Meteor gone into Examinership

kn

Meteor went into Examinership along with Eircom this morning. I am just wondering what does that mean for those with prepay credit on their phones and other services? Logically they should be treated as just another category of creditors!

foggy_lad

kn wrote: »

Meteor went into Examinership along with Eircom this morning. I am just wondering what does that mean for those with prepay credit on their phones and other services? Logically they should be treated as just another category of creditors!

It means they have 100days to come up with a recovery plan for their businesses.

Paulw

Examinership is very different from liquidation or such.

Your pre-paid credit is fine, Meteor/Eircom will continue to do business.

Cabaal

Paulw wrote: »

Examinership is very different from liquidation or such.

Your pre-paid credit is fine, Meteor/Eircom will continue to do business.

You won't see Eircom/Meteor suddenly shutting up shop don't worry.

Worse come to worse will be another company buying them for 1euro or something.

BrianD

However the OP is correct if you had a credit balance then you are just "another creditor" owed money and well down the list.

jor el

BrianD wrote: »

However the OP is correct if you had a credit balance then you are just "another creditor" owed money and well down the list.

That would only happen if the company closes. As is, it's likely that both eircom and Meteor will continue as going concerns, even if they are stripped down and sold off.

Agent_99

jor el wrote: »

That would only happen if the company closes. As is, it's likely that both eircom and Meteor will continue as going concerns, even if they are stripped down and sold off.

If another company takes over does that constitute a change in the T&C's for (Meteor) Bill Pay customers still under contract? will we have the option to opt out of the contract if a new company takes over. Just wondering

cookie1977

To be honest no unless the new company specifically changes your plans T&C's

coylemj

Eircom has almost no value without customers so if they tried to wipe out the credit of existing PAYG customers, every one of them would walk to another n/w provider and never go back so that's unlikely to happen.

Their new HQ down by Heuston Station is a rented office block, I don't think they have any assets worth talking about (unless you count the exchanges) so shafting the customers is the last thing they are going to do or else the business will disappear overnight.

jonnny68

Meteor = the worst customer of all time in Ireland, absolutely shocking beyond belief, never ever again:eek:

cookie1977

jonnny68 wrote: »

(insert network of choice depending on who you are)= the worst customer of all time in Ireland, absolutely shocking beyond belief, never ever again:eek:

FYP

daenerysstormborn3

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/eircom-seeking-1000-redundancies-545470.html

<SNIP>Please do not post full text of articles

foggy_lad

good news that it is business as usual because the last thing the country needs is the collapse of the largest phone line provider.

kelle

jonnny68 wrote: »

Meteor = the worst customer of all time in Ireland, absolutely shocking beyond belief, never ever again:eek:

I've been with Meteor for 4 years and I can't fault their customer service whatsoever (I assume you meant "customer service" in your reply )

Sponge Bob

Astoundingly Meteor apparently lost money last year. That may just be funny accounting in eircom.

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0330/breaking4.html

sandin

Its a planned examinership. Every fine detail has already been worked out.
No suppliers nor customers will be affected in anyway.

cookie1977

It's completely planned. Sure some debtors are taking a 90% cut. That's some vote of confidence in the plan:
http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/breaking/2012/0330/breaking4.html

drunkmonkey

sandin wrote: »

Its a planned examinership. Every fine detail has already been worked out.
No suppliers nor customers will be affected in anyway.

That does not mean a Judge will grant it protection through examinership.

cookie1977

I'd have a heart attack on the spot if he didn't.

drunkmonkey

cookie1977 wrote: »

I'd have a heart attack on the spot if he didn't.

There insolvent. Revenues are declining. It's been restructured so many times now by so many owners and each time it just gets more and more in debt.
I think Liquidation is inevitable if some shareholders push for it. The profitable bits will be sold off and the first line lenders will get something back but the rest will be burned.
The judge will try and protect the jobs which may save them today but he could be just putting off the inevitable. 5 years is a long time to look for protection against people you owe money to.

cookie1977

It might be insolvent for debt reasons but it's still got huge assets which have been profitable. Judge may be putting off inevitable but I'd still like to see them try a new plan that has a lot of backing from the debtors this time.

drunkmonkey

It only had backing from the first line lenders I think. The rest are going to be roasted and that's where the problem will be. The judge may not be left with an option if pushed.

jonnny68

kelle wrote: »

I've been with Meteor for 4 years and I can't fault their customer service whatsoever (I assume you meant "customer service" in your reply )

i was with them since their inception and couldn't fault them up to about a year and a half ago, ive no idea what happened some people say a lot of people in meteor lost their jobs but they went from being a good network with helpful customer service to not giving a total f**k,absolutely everything took several phone calls, the log in on their website was broken for months they were fully aware of it and it took them 3+ months to fix something that should have taken hours,and then they claimed they were "experiencing extremely high volume of calls and apologized and said this would be rectified soon" after people complained about being over an hour on hold, this went on and on for months, by that time id left.

