Eircom changing Name?

ItHurtsWhenIP

I just posted this over on the IoffL forum:
https://twitter.com/adrianweckler/status/638599850746114048

ED E

All the brands or just eircom W/S?

bk

ED E wrote: »

All the brands or just eircom W/S?

Looks like Eircom overall, according to the article on Silicon Republic.

I assume they want to bring the Eircom and Meteor brand together to create a single brand for their quad play products.

That would make a lot of sense going up against a newly launched Virgin Media quad play brand.

joe_99

They have registered a number of names

Eirmobile, Eirbusiness, Eirstore, Eirnetworks, Eircare, Eirwholesale, Eirphonebook, EirTV and Eirbroadband and Openeir.

Openeir has connotations of OpenReach in the UK

irishtimes.com/business/technology/cantillon-rebranding-is-name-of-the-eircom-game-1.2335334

Nollog

joe_99 wrote: »

They have registered a number of names

Eirmobile, Eirbusiness, Eirstore, Eirnetworks, Eircare, Eirwholesale, Eirphonebook, EirTV and Eirbroadband and Openeir.

Openeir has connotations of OpenReach in the UK

irishtimes.com/business/technology/cantillon-rebranding-is-name-of-the-eircom-game-1.2335334

Dropping the com maybe?

bk

Pretty ugly names IMO.

I'd think better to step away from the Eircom name completely, due to the negative connotations many people have with it about the IPO and years of underinvestment.

Nollog

bk wrote: »

Pretty ugly names IMO.

I'd think better to step away from the Eircom name completely, due to the negative connotations many people have with it about the IPO and years of underinvestment.

They should've called it Sen(pronounced like Pen) to counteract the Siro appeal.

Praetorian

They are all horrendous names.

Again this is more expensive re-branding. Eircom have worked really hard to turn around what once was in my opinion a bad name. They've earned a great deal of respect for their brand through investment and new work practices and smart outsourcing. Then they decide to go through the expense of re-branding.

I'd prefer to see that money going into finishing the cabinet roll-out and then onto the FTTH roll-out.

joe_99

Agreed - they really are horrendus. They are dropping the com and then putting a raft of words in it's place. eircom meant something i.e. eire's communcations network. But eirbusiness, eirstore etc just nonsense. They needed to make a clean break.

Openeir is just a complete copy of openreach.

kaizersoze

Eircon

Praetorian

Thinking about it, I reckon it might not be any of those names. But even if the marketing department comes up with the best name ever, I think it's still a mistake.

ongarite

ConEir : Take Your Breath Away

ThisRegard

Keeping the Meteor brand apparently.

byte

ThisRegard wrote: »

Keeping the Meteor brand apparently.

Sure, they could just change it to Mete-eir :pac:

roast

No rebrand is going to cover up todays debacle anyway.

Praetorian

It's like I made today happen after praising them so much. Pretty incredible that Dublin area calls can be taken out by one "major issue". Eircom HQ has hardly burned down

joe_99

Looks like the new name is 'eir'

Pretty dismal attempt at a rebrand

www.irishtimes.com/business/ey-entrepreneur-of-the-year/eircom-registers-eir-as-it-prepares-to-rebrand-1.2335979

swoofer

I have to say this, do you think they are .. erring on the side of caution!!

and this has to be a wind up? Q. Who do you work for? eir( sounds like err)

roast

Praetorian wrote: »

It's like I made today happen after praising them so much. Pretty incredible that Dublin area calls can be taken out by one "major issue". Eircom HQ has hardly burned down

Not just Dublin even!

joe_99

joe_99 wrote: »

Looks like the new name is 'eir'

Pretty dismal attempt at a rebrand

www.irishtimes.com/business/ey-entrepreneur-of-the-year/eircom-registers-eir-as-it-prepares-to-rebrand-1.2335979

Err......yes.

GerardKeating

roast wrote: »

No rebrand is going to cover up todays debacle anyway.

the new brand "Eir" is suitable for today, they dropped most of the "com" today.

Kensington

Praetorian wrote: »

They are all horrendous names.

Again this is more expensive re-branding. Eircom have worked really hard to turn around what once was in my opinion a bad name. They've earned a great deal of respect for their brand through investment and new work practices and smart outsourcing. Then they decide to go through the expense of re-branding.

I'd prefer to see that money going into finishing the cabinet roll-out and then onto the FTTH roll-out.

They have far from turned it around, the Eircom brand is completely toxic.

It ranks bottom of the pile of Irish companies alongside Bank of Ireland, AIB and Irish Water in terms of reputation and well behind all major ISPs in this country.

They're decimated in areas covered by alternative operators such as UPC or Magnet fibre and despite a significant advertising spend and heavy promotion are not making any real headway in winning any of those customers back.

