Biddy Bites Back

Sponge Bob

Having managed to get herself promoted way beyond her station and having pocketed a large whack of redundancy in recent years and also pocketed her payout from the employee share option it seems that Biddy has a new strategy for bleeding the Irish public (indirectly) of its money .

Biddy has decided she is going deaf , a la our soldiery.

From The Business Post

Eircom is facing the prospect of mass litigation by former telephone operators who claim their hearing was damaged after years of working for the company.

The company confirmed that it was defending litigation in at least one case. Sources said large-scale litigation by current and former employees of Eircom was probable.

Great

Our man in Havana

Roffle

Sponge Bob

Of course the BIG problem is that Eircom is Self Insured for this kind of legal action and there are 1000's and 1000's of Biddies out there.

Con Scanlon of the CWU is in a pickle here . The CWU has tried to hold back these cases so that they could offload the ESOT shares at a good price.

Con knew something of the scale of the claims pipeline , naturally I trust he fully informed the Board of which he is Vice Chairman of these claim liabilities for which they should provision in their annual accounts .

The floodgates will open this year once some compo freak lawyers start to prepare and submit these claims on a large scale. Liabilities for Biddy and her medical problems in the years 2006 to 2009 are estimated in some quarters at about €30m a year, thats 2% of Turnover each year .

Eirocm will try to increase Line rentals and the state pays over 20% of that already so

1. We the customers will suffer ....we already pay the highest line rental in the known universe.
2. We the taxpayers will suffer.
3. We the taxpaying customers will suffer twice over.
4. We the taxpayers will also have to pay to have rude boorish and deaf biddies clogging up our hospitals

Sheeessshh , will we ever be rid of Biddy in our lifetimes

jesus_thats_gre

Used to work in one of their call centres myself.. *rubs my hands in gless*

damien

How could they go deaf if they never listened?

Our man in Havana

A male biddy, will wonders ever cease?

jesus_thats_gre

Male biddy with logic.. ohhh ahhh

scojones

damien.m wrote:

How could they go deaf if they never listened?

Quote of the week! LMFAO

dahamsta

C'mon lads, drop the cynicism. It should be obvious to anyone that's every dealt with a Biddy that their hearing issues were caused by sticking cotton buds in their ears for lack of anything better to do while they were pretending to do line tests.

"Nah, that line's workin' perfectly. Must be your wiring."

adam

jor el

dahamsta wrote:

"Nah, that line's workin' perfectly. Must be your wiring."

Don't you mean
"Nah, dat loin's workin' purfectly. Mus be yer woirin'. Wha!"

On a serious note though this does probably spell disaster for customers who are already being fleeced by Eircom since they'll most likely want to increase prices to pay for all this. Hopefully Comreg will not bow (further) to Eircom and allow them to increase line rental once again :mad:

Sponge Bob

According to todays Star some compo lawyer already has 600 biddies lined up to submit their cases any day now for th'oul compo . I'm sure that some other compo lawyers will get on the gravy train PDQ , Acoustic Shock indeedy.

rymus

I dont think comreg bows to eircom anymore, they simply bend over.

Solair

Hmmm, it seems kind of unlikely that they'll be able to win such a case. Unlike the soildiers, they had equipment that was specifically designed for safe use and shouldn't damage your hearing.


If they're from the P&T days, I wonder if eircom's even responsible anymore? P&T was a government department, not a company.

What's next, DJs, RTE Radio and TV presenters, people who have had to listen to speeches in the dail and suffered from chronic bouts of bordom resulting in deep vein trombosis!

juliuspret

I blame the scumbag, ambulance chaseing & money grabbing solicitors who have watched too many US TV shows about litigation!!!

The Army took actions against any further claims with the now high leverl of hearing required for entry and the constant use of earplugs/peltors for the firing range.

Mabye employees who served in the 80's and further back could have got hearing problems...but those who were involved since the 90's dont have a leg to stand on!

Solair

Pre 1980s it was caused by "ear strain" as, according to anyone I've ever spoken to who's used a phone during that period, you needed to listen REALLY hard to actually hear the caller at all.

I must say that they have some of the rudest operators you'll find anywhere on the planet too though.

"yes caller?... I can't do dat from here. Dial 1901 (click & busy tone)"

Sponge Bob

and because they were trained to be rude people ended up shouting at them and because people shouted at them...wellllllllllllllll

be a fun court case so it will

dahamsta

We should all go along with a phone each, and slam them down at regular intervals throughout the proceedings. See how those bitches like it.

"Nah, yer ears are working fine, must be an internal wiring issue."

adam

Sponge Bob

must get me a Pokia , blasht from the pasht wha ??

BrianD

Well it won't just be confined to Eircom and you can expect litigation from any ex-call centre worker. They call it acoustic shock caused by poor quality headsets and made worse in "call out" centres where random numbers are dialed and there is a high probability that fax machines will be dialed.

Eircom may be the unlucky target here but it is bad news for everybody in business.

juliuspret

Well if eircom do get stung by greedy solicitors we all know who will win(solicitors) and loose(customers) in the long term!!!

the_syco

jesus_thats_gre wrote:

Used to work in one of their call centres myself.. *rubs my hands in gless*

How long must we have worked there?:rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Solair

Personally, I think these kinds of cases are ridiculous. Fair enough if someone has a genuine problem as a result of working with asbestos or down a coalmine where their employers really didn't care if they went deaf/dropped dead or whatever.

