Eircom Phonewatch door-to-door €1500?

altor

Blue_Wolf wrote: »

I had 3 eircom reps at my door at once and they left me with contact details and quoted roughly 250euro which I thought was quite pricey!

what where you paying for ? a live bell outside the house, because thats all you would get off phonewatch for that price :rolleyes:

hellboy99

I had a rep round today looking for me to come back to Eircom, he had a fantastic deal for me so he did, 600 free minutes and 3MB broadband for €65 a month :eek:. I'm with BT, €67 a month for free local and national calls and 7.6MB broadband. Needless to say he couldn't compete with that and walked away :rolleyes:

Blue_Wolf

delllat wrote: »

they are NOT allowed to collect a cash payment

IMO if someone is daft enough to pay cash on their door step they deserve to be stuffed. Reminds me of travellers who call upto peoples doors offering service. " Want your gutters cleaned?" They sit up on your roof, have 3 fags clean a little bit out, 30min later they are looking for 200euro.
This happens on a daily basis. I don't understand people who entertain them.

darc

Blue_Wolf wrote: »

IMO if someone is daft enough to pay cash on their door step they deserve to be stuffed. Reminds me of travellers who call upto peoples doors offering service. " Want your gutters cleaned?" They sit up on your roof, have 3 fags clean a little bit out, 30min later they are looking for 200euro.
This happens on a daily basis. I don't understand people who entertain them.

FEAR

The travellers who do this (and it is travellers before I'm accused of racism) bully & intimidate their victims who are left relatively powerless by current laws.

Arciphel

These guys called to my door tonight in D15, sounds like the same crowd, offered me the system and three years monitoring & maintenance for €1500. he told me this was a substantial saving that they were offering to the first four people in my area to install the system, apparantly the reason is that they hoped that us having the system would entice other people in the area to upgrade :rolleyes: not a great strategy when a lot of the houses in the area are rented out. Anyway, sounds like he was chancing his arm.

condra

The pound in Ashtown give away free alarm systems, they just need to be fed and walked.

smelltheglove

They were out with me during the week in Lucan and thought of this straight away. I told the guy he'd be wasting his time as I just didnt have the money. He left pretty quick, a little bit of nice day etc and then off he went. There were 3 guys in total and they were in my estate for a good 4 or 5 hours ensuring they got someone at every house, there is only around 200 houses in my estate.

lovelyleitrim

these people are sales people working for a marketing firm accordingly "on behalf of eircom". they go around door-to-door ina housing estate (usually) and tell every1 the same bull**** story no matter what shape, size or number of rooms in the house, they will tell you that it sounds like the perfect alarm system that will suit you and your house. their wages are based on commission and they will try every trick in the book to sell it to you.if they call to your door dont entertain them, tell them straight off that your not interested and close the door. to me its a complete scam and is also a complete rip-off. if you want one of these eircom phonewatch alarm systems i recommend you look up their website and give them a ring.

altor

lovelyleitrim wrote: »

these people are sales people working for a marketing firm accordingly "on behalf of eircom". they go around door-to-door ina housing estate (usually) and tell every1 the same bull**** story no matter what shape, size or number of rooms in the house, they will tell you that it sounds like the perfect alarm system that will suit you and your house. their wages are based on commission and they will try every trick in the book to sell it to you.if they call to your door dont entertain them, tell them straight off that your not interested and close the door. to me its a complete scam and is also a complete rip-off. if you want one of these eircom phonewatch alarm systems i recommend you look up their website and give them a ring.

They are from a company called cobra, they are set targets so have to keep there sales up. There have being loads of complaints about them but most people who dont know what they are doing and will just buy the alarm off them as there sales people sell it well, even if half them dont know much about alarms.

Something they dont tell you is the alarm comes with a dummy external bell box which means if down the road you decide to stop having the alarm monitored and your alarm goes off it will only ring in the house, plus they dont say anything about your phone line that will be used to monitor the alarm. On most houses this is easily cut, which means you may as well not have the alarm monitored as a cut phone line will not ring the monitoring station to alert them your house is being broken into.

Bottle

Just had them around this evening and unfortunately had not seen this thread before.