They are even losing their retail customers to the resellers of functionally identical Eircom wholesale product offerings such as Sky, Vodafone, Magnet, Digiweb and Pure Telecom.

Much of it's woes are entirely their own fault. Their customer service has always been (and from personal experience, still is) dreadful. They took advantage of their monopoly position to the serious detriment of the customer. They are consistently the most expensive yet least attractive offering out of a collection of similar competing products. Their base line rental is the most expensive in the world. Quite a lot of their core landline customers will also remember the Telecom Eireann flotation debacle and subsequent share scheme fallout.

The only success and real change they've demonstrated in recent times has been in their wholesale division. Yet this is not part of the Eircom brand as such as all wholesale does is provide the white label POTS, xDSL and interconnectivity to the retail providers - Eircom retail being the "Eircom" that customers see and interact with.

Unless they're prepared to introduce the same sea-change in thinking in retail that they've seen put into wholesale, this whole rebranding will be about as effective as their hefty marketing budget has been at winning back the hundreds of thousands of lost customers...

Praetorian

Kensington wrote: »

They have far from turned it around, the Eircom brand is completely toxic.

It ranks bottom of the pile of Irish companies alongside Bank of Ireland, AIB and Irish Water in terms of reputation and well behind all major ISPs in this country.

They're decimated in areas covered by alternative operators such as UPC or Magnet fibre and despite a significant advertising spend and heavy promotion are not making any real headway in winning any of those customers back.

They are even losing their retail customers to the resellers of functionally identical Eircom wholesale product offerings such as Sky, Vodafone, Magnet, Digiweb and Pure Telecom.

Much of it's woes are entirely their own fault. Their customer service has always been (and from personal experience, still is) dreadful. They took advantage of their monopoly position to the serious detriment of the customer. They are consistently the most expensive yet least attractive offering out of a collection of similar competing products. Their base line rental is the most expensive in the world. Quite a lot of their core landline customers will also remember the Telecom Eireann flotation debacle and subsequent share scheme fallout.

The only success and real change they've demonstrated in recent times has been in their wholesale division. Yet this is not part of the Eircom brand as such as all wholesale does is provide the white label POTS, xDSL and interconnectivity to the retail providers - Eircom retail being the "Eircom" that customers see and interact with.

Unless they're prepared to introduce the same sea-change in thinking in retail that they've seen put into wholesale, this whole rebranding will be about as effective as their hefty marketing budget has been at winning back the hundreds of thousands of lost customers...

If you speak to most customers, they are very happy with the improvements at Eircom. The VDSL rollout has been a revelation for the company. It's been carried out in a professional and efficient manner. The speeds and quality of service that have been delivered are beyond anything they have done before. Customer service in my opinion is good, better than Sky, Vodafone and the disaster that is Magnet. Triple and quad play offerings are convenient for customers.

Incumbent's always lose a lot of customers when they lose their dominant monopolistic positions. The line rental can't be blamed on Eircom. You should be blaming Comreg on that.

They have turned around a bad name and made it better. It's far from perfect. I agree their bundles aren't competitive enough. But when I'm recommending telecoms to companies and people, based on telephone line delivered services, I describe Eircom as the expensive, most reliable option. Sometimes you pay for the quality of service you get.

Nollog

Praetorian wrote: »

If you speak to most customers, they are very happy with the improvements at Eircom. The VDSL rollout has been a revelation for the company. It's been carried out in a professional and efficient manner. The speeds and quality of service that have been delivered are beyond anything they have done before.

Incumbent's always lose a lot of customers when they lose their dominant monopolistic positions. The line rental can't be blamed on Eircom. You should be blaming Comreg on that.

They have turned around a bad name and made it better. It's far from perfect. I agree their bundles aren't competitive enough. But when I'm recommending telecoms to companies and people, based on telephone line delivered services, I describe Eircom as the expensive, most reliable option. Sometimes you pay for the quality of service you get.

That's exactly what she's saying.

eircom wholesale are doing great.
eircom retail are a shower of ****.

No idea what your experience has been with eircom retail's customer service, but my family members have had nothing but trouble.
I've been with eircom only once in my life, for a year as line rental only operator back before we got any kind of fair competition. Had no trouble with them at all, but I never had to call them except to cancel.

Stinicker

Eircom have unveiled their new look

bk

To be honest the Eir brand is terrible and will open them up to lots of silly Eir..... memes.

Bad move if they go ahead with this brand IMO. Hopefully not a sign of Eircom reverting to old ways after their very successful VDSL rollout.

Kensington

Praetorian wrote: »

If you speak to most customers, they are very happy with the improvements at Eircom. The VDSL rollout has been a revelation for the company. It's been carried out in a professional and efficient manner. The speeds and quality of service that have been delivered are beyond anything they have done before. Customer service in my opinion is good, better than Sky, Vodafone and the disaster that is Magnet. Triple and quad play offerings are convenient for customers.

