Eir Account Number Change

Damien85

Hi,

Unsure if this is the right subforum.

In order to avail of better broadband with Eir we are required to get a line upgrade. We would then be able to avail of better priced boadband and phone packages.

However this requires us to change our account number.

I'm just covering all my bases here by asking, if there is any potential downside to having our account number changed and being new customers as opposed to maintaining our exsiting (15+ years account number)?

Regards,

endofrainbow

same thing happened to me 6 months ago. You won't be new customers, you will just be transferred to the current billing system (that some of the older accounts are not compatible with).

They will send you a final bill on the old account number before giving you a new account number.

Damien85

thanks for the reply,

so in essence it's not a bad thing and there's no catch involved?

endofrainbow

none that I can see. Just be sure that if you pay by direct debit, you set up a dd in your new account number and close the old one.

Damien85

thanks.

ED E

Just to confirm the above is correct, they're moving you onto their new single billing platform. Other than a habit of sending texts in error it appears to be fine.

Age of your account is of no benefit with Eir, they dont have a loyalty rewards program for broadband.

GreenFolder2

It seems to just be a case that they are upgrading their billing / accounting systems to allow for realtime financial information processing.

A lot of older billing software would have been designed around the needs of 1980s telephone networks, where you only needed to deal with things on a batch processing basis. Exchanges and other systems would have typically automatically sent billing information to a central computer every so many days and the information available didn't need to be in 'real time'. Everything was just processed for a monthly / bimonthly paper bill.

I would assume Eir wants to be able to offer interactive television, more pay-per-view and more online service and more advanced billing systems for dealing with things like mobile payment for Meteor at some stage in the future.

Their networks are also becoming far more advanced and IP-based, so those old legacy systems will be getting phased out.

Having everything on a single platform would make a hell of a lot of sense for a big telco.

Similar stuff is being upgraded in most utilities and also at the banks. Batch processing still goes on in a lot of those old systems which is why you don't get up-to-date information about your bills or accounts a lot of the time.

Gleisweiler

I ordered a Broadband/Phone bundle this afternoon, added another name to the account. When I asked if I would get a new account number, I was told it was not necessary and I would keep the old one that I've had for 8 years. The chap I spoke to was efficient and knew what he was talking about. I expect to get the upgrade sometime within the next 7 working days.