Charge in lieu of one months notice to cease service

CASEsensitive

I recently switched provider and on my last eircom bill I was charged €20.65 in lieu of one months notice to cease service. As I was out of contract with eircom I am having trouble tracking down why this charge was taken as it is not in the T&Cs supplied by eircom when we signed up at the end of Oct. 2011. I see in another thread that this charge was introduced at the end of 2011, a representative (Mark) said notifications were placed in customer bills and national newspapers. I have my bills from that time and I can't find any notice of the change. Was the notice included in the did you know? box at the side of the bill or was it on a separate document and do you have a copy of this notification from that time. 

I have complained to Comreg and they are already investigating the issue. The question that puzzles me is how I can be charged for giving insufficient notice to move provider when I do not have a contract with eircom, can you enlighten me as to the thought process behind this.

eircom: Mark

CASEsensitive wrote: »

I recently switched provider and on my last eircom bill I was charged €20.65 in lieu of one months notice to cease service. As I was out of contract with eircom I am having trouble tracking down why this charge was taken as it is not in the T&Cs supplied by eircom when we signed up at the end of Oct. 2011. I see in another thread that this charge was introduced at the end of 2011, a representative (Mark) said notifications were placed in customer bills and national newspapers. I have my bills from that time and I can't find any notice of the change. Was the notice included in the did you know? box at the side of the bill or was it on a separate document and do you have a copy of this notification from that time. 

I have complained to Comreg and they are already investigating the issue. The question that puzzles me is how I can be charged for giving insufficient notice to move provider when I do not have a contract with eircom, can you enlighten me as to the thought process behind this.

Hi CASEsensitive

The 30 day written notification is common practice with a number or telecommunication and utility companies. As advised the process is in place since 2011. I appreciate it is a bit of a surprise for customers to receive the possible fees on the final bill.

However we always ask customers to speak to or save team on a free phone number (which just takes a few minutes)  or with us online to check verify any possible contract fees or notification charges.

The customer care team will look into your issue directly if you have logged a case with the regulator and a manager will get back to you.

Mark 

CASEsensitive

eircom: Mark wrote: »

CASEsensitive wrote: »

I recently switched provider and on my last eircom bill I was charged €20.65 in lieu of one months notice to cease service. As I was out of contract with eircom I am having trouble tracking down why this charge was taken as it is not in the T&Cs supplied by eircom when we signed up at the end of Oct. 2011. I see in another thread that this charge was introduced at the end of 2011, a representative (Mark) said notifications were placed in customer bills and national newspapers. I have my bills from that time and I can't find any notice of the change. Was the notice included in the did you know? box at the side of the bill or was it on a separate document and do you have a copy of this notification from that time. 

I have complained to Comreg and they are already investigating the issue. The question that puzzles me is how I can be charged for giving insufficient notice to move provider when I do not have a contract with eircom, can you enlighten me as to the thought process behind this.

Hi CASEsensitive

The 30 day written notification is common practice with a number or telecommunication and utility companies. As advised the process is in place since 2011. I appreciate it is a bit of a surprise for customers to receive the possible fees on the final bill.

However we always ask customers to speak to or save team on a free phone number (which just takes a few minutes)  or with us online to check verify any possible contract fees or notification charges.

The customer care team will look into your issue directly if you have logged a case with the regulator and a manager will get back to you.

Mark 

Hi Mark,

I did speak to the save team, actually they phoned me to ask me to sign up to another 12 month contract and I said no as I was thinking of switching providers, they couldn't match the other providers offer and didn't say anything about a charge to switch providers. I even rang them back after I switched to see if they could offer me a deal as a returning customer and they couldn't even match the offer that they had made to me the previous week.

Whether or not it's common practice or not is immaterial really, I was just looking for when and how the change was communicated to me as I said I can find no details on any of the bills I have and my T&Cs are from the end of Oct 2011.

When I phoned eircom last week after receiving the charge, I and was put through to seven different people before I got to complaints. The guy I was talking to said he would look into and raise it with his supervisor and get back to me, however I've heard nothing back since. 