Have a look at the history on their facebook page assuming they haven't deleted all the thousands of comments berating Meteor for being the worst customer service ever, don't just take my word for it, search yourself on boards.ie:eek:

cookie1977

Interim Eaxminership granted:
http://www.rte.ie/news/2012/0330/decision-due-over-eircom-interim-examiner.html

lala88

jonnny68 wrote: »

Meteor = the worst customer of all time in Ireland, absolutely shocking beyond belief, never ever again:eek:

Iv been with them for 6/7 years now and any issue i never had was sorted out right away.

If they do go out of business i wonder what all the people who come on hear to complain about them will do?

foggy_lad

lala88 wrote: »

Iv been with them for 6/7 years now and any issue i never had was sorted out right away.

If they do go out of business i wonder what all the people who come on hear to complain about them will do?

their customer care is not good if you ring them but any time I emailed they were quite fast at not just replying with the stock answers but also sorting the issue out when I would copy the whole email conversation to ComReg and request a complaint reference from them!

daenerysstormborn3

foggy_lad wrote: »

their customer care is not good if you ring them but any time I emailed they were quite fast at not just replying with the stock answers but also sorting the issue out when I would copy the whole email conversation to ComReg and request a complaint reference from them!

That is the only way I have ever had any issue resolved with them.

lala88

foggy_lad wrote: »

their customer care is not good if you ring them but any time I emailed they were quite fast at not just replying with the stock answers but also sorting the issue out when I would copy the whole email conversation to ComReg and request a complaint reference from them!

I rang them last week about some with my bill and they had it sorted by the next day just like they said they would.

daenerysstormborn3

lala88 wrote: »

I rang them last week about some with my bill and they had it sorted by the next day just like they said they would.

lucky you, yours is probably one of very few posts I've read on here with a good word to say about them

jonnny68

lala88 wrote: »

Iv been with them for 6/7 years now and any issue i never had was sorted out right away.

If they do go out of business i wonder what all the people who come on hear to complain about them will do?

you have been incredibly lucky then, may i suggest you do a search on this forum and you'll see many threads slating Meteor and on their facebook page (if the comments haven't been removed by the admin) have a look at the history of the posts going back to last year, complaint after complaint day in, day out, i have never seen any company come in for such criticism before and rightfully so too.

If you are with them 7 years surely you must remember last year the fiasco regarding the log in not working on meteor.ie and it took months to fix and thousands of complaints, something as simple as this would take a few hours max to fix yet as far as i recall it took meteor a staggering 3 months before it was resolved.

danjo-xx

Cant understand why they introduced emobile when they all ready had Meteor and the parent in financial difficulties.

lala88

jonnny68 wrote: »

you have been incredibly lucky then, may i suggest you do a search on this forum and you'll see many threads slating Meteor and on their facebook page (if the comments haven't been removed by the admin) have a look at the history of the posts going back to last year, complaint after complaint day in, day out, i have never seen any company come in for such criticism before and rightfully so too.

If you are with them 7 years surely you must remember last year the fiasco regarding the log in not working on meteor.ie and it took months to fix and thousands of complaints, something as simple as this would take a few hours max to fix yet as far as i recall it took meteor a staggering 3 months before it was resolved.

You can really judge from hear though can you? Seeing as the posts hear will make up a very small percentage of there over all number of customers. Now if there was thounds of posts then maybe but only a fear doent give a real picture. Plus if you look alot of the time its the same people posting the same thing over and over.

I did have trouble with there online yes and it did take alonf time to sort but thats really been the only big problem iv had with them

compsys

danjo-xx wrote: »

Cant understand why they introduced emobile when they all ready had Meteor and the parent in financial difficulties.

It was a branding and marketing exercise and not as silly as you might think.

Over 85% of Meteor's customer base is PAYG, which usually isn't anywhere near as as profitable as bill pay. Also, Meteor's customer base is heavily skewed towards teenagers and college students who wouldn't always have a huge amount to spend on phones and credit (hence all the PAYG customers).

eMobile was launched by eircom to target mainly older, slightly richer, bill pay clients. So both brands were going for slightly different areas of the market.

drunkmonkey

compsys wrote: »

It was a branding and marketing exercise and not as silly as you might think.

Over 85% of Meteor's customer base is PAYG, which usually isn't anywhere near as as profitable as bill pay. Also, Meteor's customer base is heavily skewed towards teenagers and college students who wouldn't always have a huge amount to spend on phones and credit (hence all the PAYG customers).

eMobile was launched by eircom to target mainly older, slightly richer, bill pay clients. So both brands were going for slightly different areas of the market.

That still makes no sense, it would be a lot cheaper to do a marketing campaign than launch a whole new network.
Going on your logic there every time a company wants to target a different market segment they would launch a new company.
The real reason it a lot more obvious.

keithclancy

drunkmonkey wrote: »

That still makes no sense, it would be a lot cheaper to do a marketing campaign than launch a whole new network.
Going on your logic there every time a company wants to target a different market segment they would launch a new company.
The real reason it a lot more obvious.

