Open Letter to Phil Nolan

dahamsta

Entirely unrelated to the current debacle.

14th January 2004

Phil Nolan
Eircom Head Office
St. Stephens Green West
Dublin 2

Dear Phil,

I would like to compliment you on the performance of your engineers. For the past several months I've had intermittent problems with my telephone line, and one of your engineers in Cork - Peter off Hettyfield - has patiently returned time and time again to isolate the problem. As it turns out the issue was more complex than he thought, as his colleague Declan discovered at the last visit, and now the issue seems to be fully resolved.

Moreover, when Peter and Declan were leaving on the last occasion, they pointed out that one of the boxes on the telephone poles I connect to was badly corroded, and that it would need to be replaced. They thought it could be months before this happened, but in fact several more engineers arrived only two days later to do this job. Nearly all of the engineers that I've met have been polite and well mannered, and appear to do their jobs efficiently.

It's a pity the same can't be said for the rest of your staff. Granted, your sales operatives are generally polite and well mannered, but unfortunately they tend to extend this to the point of embarrassing sycophancy. Moreover, gross incompetence and a huge propensity to lie appear to be required attributes for the job. Fortunately I have the ability to recognise the stupidity and untruths, but unfortunately most Irish people don't -- as you’re no doubt aware.

Your sales staff pale in comparison to your repairs operators though. These vicious, malignant people seem to revel in the anger and unhappiness of their callers. They address the people that call them - your customers - as if they are lower forms of life that purposely pull telephone cables out of the ground simply to annoy them. They're condescending, rude, arrogant and more often than not completely ill informed in what they say.

I don't doubt that they have this attitude for a reason. Whether that reason is maltreatment by their superiors or an implicit approval from the same superiors, I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that you allow it to continue because it keeps the repair bill down, so you and the shareholders can suck as much filthy lucre as possible out of the company before someone notices what a tumbledown wreck Eircom is. And you can't blame someone else Phil, you're the boss.

This is my message: I hope it all falls apart. I have my fingers securely crossed that when you do take the company public again, no one is stupid enough to invest. I hope that the investments you and your colleagues made with the dirty money do terribly. I hope that the big houses and the big cars have to be sold for survival. And when all that happens, when you're forced to live like the rest of us, I hope that your telephone line doesn't work.

Do you think that’s a bit nasty? Perhaps it is, but it pales in comparison to the treatment I’ve received from your repairs operators. How do you like it?

Yours sincerely,
Adam Beecher

spongebob

I'd almost forgotten about Biddy , especially the Dial 1901 Press 2 for 'Repairs' Biddy .

You were far too polite Adam ...which is more than Biddy will ever do for you as you know perfectly well.

M

rymus

And when all that happens, when you're forced to live like the rest of us, I hope that your telephone line doesn't work.

Beautiful!

dahamsta

I'd love to be able to forget about Biddy, but unfortunately I've spent hours onto them over the last few months. The worst was last two weeks though, with terrible noise on the line and repeated DSL disconnections. I rang several times, but it's like when you go to a mechanic with a knocking noise -- as soon as you enter the garage, it disappears. So they didn't believe me. Then I started ringing when there was noise on the line, and I got the lines tests.

Biddy: No, that line is testing fine.
Me: Can you hear the noise on the line?
Biddy: I can, but the line is testing fine.
Me: Well obviously it's not working.
Biddy: Well the system says it is.

Last week I went through this several times, and every time I rang they insisted on testing the line.

Me: Can you hear the noise on the line?
Biddy: Yes, but the line still needs to be tested.
Me: It was tested yesterday.
Biddy: It still needs to be tested.
Me: I'm not disputing that it tests ok, but you can hear the noise on the line.
Biddy: Sorry, we have to test the line.
Me: <minor rant>
Biddy: I'll put you onto my supervisor.
Me: <fume fume fume>
Supervisor: We need to test the line.
Me: <minor explosion>

Et cetera. It gets better though: After a week of this I contacted customer service to enquire about the Customer Service Guarantee. The guarantee is that your line will be fixed in two days, right? Get this: The customer service agent doesn't have access to the service system. And better again: The service ticket needs to be closed before they'll talk to you.

This was ComReg's idea by the way. Our fearless defenders.

adam

yellum

I think Peter fixed my line yesterday too. Bless him. He just rang me again there to check was everything working fine.

dahamsta

A follow-up on this: I got a phone call today from Eircom, someone in Phil Nolan's office if I remember correctly. She asked for a little more information on my experiences with their repairs operators, and I explained that the majority of conversations I've had with their repairs staff over the years have been less than satisfactory. Not all, but a very large majority; and not explicitly belligerent, but implicitly so -- difficult, circular, etc. She told me that the staff get call handling training - Ian Paisley must be moonlighting - but that my complaint would be passed to the manager of that department. I hope it is, and that it's taken seriously.

I also explained that, contrary to popular belief, I don't spend every waking moment ranting and fuming about Eircom - I sleep quite well as it happens, probably more so since I started doing business with UTV - but that I do find many aspects of dealing with them extremely irritating, and often intrusive on my business and personal life (I work from home, so I get to deal with problems with the line from both angles). I said, in essence, that they need to improve their working practices and attitude towards the customer if they're ever going to get my business back; and that I found it highly unlikely that it was going to happen.

Obviously the line rental issue got a mention, but it seems she didn't need to hear much about that from me, since she had a lot of other complaints to reply to about the issue. We laughed about that actually, which was decidely odd. She also offered me six months line rental at Eircom's expense, which I obviously accepted; and seemed at pains to point out that my letter had been read by the man himself. I'd love to have seen his face. Make no mistake though Phil, if this gets back to you: Nothing's changed. I don't like the way your company treats people and I don't like you or your shareholders making money on the back of that.

I'll never know if my complaint will be followed through on, and I'll never know if my complaint will have even a minor effect on Eircom, but I do appreciate that this person took time out of their day to call me and talk to me. Yes, she's probably paid specifically to assuage people like me, but if the rest of the people working in Eircom treated their customers with a little more respect, they wouldn't need to make that call to me, or write letters to all those people complaining about line rental.

If the management could get it into their heads that people don't like being lied to, and misled, and overcharged, they could have a lot more customers. If the executive officers spent a little less time pumping themselves up for the shareholders, and a little more time researching the medium to long-term effects of good customer service, they'd find it a lot easier to hold onto those customers. Of course they're not in it for the long haul, just a quick buck, but the staff are. They'd do well to remember that.

We've been empowered by the tool they've tried so hard to keep from us. With it, we've created a common where we can compare experiences and make informed decisions about who we will and won't deal with, and one decision that appears to be on the increase is to take our business elsewhere, to providers that are less expensive, and people that are more attentive to our needs.

To survive, they have to connect as many people as possible to this common, and it seems that they consistently fail to recognise this irony. Until they do, all they will ever represent is self-defeat, bad management and low ethics. They can take as much money as they want out of the company, all I will ever see is failures that couldn't cut it, that couldn't stay the path and win on merit.

I don't know if anything I say here ever makes even the tiniest difference, but there's still a moral in this for everyone: If you don't complain, you won't be heard.

Get writing.

adam