Not Acceptable

Doweallsee

How is this allowed?

Moved into a new apartment at the start of September as I was going to college. Before this I enjoyed almost 2 years of splendid UPC broadband, So you will have to forgive me if I seem to used to speedy and effective customer service. Realizing the inevitably of moving out to the stix, I only had 2 options for Broadband (Which I need for college work) Sky and Eircom.

Knowing Eircom's awful track record with broadband speed, customer service and pretty much everything else (My girlfriend has Eircom, she's gone weeks without service with little to no followup by Eircom) I took the obvious choice of going with Sky.

Of course, Eircom being Eircom, I couldn't sign up for sky because Eircom had to re-activate the line going into my new apartment. After trying for a day or so trying to work around this, I submitted to signing up for Eircom just before the beginning of September. I politely asked for a speedy installation because I had college beginning in less than a week, I was told it would take 10 working days, Whatever, No biggie, right? Nope.

Queue to almost a month later and the installation is finally complete. A Month. Not only this, It took almost another week for the modem to arrive (today). I was pretty naive to think it'd stop there though, wasn't I?

So I plug in the modem, what happens? Sweet nothing, that's what happens. It's like the installed phone line is dead, no flashing DSL light, just... dead. So, I ring Eircom Tech support to be greeted by a gentlemen who in my opinion, was not satisfactory in helping me in any shape or form. I was on the phone to him for over 20 minutes and all I was told was to reset the modem, and he rechecked my order, but whatever, he's just doing his job. After 20 minutes or so, I am informed by him that an engineer will be out in X amount of working days (Can't remember at this time) and to sit tight.

So, let me get all of this right;

• I was forced into an Eircom contract I didn't want
• I then had to wait a month for the installation
• I then had to wait another week for the modem to arrive via post
• I now have to wait possibly another week for an engineer to check a freshly installed line

I would be dead in the water in relation to college work if I wasn't piggy backing on my neighbors connection (with permission)

This is not acceptable, And I truly do want to leave my contract, Do I have the basis to do so? If not, can somebody point me the direction of the applicable regulatory body for complaints?

Engine No.9

Short answer.... Yes

There are a few hoops to jump through first though. You need to inform eircom that you're not happy with their service and fi en the problems they must release you from your contract. Basically, you'll need to ring them every day until they agree, however, that doesn't preclude you from moving to, say, Vodafone. You will have your landline number from eircom which is all you need to move anyway.

Doweallsee

pajopearl wrote: »

Short answer.... Yes

There are a few hoops to jump through first though. You need to inform eircom that you're not happy with their service and fi en the problems they must release you from your contract. Basically, you'll need to ring them every day until they agree, however, that doesn't preclude you from moving to, say, Vodafone. You will have your landline number from eircom which is all you need to move anyway.

That's great. I'm assuming though that trying to leave the contract under terms that the service isn't good enough (or even existent) is like getting blood from a stone?

Engine No.9

I'm not sure which legislation covers it but I'd imagine there's a provision for it in the Sale of Goods and Supply of Services Act.

SpaceTime

There's absolutely no reason Sky wouldn't activate the line for you. They keep referring customers to eircom for no reason.

Eircom is effectively split in two. Eircom Retail and Eircom Wholesale


Sky and every other phone company / ISP using eircom lines can activate the services themselves. 

There is some confusion at the Sky call centre. The whole point of the system and the division between eircom retail and wholesale is so that there is an equal playing field.

I have had lines activated by companies other than eircom. There is no reason to call them to activate the line.

This is a Sky rather than eircom issue. 

Doweallsee

I should probably clarify:
Sky did tell me they could activate the line, however the problem was the apartment in question never had a line installed before, so it physically required eircom engineers to install the line.

SpaceTime

They can also do that.
They've opted not to and don't want your businesses.

I've had lines installed by Vodafone with no issue or reference to eircom. All they needed was your address.

It's sky you should be annoyed with not eircom. They can order a new line or activate an existing one like every other operator can. They've no reason to refer you to eircom retail which is purely a retail arm of eircom that sells services to end users.

The days of having to order lines yourself are long gone. You just pick your provider and they should be capable of sorting it all out and most are!

Engine No.9

SpaceTime wrote: »

They can also do that.
They've opted not to and don't want your businesses.

I've had lines installed by Vodafone with no issue or reference to eircom. All they needed was your address.

It's sky you should be annoyed with not eircom.

Ah come on. Even if sky had rejected his business, eircom are still at fault here. They're not providing a service which is the cornerstone of their business!!!

SpaceTime

Well, yeah the delays are quite long and unacceptable but the whole Sky thing's nothing to do with them.

Doweallsee

SpaceTime wrote: »

They can also do that.
They've opted not to and don't want your businesses.

I've had lines installed by Vodafone with no issue or reference to eircom. All they needed was your address.

It's sky you should be annoyed with not eircom. They can order a new line or activate an existing one like every other operator can. They've no reason to refer you to eircom retail which is purely a retail arm of eircom that sells services to end users.

The days of having to order lines yourself are long gone. You just pick your provider and they should be capable of sorting it all out and most are!

Oh man, That's a good one.
I should be annoyed by the company who (might I add, has given me great service in relation to my television for the past 5 years) didn't save me from the other company who caused me all the annoyance to begin with?
I should also add, Sky did in fact tell me this was a possibility but when I got on to Eircom I was told "Eircom aren't going to reconnect lines and then give them away to Sky"
The problem was in that Sky couldn't find the apartment address on their system because there wasn't an active line, So for Sky to be able to find the house and apartment number, Eircom needed to activate the line, however, as we all know, Eircom seem to enjoy trapping people into 12 month contracts

SpaceTime

That's actually not how it works at all.