Herr Khume Schuccs

Hi CASEsensitive,
I had the same problem, an Eircom rep told me customers had been notified by inserts in bills in Feb 2010, I only signed up to Eircom in Aug 2010 and the T&C's I got at that time did not mention the 30 days notice (I still have the original). Eircom will probably also argue that the T&C's were on their website and that is sufficient, however this is not enough. The askcomreg site may be of use http://www.askcomreg.ie/home/faqs.asp .
Best of luck,
Herr Khume Schuccs

eircom: Mark

CASEsensitive wrote: »

eircom: Mark wrote: »

CASEsensitive wrote: »

I recently switched provider and on my last eircom bill I was charged €20.65 in lieu of one months notice to cease service. As I was out of contract with eircom I am having trouble tracking down why this charge was taken as it is not in the T&Cs supplied by eircom when we signed up at the end of Oct. 2011. I see in another thread that this charge was introduced at the end of 2011, a representative (Mark) said notifications were placed in customer bills and national newspapers. I have my bills from that time and I can't find any notice of the change. Was the notice included in the did you know? box at the side of the bill or was it on a separate document and do you have a copy of this notification from that time. 

I have complained to Comreg and they are already investigating the issue. The question that puzzles me is how I can be charged for giving insufficient notice to move provider when I do not have a contract with eircom, can you enlighten me as to the thought process behind this.

Hi CASEsensitive

The 30 day written notification is common practice with a number or telecommunication and utility companies. As advised the process is in place since 2011. I appreciate it is a bit of a surprise for customers to receive the possible fees on the final bill.

However we always ask customers to speak to or save team on a free phone number (which just takes a few minutes)  or with us online to check verify any possible contract fees or notification charges.

The customer care team will look into your issue directly if you have logged a case with the regulator and a manager will get back to you.

Mark 

Hi Mark,

I did speak to the save team, actually they phoned me to ask me to sign up to another 12 month contract and I said no as I was thinking of switching providers, they couldn't match the other providers offer and didn't say anything about a charge to switch providers. I even rang them back after I switched to see if they could offer me a deal as a returning customer and they couldn't even match the offer that they had made to me the previous week.

Whether or not it's common practice or not is immaterial really, I was just looking for when and how the change was communicated to me as I said I can find no details on any of the bills I have and my T&Cs are from the end of Oct 2011.

When I phoned eircom last week after receiving the charge, I  and was put through to seven different people before I got to complaints. The guy I was talking to said he would look into and raise it with his supervisor and get back to me, however I've heard nothing back since. 

Hi CASEsensitive

If you would like to PM me with your account number I can check the status of the complaint with the eircom customer care / complaints team.

Thanks, Mark

CASEsensitive

Hi Mark, I've sent you a PM with my account number, if you could let me know what happened with the compliant that would be great as the guy said he'd ring me back.

Herr Khume Schuccs, I have the eircom T&Cs from when I signed up in late October 2011 and it doesn't mention any charge or the fact that you have to give 30 days notice to change provider. From doing a search, I found this eircom response to a Comreg survey from 2007 on Number Portability in the Fixed and Mobile Sectors (http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/comreg0798a.pdf), it seems logical but obviously they didn't hold this view for very long.

Q. 9. Do you agree with ComReg’s proposal that that there should be no direct charge to retail subscribers for NP? Please state the reasons for your response.
eircom agrees that the losing operator cannot charge the migrating customer as this would restrict competition. In any case the porting charges levied on the gaining operator should recover all the efficiently incurred costs of the losing operator. Whether the gaining operator chooses to recover the transaction charge from a separate retail charge is a matter of retail price policy. If they do not implement a separate charge they will
simply treat the transaction charge paid to the losing operator as a cost-of-sale to be recovered from other service revenues.

eircom: Mark

CASEsensitive wrote: »

Hi Mark, I've sent you a PM with my account number, if you could let me know what happened with the compliant that would be great as the guy said he'd ring me back.

Herr Khume Schuccs, I have the eircom T&Cs from when I signed up in late October 2011 and it doesn't mention any charge or the fact that you have to give 30 days notice to change provider. From doing a search, I found this eircom response to a Comreg survey from 2007 on Number Portability in the Fixed and Mobile Sectors (http://www.comreg.ie/_fileupload/publications/comreg0798a.pdf), it seems logical but obviously they didn't hold this view for very long.

Q. 9. Do you agree with ComReg’s proposal that that there should be no direct charge to retail subscribers for NP? Please state the reasons for your response.
eircom agrees that the losing operator cannot charge the migrating customer as this would restrict competition. In any case the porting charges levied on the gaining operator should recover all the efficiently incurred costs of the losing operator. Whether the gaining operator chooses to recover the transaction charge from a separate retail charge is a matter of retail price policy. If they do not implement a separate charge they will
simply treat the transaction charge paid to the losing operator as a cost-of-sale to be recovered from other service revenues.

HI CASEsensitive

I got your PM thanks, I will get back to you as soon as I can.

Mark