Incumbent's always lose a lot of customers when they lose their dominant monopolistic positions. The line rental can't be blamed on Eircom. You should be blaming Comreg on that.

They have turned around a bad name and made it better. It's far from perfect. I agree their bundles aren't competitive enough. But when I'm recommending telecoms to companies and people, based on telephone line delivered services, I describe Eircom as the expensive, most reliable option. Sometimes you pay for the quality of service you get.

I deal with Eircom a lot from both the residential and business side of things.
Granted when the service works, it's superb.
eFibre is rock solid, fast, low pings and latency.
But you will generally get just as good a service off the resellers - so no kudos as such there.
(Although I have to commend them that Eircom's peering matrix is one of the best in the country and you ONLY get this via Eircom retail)

It's their backend support and administration which are an absolute nightmare to deal with and THIS is where they let themselves down so badly.

If you have a billing error, forget a quick or easy resolution.
They don't proactively follow up on issues.
They do not return phone calls. Ever.
The default response is to blame internal wiring, networks, computers, or just about anything other than admit an issue themselves - despite the fact it can be clearly demonstrated it's an issue on their end.
(Typical example - during their outage earlier this week they were playing down the sheer extent of the numbers affected by it rather than being open and upfront about it)

Their scheduling for installs and appointments is just as bad - albeit this is all done by a third party.

They've gone as far as publicly admitting themselves that they've treated customers dreadfully in a recent interview:
http://businessetc.thejournal.ie/eircom-customer-service-2145168-Jun2015/

So they can rebrand all they want - if they aren't going to change their practice in the retail arm of things it's not going to matter a damn.

bk

Kensington wrote: »

But you will generally get just as good a service off the resellers - so no kudos as such there.

I agree with most of what you say, but I do think Eircom Wholesale do deserve major kudos for rolling out such a high quality, high performing and robust FTTC network in record time.

It is also fantastic to see that they aren't just limiting it to the usual urban areas and are also rolling out to many rural areas.

Finally Eircom wholesale deserve big kudos for becoming so open and transparent, with lots of info available about rollout estimates and product details. Much better then most other ISP's you see in Europe who tend to be very secretive.

Also I wouldn't be so sure that the resellers have any better customer support.

I had an absolute nightmare with getting Vodafone VDSL for my parents. The install went well, but next day their entire phone line died. No dial tone, no broadband. It remained this way for 6 weeks!!!!!!!!

Multiple calls to Vodafone support, but really they couldn't care less and seemed to do almost nothing to fix it!!

Also my sister had a pretty terrible experience with Vodafone. She was on ADSL with them and they actually charged her for going over the cap! This was despite the fact that she was paying more then new customers who got unlimited. Customer support couldn't care less, refused to wave the extra charges and refused to move to the cheaper unlimited package unless she signed up to a new 12 month contract.

Needless to say she told them to feck off and got a great cheap deal in moving to Sky. Idiotic performance by Vodafone, certainly not a way to retain customers. Concerns me about how the new SIRO network will perform.

Sky customer support seems much better. But two things I don't like about them:

1) They only use expensive phone numbers for contacting both their sales and support teams. Feels very cheap of them. Even a standard 021,01 number would allow people to use free calling minutes they might have.

2) They have a weird way of installing VDSL where they use two separate companies. One to do the customer side, the other to do the cab side. With Eircom and Vodafone they guarantee you have working broadband before they leave. With Sky they leave and say your broadband will start working a few hours later. Sounds like a recipe for disaster to me.

So no one is perfect!

Nollog

It's standard practice to sign a new year or more contract for a change in service, also no company should ever switch you do another package without your consent.

efb

compuglobalhypermeganet

Waits for Microsoft takeover bid...

/\/ollog

/\/ollog wrote: »

, also no company should ever switch you do another package without your consent.

They cold call customers to try to sell them new products. All it takes is a 'yes' on the phone to do the deal. I answered the phone at an elderly and confused relatives house recently and found them politely inquiring about how the service was and if they would be better on a different package.. i found it unethical as my relative would be completely led in a conversation like that and has never expressed a wish to upgrade.
I know there is a cooling off period but this has little relevance as it depends on a relative finding the mail etc.

When I get such calls at home I always say that i dont deal on such matters by phone but to send me a letter with their proposals. Needless to say, they never do.

Nollog

Deleted User wrote: »

They cold call customers to try to sell them new products. All it takes is a 'yes' on the phone to do the deal. I answered the phone at an elderly and confused relatives house recently and found them politely inquiring about how the service was and if they would be better on a different package.. i found it unethical as my relative would be completely led in a conversation like that and has never expressed a wish to upgrade.
I know there is a cooling off period but this has little relevance as it depends on a relative finding the mail etc.