Eircom is split into two units : Eircom Retail which sells services to end users and Eircom Wholesale that provides lines and services to other operators (including Eircom Retail)
They're obliged to offer the exact same services to other providers like Sky as they are offering to their own retail unit.

Each company accesses eircom Wholesale via a set of APIs that allow their sales systems to plug into it and request services, new lines, broadband etc etc and order / organise repairs.

If Sky wanted to provide you with a new line, they could order it up. There's absolutely no reason whatsoever for you to contact eircom's retail division.

For whatever reason, Sky simply do not want your business for broadband because there's no active line. I can only guess that's either because of some kind of processing issue at their call centres or because they are unwilling to absorb or charge-out the fee associated with activating a brand new line.

I've had zero issues doing this with other ISPs, yet there are loads of posts on Sky not taking orders for new lines. So, it's most definitely a Sky issue not an eircom one.

I've ordered lines from other phone cos / ISPs without going near eircom retail.

ComReg lays out very clear rules on this and all the information is fully publicly available.

The delay in your eircom order though is crazy. They're being very slow and I agree 100% that's not really very good service.

However, the Sky issue is totally unrelated and they basically just turned you down for business for their own reasons. I have no idea what they might be but if they wanted to they could order you a line without any issue.

All they need is your postal address and to key that into the ordering system. There's no reason for the to be an active line there already. Every phone co using the eircom access network can order new lines if they want to. They're clearly only taking orders for people who already have lines installed. That's their own business policy and up to them.

I'm not defending eircom's slow response in your line installation though.

eircom: Alan

Doweallsee wrote: »

How is this allowed?

Moved into a new apartment at the start of September as I was going to college. Before this I enjoyed almost 2 years of splendid UPC broadband, So you will have to forgive me if I seem to used to speedy and effective customer service. Realizing the inevitably of moving out to the stix, I only had 2 options for Broadband (Which I need for college work) Sky and Eircom.

Knowing Eircom's awful track record with broadband speed, customer service and pretty much everything else (My girlfriend has Eircom, she's gone weeks without service with little to no followup by Eircom) I took the obvious choice of going with Sky.

Of course, Eircom being Eircom, I couldn't sign up for sky because Eircom had to re-activate the line going into my new apartment. After trying for a day or so trying to work around this, I submitted to signing up for Eircom just before the beginning of September. I politely asked for a speedy installation because I had college beginning in less than a week, I was told it would take 10 working days, Whatever, No biggie, right? Nope.

Queue to almost a month later and the installation is finally complete. A Month. Not only this, It took almost another week for the modem to arrive (today). I was pretty naive to think it'd stop there though, wasn't I?

So I plug in the modem, what happens? Sweet nothing, that's what happens. It's like the installed phone line is dead, no flashing DSL light, just... dead. So, I ring Eircom Tech support to be greeted by a gentlemen who in my opinion, was not satisfactory in helping me in any shape or form. I was on the phone to him for over 20 minutes and all I was told was to reset the modem, and he rechecked my order, but whatever, he's just doing his job. After 20 minutes or so, I am informed by him that an engineer will be out in X amount of working days (Can't remember at this time) and to sit tight.

So, let me get all of this right;

• I was forced into an Eircom contract I didn't want
• I then had to wait a month for the installation
• I then had to wait another week for the modem to arrive via post
• I now have to wait possibly another week for an engineer to check a freshly installed line
  
  

[*]


I would be dead in the water in relation to college work if I wasn't piggy backing on my neighbors connection (with permission)

This is not acceptable, And I truly do want to leave my contract, Do I have the basis to do so? If not, can somebody point me the direction of the applicable regulatory body for complaints?

[*]
Hi Doweallsee

If you would like to PM me your account details I'll look into this for you.

Thanks

Al

da_hambo

I have got eircom sockets in my house but never activated. I am finally getting fixed line broadband and nearly signed up yesterday for the eircom 40 deal until I realised it goes up to 50 after six months. I am now going to give sky a ring but if they start sending me through the above hoops i might as well go with eircom.sky is 40 eur unlimited compared to eircoms 50 but eircom have free installation etc.

eircom: Mark

da_hambo wrote: »

I have got eircom sockets in my house but never activated. I am finally getting fixed line broadband and nearly signed up yesterday for the eircom 40 deal until I realised it goes up to 50 after six months. I am now going to give sky a ring but if they start sending me through the above hoops i might as well go with eircom.sky is 40 eur unlimited compared to eircoms 50 but eircom have free installation etc.

Hi da_hambo

If you need me to check on the order or clarify anything feel free to PM me with your order number name and address.

Thanks, Mark

da_hambo

Confirmed. Sky cant activate my line cos its never been connected. They can reactivate only if it has been connected before.

Will prob go with eircom considering my estate is getting fibre optic in two days!

Thanks Mark Ive been dealing with a Jennifer in Wexford store.

eircom: Mark

da_hambo wrote: »

Confirmed. Sky cant activate my line cos its never been connected. They can reactivate only if it has been connected before.

Will prob go with eircom considering my estate is getting fibre optic in two days!

Thanks Mark Ive been dealing with a Jennifer in Wexford store.

No problem da_hambo

Thanks for getting back to me.

Mark

BaldyRua

I decided to change to Sky as Eircom were slow and costing a fortune, sky unlimited with talk and tv will reduce my bill by around 40 euro a month.
 
Ordered Sky on the 9th got the hub around 5 days later with an activation date of the 24th, this date came and plugged in the hub.... nothing.....rang sky was told it would definitely be the 29th..... again nothing, got on to sky who are trying to sort it out saying its an issue with a third party??? what the hell! I'm totally annoyed and sick trying to get sky to sort it, 3 weeks after I order and still no service.

Still have Eircom service so I'm caught , do I try and cancel sky and risk eircom again?