For those of you with Eircom Flat Rate, How they screw you over:

mp3guy

OK, heres how eircom screw you over, If you have any of their flat rate deals. Either 25-hour, 60-hour or 180-hour. OK, Eircom say you get 25 hours of free internet access for only €9.99 a month, so far so good. You get to the end of the month and reset your internet timer (If you use one). You get your phone bill, and see that you went over your flat rate allowance by lets say, 6hours and you get charged an extra €5 for this. How could this happen? You reset your timer at midnight the end of the month… now check your phone bill dates: It should say, bill issue/date or from:to. It will probably say from the 10th of Nov to the 13th of Dec for example. EIRCOM DON’T RESET THEIR TIMER FOR YOUR ACCOUNT ON THE 1ST OF EACH MONTH. It’s your bill date. So, the end of the month, you’ve used all your allowance, you reset YOUR timer, then eircom don’t reset theirs until the 7th, 10th or 13th. They then make a week or 2 worth of flat rate over time out of you. And, you can never find out when THEY reset. The date you get billed from and to is also variable, in other words, they wait as late as they can to reset it to make sure they can over charge you… then, your account timer gets completely messed up, and it is IMPOSSIBLE to keep track of it… and there you go. Check your own bill, and past bills, dates vary, a lot.

azezil

Its reset on the billing date and flat rate 25 and 60 can only be use after 6pm and weekends , otherwise normal payg charges apply.

Its in the terms and conditions dear.

ShiverinEskimo

Get broadband..much easier. - Although then you'll probably have difficulty calculating your cap reset date.

mp3guy

i know you can only use it after 6pm and and weekends, but really, what kind of company resets their service on an un-predictable billing date? An honest/non greedy company? My ass...

PRE_10_DER

what about your ass??

mp3guy

nothing, its just a way of saying "yeah right"

tman

and if you cancel it before your next bill arives... you get charged the standard rate for all of your internet calls from the past 2 months.
lovely bunch, arent they.

mp3guy

yeah, when is line rental de-regulation happening?

ShiverinEskimo

Well billing date would be the obvious choice because not everyone signs up for it on the 1st of the month.

mp3guy

you don't get to chose, it's whatever date they print your entire phone bill on

ShiverinEskimo

and you cant get broadband from anywhere no? I used to be on flat rate 25, with a second line and some overflow of hours. i'm only paying on average an extra 10 squids for an always on 512 connection which i have just recently realised is working very well with xbox live. its a wireless account, digiweb.

I am MAN

Hmmm azezil you seem to be sticking up for eircom, they are scammers

tman

I am MAN wrote:

Hmmm azezil you seem to be sticking up for eircom, they are scammers

he works for them

mp3guy

ah, yes, i should have guessed "it's in the terms and conditions"

secret_squirrel

Signing a contract without reading the small print or T's&C's - what fool would do that??

Seriously we all do it even though we should know better.
It only when you come across something like this you realise why.

Caveat Emptor.

I am MAN

Well mp3 guy no law was broken you didnt read the terms and conditions so dont go moaning on a message board about it, you lost out because you didnt look into it

mp3guy

oh, i'm not saying a law was broken, and i'm not moaning either, just letting people who have unusually high phonebills why that may be so.
i'm only 16, so i'm not losing out anyway...

seamus

azezil wrote:

Its reset on the billing date and flat rate 25 and 60 can only be use after 6pm and weekends , otherwise normal payg charges apply.

Its in the terms and conditions dear.

Pretty soon you'll get over it and realise they're scum.

mp3 guy, they're not really making any money out of you. If you reset your internet timer on the 1st of every month, then theoretically you shouldn't be paying any extra. That is, you may think you've done the full 25 hours by the 31st, when according to their billing system, you've only done say 13. This means that you still have 12 hours to use before your next billing date. Not foolproof, but theoretically, it shouldn't make a difference (in practice it would, but only if your usage is unpredictable).

You can predict your next bill date by looking at your last bill. Your line rental is paid in advance, so it'll say "line rental from X to Y". The day after date Y is your next billing day.

Hobbes

ShiverinEskimo wrote:

Get broadband..much easier. - Although then you'll probably have difficulty calculating your cap reset date.

Not sure about the others but with UTV its the end of the month and you can have it automatically lock until it resets so you don't have to pay more. Other then that I have never gotten to my cap.

Canis Lupus

Can I just clarify one thing for myself about flat rate. Are u saying that if u exceed your hours u get charged an extra charge rather than just the ordinary price for the phone call????

Ciaran_Dub

Canis Lupus wrote:

Can I just clarify one thing for myself about flat rate. Are u saying that if u exceed your hours u get charged an extra charge rather than just the ordinary price for the phone call????

No extra charge you just get charged at the amount of an internet call a the time of the day the internet was used.

As for the issue here, your month that consists of 25/60/180 hours starts on your billing date I would have though that was pretty obvious. And I think this has been stated already.

Right a little known fact about myself. I worked for Eircom as a field sales rep and the abuse I got you wouldnt believe but for everyone that has given abuse about Eircom being rip of merchants I got a complaint about one of the many other telecoms companies out there. Esat, Smart, Euphony, Newtel, NTL have all apparently ripped of there customers at some stage and I have heard many of the stories coming directly from customers. Then simple fact is read the T&C's it is as simple as that. If you still dont like accept that fact that companies will always try and rip customers of whether that is buying a sandwhich in a deli or who you get your calls from.

Also wholesale line rental is in. I know you can already get your line rental from Smart or Esat. It has not been widely advertised for some reason but I am sure everyone with blinkers on will probably blame Eircom for that aswell.

Ciaran

PS I am in no way defending Eircom I have heard some horror stories about Eircom and have experienced a couple of situations myself. I only brought this issue up because I first hand experience and it makes me laugh when I hear such animosity towards Eircom

eth0_

mp3guy wrote:

EIRCOM DON’T RESET THEIR TIMER FOR YOUR ACCOUNT ON THE 1ST OF EACH MONTH. It’s your bill date.

What's wrong with that? If your account was activated during the last week of the month and then got reset a week later, you'd be on here p*ssing and moaning, wouldn't you.

Date you get billed on + 30 days = next date your timer will reset.

Also, don't Eircom have a webpage that lets you check your usage?

Ciaran_Dub

eth0_ wrote:

Also, don't Eircom have a webpage that lets you check your usage?

I'll stand corrected but I think that is only for Broadband users.

I am MAN

Yes it is only for broadband users, you need third party software to keep track of it yourself