you’re as weak as Etain on price.

And then there’s the suggestion that these hikes are needed to pay for the upkeep of Eircom’s network, when you know better than I that Eircom will do anything in its power to avoid ploughing back profits. Those Eircom vans now have one engineer in them, not two, and although redundancies needed to be made, even with redundancy packages it’s still a massive cost saving. Among many.

I don’t think you’re a stupid man, I don’t think Eircom are pulling the wool over your eyes. However the fact remains that Eircom has nothing in its sights bar cashing in as quickly as possible and handing over to the next in line to the trough. It’s possible that the next in line will find themselves holding a shiny lump of pyrite, but you’ll have to deal with the ramifications of that too.

So please, drop the defensive posturing, drop the misleading quarterly reports, drop the bargaining, stop taking excuses and accepting missed deadlines, and stand up to them. Force them to drop their wholesale prices, not by bargaining but by bullying. Fine them for not responding to directives on time. And if you feel you don’t have the power, get it, by all means necessary.

But for God’s sake stop making excuses for them. They already have a barefaced liar on staff in the shape of David McRedmond, they don’t need you to help them along.

Yours sincerely,
Adam Beecher

mike65 · 14-01-2004 7:06pm

Heres a link to an mp3 I made of part of the programme today, it includes the now famous milk carton comment!

http://us.f2.yahoofs.com/bc/437a97cf/bc/audio/Liveline+1.mp3.mp3?bfjcYBAB6tM1TFFa (2.1mb)

Mike.

Dustaz · 14-01-2004 7:28pm

I cant believe noone else mentioned "Heres 2 minutes of silence so we may weep for the state of the nation". I shìt myself laughing in work at that

sunbeam · 14-01-2004 7:31pm

Originally posted by Dustaz
I cant believe noone else mentioned "Heres 2 minutes of silence so we may weep for the state of the nation". I shìt myself laughing in work at that

You just beat me to it. I nearly choked on my tea.

viking · 14-01-2004 7:35pm

Don't think that link is working Mike...

viking

Eircom Discussion on Liveline (now with mp3 link)

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