Makes perfect sense tbh.

E.G. The KPN Network in the Netherlands targetted towards business users also has a second brand under the name "Hi" targetting at Students and younger users.

KPN: (All business like)
http://www.kpn.com/prive/mobiel.htm

Hi!: (Younger Kids with trendy phones)
http://www.hi.nl/Home.htm

Same with Meteor: (Smiley faces etc)
http://www.meteor.ie/

eMobile: (More business orientated plans - Unlimited calling etc)
http://www.emobile.ie/

compsys

drunkmonkey wrote: »

That still makes no sense, it would be a lot cheaper to do a marketing campaign than launch a whole new network.
Going on your logic there every time a company wants to target a different market segment they would launch a new company.
The real reason it a lot more obvious.

Do you even know much about marketing and branding? Also, I'm talking about the creation of a new brand and not necessarily the creation of a whole new company. Brand creation makes makes perfect sense sometimes and is done by companies all over the world all the time. You probably just don't realise it half the time.

Do you know that the same company that owns FIAT also owns Ferrari? Two VERY different car brands that target two VERY different sets of customers. Do you honestly think FIAT could try sell FIAT cars to Ferrari customers just by doing 'a marketing campaign' and nothing more? I doubt it. SKODA and Audi are also owned by the same company and even have the same engines! However, they're two very different brands to target very different sets of customers.

Do you know that Bershka and Pull & Bear are owned by the same clothing company (Inditex) which owns Massimo Dutti? One sells cheap clothes to teenagers and the other sells more expensive clothes to people in their mid-30s onwards. Why do you think Indidex created a new brand and channel distribution for themselves when they wanted to target older customers?

Also, the skincare firm Nivea and La Prairie are also owned by the same company, Beiersdorf AG. A tub of Nivea moisturiser will set you back around €5. A tub of La Prairie 'skin cavier' will set you back around €350 (no kidding). Again, different brands, same company, all going after a different segment of the market.

I know many people who wouldn't go near Meteor because of its bad customer service and the fact that it's a brand mainly associated with kids and teenagers. Meteor themselves openly admit that that's the target market for their company and they've been very good at capturing it.

If you look at any of Meteor's adverts they're heavily aimed towards teenagers and young college students. So too is their website. Do you think many 50-year-old high-spending professional adults are going to sign up to Meteor on the back of that advertising?

Meteor/eircom wanted to tap into an older client base so decided to create a new brand to do this. All you have to do is look at the ads for eMobile to see how different they are to Meteor's. Also, Meteor didn't have to create a whole new network for emobile. They're the same network. They're just different brands so it's not as expensive an exercise as you'd think.

Often when a company wants to attract new customers they'll simply create a new marketing campaign to target those new customers (as you suggest). But when a particular company has become so associated with a particular segment of the market that sometimes doesn't work and that's when a company will create a new brand instead.

JDxtra

This explains it perfectly:

Zab

drunkmonkey wrote: »

That still makes no sense, it would be a lot cheaper to do a marketing campaign than launch a whole new network.
Going on your logic there every time a company wants to target a different market segment they would launch a new company.
The real reason it a lot more obvious.

They use Meteor's network, it's not like they had to invest in a load of mobile infrastructure. Plenty of companies try to disassociate their brands in this manner so that they have more appeal to different segments.

Sponge Bob

I thought eMobile was a very good example of a successful branding exercise myself.

Talk about putting lipstick on a pig, what.!

thebiglad

Does this mean people can break 2 year contracts they have with Meteor??

Zab

thebiglad wrote: »

Does this mean people can break 2 year contracts they have with Meteor??

No

pleasereadme

It would be sorry to see eircom go,It's not nice when a company closes and people are out of jobs ,But I would be glan to see Meteor customer care team out of a job .Meteor has the worst customer care team I have evey come across. It would make me smile..So sorry I every became a Meteor customer .So Glad when contract is up.

daenerysstormborn3

http://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/eircom-to-exit-examinership-next-month-552492.html

Eircom is to exit examinership next month, after the Commercial Court approved a survival scheme for the troubled telecoms provider.

The court has accepted the examiner's recommendations for a five-year restructuring plan that provides for capital investment of €1.5bn in the telecoms business.

Eircom has around one million fixed line customers, is considered of strategic importance for Ireland's telecommunications and it owns the country's third largest mobile operator Meteor.

The plan will see 1,000 voluntary redundancies from a workforce of 6,000 as well as a significant write-down in debt with senior secured creditors taking cuts of between 15 and 90%.

Mr Justice Peter Kelly said he was satisfied that the scheme was for the overall benefit of creditors, the company, and the company's employees.

He also commended the examiner for concluding the largest examinership in the history of the state
well within the 100 days limit laid down by statute.

Eircom will exit court protection on June 11.

Zab

Does that mean they already have the 1000 voluntary redundancies agreed to?