When I get such calls at home I always say that i dont deal on such matters by phone but to send me a letter with their proposals. Needless to say, they never do.

It's not really cold call, they generate a list of customers who don't tick the "don't contact me" box and who've been on the same package for a while.
Though maybe that is cold calling depending on your definition/interpretation.

And all those offers are new contracts.
That's why they do it, to lock people into new 12 month contracts. UPC are notorious for it.

You should tell them to put you and your relative on the do not call list.

bk

/\/ollog wrote: »

It's standard practice to sign a new year or more contract for a change in service, also no company should ever switch you do another package without your consent.

To be honest Vodafones actions were highly idiotic.

First of all they had never charged my sister for going over the cap before, in fact, I'm not sure there even was a cap on her broadband when she first signed up, it just seemed to appear after a few years! I'm sure it was "legally" changed, but it seemed highly dubious.

They then started charging here for going over a ridiculously small cap (just 30GB) two months ago, at the same time as new customers were paying €5 less for unlimited!

When my sister challenged them on this and asked them to scrap the cap charge, they refused. And they also refused to change her to the new unlimited product without a new contract.

Needless to say my sister was very upset with them and told them she would leave for Sky so. They shrugged their shoulders and basically told her to feck off.

Needless to say the next day she switched to Sky.

As a result she also cancelled both her and her husbands Vodafone mobile phone contracts 2 weeks later.

Honestly I've never heard of such an incompetent and unprofessional customer service!

For the sake of them being a little flexible, they have driven away an otherwise happy costumer of a number of years for ever and cost their company a great deal of money.

To be honest I was gob-smacked when I heard all of this. Sky and UPC customer service are way better then this. If you called them like this they would normally give you something like half price service for 6 months to keep you happy. Sure you would have to sign up to a new contract, but they would make it worth your while.

Vodafone were expecting her to sign up to a new 12 month contract at full price, no offers, that is idiotic.

If this is what Vodafones customer service is now like, no wonder they are losing their position as the number one network in many markets across Europe.

Niemoj

UPC changing to Virgin and now this?

Both are such stupid names, save money and don't bother renaming either of them!

"If it ain't broke...."

FobleAsNuck

bk wrote: »

To be honest Vodafones actions were highly idiotic.

First of all they had never charged my sister for going over the cap before, in fact, I'm not sure there even was a cap on her broadband when she first signed up, it just seemed to appear after a few years! I'm sure it was "legally" changed, but it seemed highly dubious.

They then started charging here for going over a ridiculously small cap (just 30GB) two months ago, at the same time as new customers were paying €5 less for unlimited!

When my sister challenged them on this and asked them to scrap the cap charge, they refused. And they also refused to change her to the new unlimited product without a new contract.

Needless to say my sister was very upset with them and told them she would leave for Sky so. They shrugged their shoulders and basically told her to feck off.

Needless to say the next day she switched to Sky.

As a result she also cancelled both her and her husbands Vodafone mobile phone contracts 2 weeks later.

Honestly I've never heard of such an incompetent and unprofessional customer service!

For the sake of them being a little flexible, they have driven away an otherwise happy costumer of a number of years for ever and cost their company a great deal of money.

To be honest I was gob-smacked when I heard all of this. Sky and UPC customer service are way better then this. If you called them like this they would normally give you something like half price service for 6 months to keep you happy. Sure you would have to sign up to a new contract, but they would make it worth your while.

Vodafone were expecting her to sign up to a new 12 month contract at full price, no offers, that is idiotic.

If this is what Vodafones customer service is now like, no wonder they are losing their position as the number one network in many markets across Europe.

6 weeks you say? I waited overall like 3 months from the moment they took the order to be fully connected

see my signature for details if you wish.

Nollog

Niemoj wrote: »

UPC changing to Virgin and now this?

Both are such stupid names, save money and don't bother renaming either of them!

"If it ain't broke...."

I can see why UPC would change, in the long run 1 name costs less than 2, the eircom one is just pointless advertising.

degsie

Why do ppl keep referring to 'Eircom' when in fact it's 'eircom'?

bk

degsie wrote: »

Why do ppl keep referring to 'Eircom' when in fact it's 'eircom'?

Because Eircom is a proper noun and as such proper nouns should always be capitalised. Using a lowercase e is just stupid, childish marketing that was trying to be "edgy" 15 years ago!

Nollog

bk wrote: »

Because Eircom is a proper noun and as such proper nouns should always be capitalised. Using a lowercase e is just stupid, childish marketing that was trying to be "edgy" 15 years ago!

Because circles were in then, the "e" is futuristic because of the swoopy-circley look.:pac: