Eircom + Morale

turbot

It seems interesting to me that I can't think of anyone who has particularly good things to say about Eircom.

I know loads of people who have lots of bad things to say about them, and hold a massive amount of bad will towards Eircom (the opposite of good will).

I've personally had horrific experiences with them, and after huge amounts of my time and money were wasted, I only managed to get some kind of resolution after I wrote a 10 page letter to ComReg.

I have no faith in the competency or reliability of one of the prime providers of infrastructure in Ireland. I do have faith that for anyone other than the most standard requirements, there is a good chance it will have to be requested multiple times, and may go wrong.

It would seem to me that Eircom literally has the effect of *demoralising the country*.

For example, I recently moved out of my old apartment.

In order to get through to someone to cancel my old Eircom line, I had to wait for 22 minutes on the phone. Once I spoke to someone, I was told that because I also had broadband, I had to cancel that first, before the phone line could be ceased.

He then proceeded to transfer me to broadband, at which time I was disconnected.

Firstly, it seems absurd that there can be such extreme call times required to get through to someone. Secondly, that I am not surprised when the call is disconnected says a lot about the reputation Eircom have gained.

What do you think about this?

Do you think that Eircom have demoralised the country?

Solair

I had the polar opposite experience. Recently moved apartment and eircom managed to disconnect the old line and broadband within 10 mins of me calling and the new line was activated within about 30 mins!

It was seamless, the guy on the phone knew his stuff and was very friendly. It was all done on a saturday morning. He took my mobile number and rang me to inform me of my new account details on the following monday morning.

eircom most definitely over charge for service, but I can't say that they fall short of the mark when it comes to the quality of their customer service and support.

Likewise, I had a problem with my voicemail.. It was resolved while I was on

the phone by someone who knew what they were on about.

In terms of telcos the absolute worst service I've had is from BT Ireland and also Vodafone... eircom are light years ahead of both organisations when it comes to customer service.

koolkat

I am having major problems with eircom at the moment. I have a business and last september ordered a highspeed line so i could have a fax machine on the same line. They told me they would send out the needed hardware and i would get someone out to set it up in 6-8 weeks. On my next bill they charged me for the hardware they sent me out within 2 weeks of my original call. I waited 8 weeks for someone to call to my house before I rang them back. They told me someone would be out before the end of the week. My weekly calls to them and subsequent assurances that someone would be out to install it before the end of the week continued untill the end of January. At this point my patience was gone. I told them that I was going to leave eircom if the matter was not sorted within 5 days. Sure enough 3 days later someone did call to me and informed me that due to my location I would not be able to get a High speed line. Why could they not tell me this when I rang the very first time as I am sure that when they looked up my account details and address they could have said straight away that it is not available in my area.

TempestSabre

I was in some of their offices once on contract and it took them two weeks to get a phone in their own office. We gave up on an ISDN line after a couple of months.

kc66

My parents have a business and got Eircom to install a public payphone. A Russian guy came in most evenings for a few weeks and got change of €2 for the phone. Got a bill for over €1000 of calls to Russia. He knew the default code for making free calls. Eircom never changed it or informed my parents it even existed. Got no satisfaction from them and were passes from department to department. Ended up having to pay the bill and move to another company.

Tom Dunne

I have a rant over in the Broadband forum about Eircom.

Basically, my in-laws run a business from home and have spent the last year battling for broadband. Now that they have got connected, it doesn't work (I won't bore you with the technical details).

What really annoyed me was that I spent almost two hours onto their BB support this morning and the Eircom person utterly refused to listen to what troubleshooting I had done already.

I didn't point out to him that I lecture in computers at a third-level institution (didn't want to be patronising), so I have a bit of a clue what I am talking about. He just kept reading from his script, and actually didn't understand what ftp was (I could FTP a file from Microsoft to prove that I had some form of a connection).

This was the third successive Eircom representative I had spoken to.

Eircom really need to get their support in order. They need to get their ordering process in order. They need to get their ageing phone lines in order. They need to stopped milking this country for every penny they can. Without the clout of a competent regulator, or the initiative from government, there is sweet FA we can do.

TempestSabre

tom dunne wrote:

....
Eircom really need to get their support in order. They need to get their ordering process in order. They need to get their ageing phone lines in order. They need to stopped milking this country for every penny they can. Without the clout of a competent regulator, or the initiative from government, there is sweet FA we can do.

You've just explained why Eircom don't need to do anything.

turbot

We live in a competitive international business environment. They are core providers of infrastructure; central to what is required to do business in the modern age. My experience of trying to resolve a problem with them indicated their management systems were a sham.

Eircom cost me time, money and basically made it hard for me to do my work. The directors should be accountable for the frustration they have caused the country.

I literally spent 15 hours on the phone on 30+ occassions attempting to resolve a problem that occured due to their incompetency and poorly designed management systems.

I only got resolution after sending a 10 page letter to ComReg. I'd guess that less than 1 in 25 people would go to the thorough lengths I had to in order to get resolution.

More than this, for anything other than the most standard issues, it seems the company has been designed to be dysfunctional, like it seems that they have purposefully set up their systems so that responsibility and accountability across individuals and departments is non existent.

There are management processes and systems that are well capable of mitigating these issues.... I think it's reasonable to demand a quality of service, value and responsiveness that facilitates confidence. I'm sure there are hundreds more stories like the ones above.

TempestSabre

What was the problem?

Savman

How can a mere phone company "demoralise the country"??? :rolleyes:

There are many service providers in todays telecoms market so customers can choose whichever service they want. Eircom have taken a battering in recent years but I've not had any trouble with them.

TempestSabre

Savman wrote:

How can a mere phone company "demoralise the country"??? :rolleyes:

Wait till you have a problem with them.

Savman wrote:

There are many service providers in todays telecoms market so customers can choose whichever service they want.

Eircom owns the line. So everyone goes through Eircom.

Savman wrote:

Eircom have taken a battering in recent years but I've not had any trouble with them.

Its just a matter of time.

FranknFurter

Moved house a few months back.
Took them 3 weeks AFTER I had moved to de-activate the old line DESPITE having spent 3 hours in total the month before trying to make sure it was done BEFORE I moved.
(They also told me twice on the phone that it HAD been de-activated!)

They really need to get a grip, the amount of times they "accidently cut you off" when they mean to "transfere your call to another dept" is utterly ridiculous. The "reading from a script" thing is unbelievably frustrating, and makes all the operators sound like trained chimpanzees.

And im willing to bet that VERY few of the "tech support" guys an gals are happy about the situation either. I have been told many times by people who work there or have worked there that the amount of people who quit after a very short time is amazing.

b

cuckoo

kc66 wrote:

My parents have a business and got Eircom to install a public payphone. A Russian guy came in most evenings for a few weeks and got change of €2 for the phone. Got a bill for over €1000 of calls to Russia. He knew the default code for making free calls. Eircom never changed it or informed my parents it even existed. Got no satisfaction from them and were passes from department to department. Ended up having to pay the bill and move to another company.

Did your parents not get the manual that went with that model of payphone? Any manual i've ever come across for a payphone mentions the default code and gives instructions on how to change it.

galah

Oh Eircom...It's up there in my top 3 things I hate about Ireland, along with the health system and driver "education"...

I moved house last year, and all I needed was to transfer the old phone line back to my old landlord, and reconnect a line in the new apartment. Simple thing, really...It started off bad, as I went to the local 3G store to do it - they assured me they pass on all the forms to Eircom - after 2 weeks, I rang Eircom, and they never received a thing...

Then the real fun started...

Eircom were too incompetent to change one line, and reconnect another. They failed to switch the old line over to my landlord (had to call them 5 times about that), then they managed to register my new phone with the wrong exchange (the line was dead - obviously - and the "friendly" lady in support got really thick with me, telling me that "my phone was broken, and I should buy a new phone, and not bother them" - although obviously it was a problem with the line, not the phone...

I had technicians over, rang again, they kept billing me for the old phone line, support was a desaster...

It took me 17 complaints, Eircom owes me 6 hours of my life, and in the end, they assigned a personal complaint handler to me to resolve the "issue" (after I started threatening them with the Ombudsman...). I got 2 months free rental out of them for all my trouble, but in terms of grey hair it wasn't worth it...

And the best thing was - 2 minutes after I got off the last phone call, after all my issues were resolved - the phone rang. It was Eircom's Customer Sales line, and they wanted to know whether I was interested in any of Eircom's great new offers, being a loyal customer and all...That poor lady didn't know what was happening to her as I started screaming down the line...

ishmael whale

I had a problem recently with my broadband connection and, indeed, it did take an amount of persistance to get the problem escalated past the usual script-following support staff. That said, all it really took to get escalation was sending a lengthy email to eircom's own customer service area, setting out my problem and the details of the calls and emails I had made to their support staff. After that, I found that I did get a reasonable amount of attention, clear explanations of what had gone wrong and necessary confirmation that the problem was on their side and I would not be charged.

The overall feeling I'm left with is reasonable confidence that they have the expertise and resources to provide a decent service. In fairness to Eircom, a high proportion of the calls their support staff deal with can probably be solved by the usual scripts. The problem for any operation like this must be how to sort out the simple problems from the more complex. I don't know if anyone does this well, and eircom are probably no worse than anyone else.

The OP

I can't even get past their annoying voice recogniton cust service system nowadays - I just hang up and forget about it.

Sponge Bob

just say Agent

Brendan552004

I got an Eircom bill dated 3/2/2006 on the 18/2/2006, I got an overdue letter dated 27/2/2006 on 3/3/2006. I paid the bill 3/3/2006 and posted it off in their little blue envelope. They disconnected the phone 9/3/2006 and re-connected it 10/3/2006. They are charging a re-connection fee. They say it takes them 5/10 days to process payments.

I have been consistently receiving post dated bills over the last 3 years. I received one bill which was dated 19 days before I received it. I took it up with Eircom & Comreg. Eircom said it was an An Post problem. ComReg said they would take it up with Eircom.

I took up a 1 year broadband contract with Eircom 45 euro per month, that was 2 years ago, I told them I now wanted to take up their 29.99 offer. They told me they would have to disconnect me for a month. They then agreed to 35 euro per month, that was last September after numerous calls they are still charging 45 euro per month.

any ideas?

Keep an eye on the issue dates of your Eircom bills.

James Hunt

I asked them to disconnect my broadband last October - 'no problem, I've put the order through, it should take two days'.

This is March....I'm still posting, aren't I?