John Doherty outs ComReg as worthy of straight jacket

eircomtribunal

Press release for ComWreck.com 29 April 2004


In one of the more bizarre actions of ComReg, Doherty censors SMART Telecom for putting the straight jacket on Eircom for their "insane" line rental price hike – and outs ComReg as worthy for this garment.
Watch the billboard, displaying 11 of ComReg's insane actions and read Smart's arguments for a change of ComReg's office dress code.

Regards

Peter Weigl


P.S.
Thanks to all in high and low places, who have contributed to arm-wrestle lazy Comreg into action on the porn-dialler/stealth dialler/eircom band 13 band–scam. While the "consumer guide" on diallers, published today on ComReg's web-site, is dumb and lacks usable advice, ComReg have promised to work for a sensible solution of the dialler scourge, so shamelessly misused by Eircom with their specifically tailored Band 13.


http://www.comwreck.com/blog_19_april29.html

sceptre

In its investigation following a complaint, ComReg said that categorising the charges for Eircom’s line rental service as being “insane” could lead consumers to believe Eircom was overcharging. “This is not based on fact since the charges for line rental are currently regulated prices as approved by ComReg from time to time. Therefore such a description is prejudicial to Eircom’s reputation and thus derogatory,” the regulator’s office said in a statement. “Smart Telecom are fully aware of the legal basis for the line rental charges.”

One might be forgiven for thinking that this was written by Peter slagging Comreg. Not so - it was written by Comreg. As we're all painfully aware the increase in line rental was approved as being in line with the basket pricing that Comreg persist in maintaining rather than actually justifying a particular price increase based on an actual cost of maintenance. A cynic with an account with an OLO might be forgiven for accusing Eircom of subsiding relatively meagre call price drops for Eircom customers with increased line rental for all customers. That's how I tend to forgive myself for my view that Eircom are doing so. I'm sure it pays in some way for the "Phoning with Eircom is so much cheaper than using your nasty mobile phone" advert, though it could be worse - we could have one of these.

I look forward to the "Dear John, I know I said we'd review this basket thing after a few months if 'competition' didn't look like working out but let's not bother because people have probably forgotten I said I'd do that, signed Dermot" release from comwreck in a few weeks.

As people may have noticed from my late-night postings on the Politics forum, I tend to get rather cynical at around 2am. Even so this decision from the real Comreg is a little puzzling. Apart from David Redmond, Dermot Ahern and John Doherty, is there anyone who didn't think the persistant increases in the last 18-odd months were anything but "insane"? Judging by calls to the Joe Duffy show, the term "insane" certainly seems to be one accepted by the reasonable man. Perhaps Smart Telecom could replace the term "Insane" with "Not Especially Nice At All And A Little Mean" in their next advert. Tenner to me and you can have the phrase lads.