I thought something was up, yer man was seriously pushy and eventually had to ask him to leave.

slowhandrow

We had them today, around the Blackrock/Booterstown area. We got broken into about two years ago now. My dad in in his seventies and is genuinely interested in an phonewatch alarm. My brother has one next door and is very happy with it.
Thinking they were from eircom he invited them in, I was unaware they were in the house until I heard someone asking to see the rooms. They quoted €1399, a little pricy! Then they went on to say that we would need another two sensors and we would have to pay€90 to the installation person on the day.
The salesman was very pushy and said the usuial; this is the last contract and had to be signed today and that all the others had been snapped up bla bla bla.
I asked him if he worked for eircom and he reluctantly told me that he worked for a promotions company. I forget the name. I told him to leave his contact details, he said he couldn't because it would be unfair to the people who already signed the contract (unfair?!?).
My dad would never have signed the contract under pressure but the guy just wouldn't let it go. I unpolitely told him to f**k off.
Im going to get a quote off eircom directly on monday and report them also. It'll be interesting to see the price difference.
It was a mistake letting them in but as i said my dad was genuinely interested in an alarm and was under the impression they were from eircom.
Don't be fooled!

altor

They are very pushy, I would complain to PW about this. It is them who have these people out selling there alarms.

the_syco

jamesbond wrote: »

be careful of the ntl where alarms are concearned,the dialers dont work on ntl lines

You can get Phonewatch with a sim card - no phone line needed.

altor

the_syco wrote: »

You can get Phonewatch with a sim card - no phone line needed.

The down side to getting the GSM installed is it can be easily blocked meaning your alarm wont ring PW if a blocker is being used. The best way to go is either a protected phone line, radio or a dual com GSM.

PW dont use any of these plus dont tell you of the risks involved in just using a GSM.

legalizblack

condra wrote: »

Has anyone else had these guys knocking on your doors?

My father recently dealt with a VERY PUSHY agent, who insisted the following:
- €1500 was "cost price" and a limited promotional offer.
- Eircom were not making any profit on Phonewatch.
- Payment had to be upfront, and the agent could not leave any leaflets, brochures or contact details.

Do these guys work for Eircom or are they marketing company sales guys?

I know you could say "just close the door if you're not interested", but some older people are too polite to do that, and my dad felt like this guy was taking advantage of his politeness. The agent even insisted on calling back the following day, which he did.

The Eircom site itself says the following:


Seems pricey enough, but still nowhere near €1500. Eircom are also appearantly offering a €200 euro discount if you order online.

The various options are a bit confusing, especially when trying to compare Phonewatch with competitors schemes, but this pushy door to door stuff seems like a bad way of doing business to me. Maybe that's naive.

I dont know much about home security though. Is €1500 a decent price? I'm not sure exactly what sort of monitoring options this price included.

Incidentally, my father has actually decided to get rid of Eircom as his telephone landline supplier and switch to NTL. It's something he has been thinking about for a while, but this guy pushed him over the line, and from now on Eircom are in his "bad books".

at the moment I'm a sales rep for eircom phonewatch and what were you explaining here is wrong.It's true that we are not allowed to leave any contact nr. or to come back another day at the same door unless we were sent by eircom because it wouldnt be a promotion anymore.we only sell promotions so that eircom phonewatch can generate more sales by gettin your neighbours to call them and ask for an alarm. Now by doing that you would get the full price and that works out at @ 1200eur when we sell it for 600 (wirefree monitored alarm).what your man was doing there is obviouslly wrong and that's not the way he sould've act so you can contact his marketing company and relate your problem and they would get rid off him

altor

legalizblack wrote: »

at the moment I'm a sales rep for eircom phonewatch and what were you explaining here is wrong.It's true that we are not allowed to leave any contact nr. or to come back another day at the same door unless we were sent by eircom because it wouldnt be a promotion anymore.we only sell promotions so that eircom phonewatch can generate more sales by gettin your neighbours to call them and ask for an alarm. Now by doing that you would get the full price and that works out at @ 1200eur when we sell it for 600 (wirefree monitored alarm).what your man was doing there is obviouslly wrong and that's not the way he sould've act so you can contact his marketing company and relate your problem and they would get rid off him

Can you explain what you sell for 600Euro thats worth 1200Euro ?

Varik

If anyone is pressed in to signing something (like old people) from a door to door sales man if you did not ask them to come you can cancel the order you make with them and they can't do anything to you.

Will_H

My parents who are in their mid 70's had signed up for this last Thursday, unbeknown to me, after a rep spent over 90 mins in the house with them after knocking on their door.

€1,399 up front for a 3 year contract! And that included a €100 discount. Woo Hoo!:rolleyes: They were due to pay by bank draft on Monday but [luckily] the rep hadn't called in to pick up the draft.

