Eircom tomfoolery

behanj

This happened a couple of months ago.

I'm renting a house in Portlaoise and after getting the phone line installed decided to go for a Broadband connection for my PC.
I had a look at what was on offer from various companies and decided to go with Esat.
Esat customer service told me I'd have to get Eircom to "Verify" the line.
I rang Eircom to get my line verified, etc....
I avoided actually saying "Verified", on advice from the Esat customer service guy, but the Eircom guy was no back of a clock and kept asking me did I want to sign up for Broadband. I asked would it make a difference if I said I wanted to signup, and he told me that if I just wanted my line checked to see if it was compatible then that would take two weeks, however if I ordered Broadband from them then I'd have my Modem out in two weeks as they'd have the skates put on the whole process.
I though this was fairly dodgy by Eircom as it was putting other Broadband providers at a disadvantage.
But, I figured I'd go with the Eircom free trial, send it back and get Esat.
Two weeks came and went, and my line was coming up as a Pass pn the Eircom website.
I rang their customer service to find out about the modem and verify the connection. I was told that my connection was fine but a modem hadn't been ordered by me. "Would you like to order Broadband from us?" "Nein!, I'll go with Esat thank you very much".
I ordered from Esat that evening and was assured I'd recieve my modem in two weeks.
The next day I got a call from an Eircom techie to tell me that I was not in a broadband area!
I ripped into the poor guy about Eircom's Dodgy business practise and how I thought it was funny that I was all set and boxed off yesterday when I was going with Eircom, but when I moved to Esat I was no llonger in a broadband area. I asked what the complaints procedure was, as I believe I have to exhaust Eircom's complaints prcedure before notifying Comreg.
He went off to sort everything out.
He called me back 5 minutes later to tell me I was back in Broadband country.
I recieved the modem from Esat within the two weeks, and I'm now happily surfing away.
I hope that helps anyone thinking of getting Broadband. Eircom seem to be a bit laxadasical, let them, there's plenty of choice for the consumer and there's support there for you if you feel you're being messed about.

flamegrill

ordering online or via a dealer is a much safer way to work it.

You put in all the details by hand, once they are correct there is no excuses for eircom.

I've got about 100 people broadband installed from eircom/netsource in the past 12 months. All by using online forms provided by certain channels.

Good to hear ya got yer broadband, the sales muppets in there are a bit thick at the best of times.

Paul