Only for I was up in their house yesterday, they would have gone ahead with it. Needless to say, I had them call PW today and cancel. Also, the rep had told them they only had 7 days to cancel after signing the sales order form. :mad:

Who pays for anything upfront, never mind for something 3 YEARS up front!

If you want to go ahead any get PW by all means do so. But to prey, yes, prey, on elderly people is a disgrace. As I said to my own father, would he have invited that rep into his home for an hour and a half if he had said he was from 'John-Jo's Super Duper Alarms'..!?!? I don't think so!

As an addition, whilst I was in their house, eircom PW rang (I had answered the phone) asking if they had the bank draft ready for collection.....

P.S. If there is a John Jo's Super Duper Alarm company out there - sincere apologies. Any similarity to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

altor

Your parents wont be the first and they be the last to have this done to them. The best thing to do is send a letter to there head office and also to the NSAI who certifies them outlining your issues and complaints.

Varik

Will_H wrote: »

Only for I was up in their house yesterday, they would have gone ahead with it. Needless to say, I had them call PW today and cancel. Also, the rep had told them they only had 7 days to cancel after signing the sales order form. :mad:

Like i said if they did not ask the rep to come round in the first place they don't have to go ahead with any order made.

Will_H

Fully appreciate that guys, door-to-door sales has been going on forever, and will continue to do so. I only found this thread after getting them to cancel!

I've personally been in sales & contracts for a long time and it was the "give us your money pronto" and the "you only have 7 days to cancel" which really annoyed me - and I will be following up on it Altor!

Rochester

This is an old thread so apologies but I have just come back from my mother's house where two of these "salesmen" had installed themselves in this elderly person's kitchen. Same old spiel, special offer, once off if you take it because the box on the wall is an advertisement yadda yadda yadda.

When I asked about the "cooling off" period I was told seven days BUT that if I was considering this, he wouldn't make the sale as clearly I wasn't convinced.

Preying on the elderly in the name of Eircom is unacceptable so watch out, I'm coming for you.:mad:

Oh and again no card or contact details due to the nature of the special deal.

altor

Rochester wrote: »

This is an old thread so apologies but I have just come back from my mother's house where two of these "salesmen" had installed themselves in this elderly person's kitchen. Same old spiel, special offer, once off if you take it because the box on the wall is an advertisement yadda yadda yadda.

When I asked about the "cooling off" period I was told seven days BUT that if I was considering this, he wouldn't make the sale as clearly I wasn't convinced.

Preying on the elderly in the name of Eircom is unacceptable so watch out, I'm coming for you.:mad:

Oh and again no card or contact details due to the nature of the special deal.

I had two lads call to my home trying sell me there system. They never noticed my van plus bell box on the house but still tried to sell me one of there special offers. They have no details of the product they are selling plus know nothing about security from what I could get from them. When I put a few questions to them about phone lines being cut, GSM jammers, radio monitoring they had not got a clue and left saying "you know two much"

Why these people, who know nothing about security are allowed try sell security system I dont know but you should complain to P.W about there prying on the elderly. I am sure it wont be the first complaint they have had re this.

KoolKid

Eircom Reps will tell you anything. Generally they have no technical knowledge of the system & no installation experience. I had a guy at my door one night telling me to take out a wired system in a prewired house.
Now this system is A SigNET 220 with web server X10 home automation & 2 forms of monitoring. But this lad wanted to convience me that wireless was better. I didn't need my extra keypads , &, wait for it, GSM was the most secure form of monitoring there is. When a security company is run based on these high pressure selling tequniques you know the customers needs are way down the line.

Finns.d

Just had two Eircom guys call to the house offering a 'great' promotion if we put up an Eircom box on the house, i.e. took the alarm package. They would only do the deal there and then so did'nt suit as I was putting the kids to bed. We had actually got a quote last year for €1.5k and he said that they could do the deal today for half that - now theres promotions and theres over-promising but that sounded too good to be true so I left it. Again, they wouldn't leave name or numbers. Just found the whole experience a bit strange.

KoolKid

Did you ask them the hard questions?
How much extra is a working bell box?
Why is it not standard like most other company's?
Can I use another providers land line, like UPC etc?
If not why not?
Why are Eircom still offering GSM as a reliable form of monitoring?
oh & the big one.....
Can you GSM digis be jammed??? If so why are you selling them?

Procrastastudy

For goodness sakes don't let them know you don't have an alarm - this sounds like someone casing the place for a robbery. The second they cant produce ID shut the door and call the Gardai.

dudara

Closing thread as it's a bit of a zombie.

dudara