The soildiers may have some genuine claims, although there was a LOT of jumping on the bandwaggon for the sake of compo.

I don't think that it's possible that operators were exposed to sounds that were THAT loud. It's only a phone conversation and I seriously doubt the Telecom Eireann / P&T headsets were that bad, they wern't a company that skimped on things that their workers required. Customers could go take a long walk off a short plank however. Biddie and Eileen down in the operator centre were well looked after. (Don't forget the unions ran the place for decades!)

You can also be damn sure that the equipment was made by reputable manufacturers e.g. the likes of Nortel (Northern Telecom), Bell, Western Electric, Ericsson, Siemens etc. If it did damage their hearing, eircom would have a case against those companies for compo too!

Basically, P&T, Telecom Eireann / Eircom are unlikely to have conspired to damage Biddy & her buddy's hearing. They would have been following standard industry practice at the time.

dahamsta

Solair wrote:

I don't think that it's possible that operators were exposed to sounds that were THAT loud.

Me and my truck horns say different.

BrianD

Poor quality headsets are common. Bear in mind that operators would be turning up and done the volume depending on the line quality and the person speaking to them. People slamming down a handset or even dialing a fax machine can cause "acoustic shock". Audio secretaries have also had the same problems - I know a girl who is almost deaf in one ear as a result of years of listenung to dictation tapes.

This legal action by call centre workers has happened in other countries so I wouldn't expect it to be confined to Eircom.

zuma

I wonder if there will be an avalanche of past P&T/Telecom Eireann workers from the 50's up all jumping over each other for a piece of the pie???

Well we live in a compo loving country...so we get the massive insurance bills!!!

Solair

At that rate we'll all be deaf in a few years time.. walkman, iPod, loud night clubs.. we're all doomed!

Sponge Bob

Solair wrote:

we're all doomed!

ever feel no one is listening to ya bar an ambulance chaser.

Sponge Bob

A nasty rumour has erupted that the ESOP have 'been asked' to keep Biddys ambulance chasers on a leash during the B&B due diligence process . Were there no claims registered in St Stephens Green over the next couple of months that would be jolly decent of them . OTOH, If the ESOP do not go with the B&B proposal they will possibly unleash the Biddies to tank the share price and force B&B out.

2,800 claims are allegedly being prepared at present and are in varying stages of readiness with the different ambulance chasers . The SBP had revisited this issue in November 2005 with a follow up article but the claims had not been sent in at that point and are not being sent in just yet.

2,800 Biddies x €100k claim each is about €280 Million Euros .

Business post follow up November 2005 here, does anyone know the journo in question and could they maybe prod an update out of them ???

http://archives.tcm.ie/businesspost/2005/11/06/story9455.asp

damien

Pat's on holidays at the moment I believe...

crawler

Anyone know when Smart's case against eircom is due to be heard? I would think B&B will watch that with interest.....

Blaster99

But B&B is going to be our saviour with an open network architecture for the good of the nation. Or did I get this all wrong.

crawler

Blaster99 wrote:

But B&B is going to be our saviour with an open network architecture for the good of the nation. Or did I get this all wrong.

Funny enough you might not be wrong...seriously...

B&B will sell the retail arm and just keep the wholesale arm...they know that the retail arm will more or less have to buy from wholesale so they protect the revenue...

they would then be genuinely be interested in all other carriers buying form them also - and in a sense they wouldnt care who bought what provided they are getting the revenue and sweating the asset...they also lose the overhead of the support issues etc..

It's a clever idea I have to say....and may oddly be in the favour of the consumer and us other carriers...

damien

crawler wrote:

It's a clever idea I have to say....and may oddly be in the favour of the consumer and us other carriers...

Once they don't continue with the stupid idea that they'll oppose LLU.

Sponge Bob

damien.m wrote:

Once they don't continue with the stupid idea that they'll oppose LLU.

They dont think its stupid, they are actually trying to replicate the situation in NZ as discussed in a recent thread on the fabulous Whirlpool board in OZ . There is some more stuff there too.

B&B have identified _correctly_ that the Irish Regulator and Government are individually and collectively weak and that they could easily make the same arrangement here as in NZ with a bit of schmoozing and probably with a few envelopes and fact finding trips to Cairns, the pulsating heart of the Antipodean Telecoms industry as we all know, thrown in for luck .

Here is what the Phil Nolans peer said to Noel Dempseys peer in NZ (one of them Comms bills lads was in the pipeline in NZ at the time

From The NZ Herald in December 2005

The letter from Ms Gattung to then Communications Minister Paul Swain, dated May 5, 2004, talked about a potential 30 cent fall in Telecom's share price if "unbundling" was required, reminded Mr Swain that the health of the sharemarket was at stake because of Telecom's high weighting - its shares make up more than 20 per cent of the market, and said the Government superannuation fund was invested in Telecom.

The letter was released under an official information request by Wellington newspaper The Dominion Post.

At the time, a Government decision on whether to accept the recommendation of Telecommunications Commissioner Douglas Webb not to "unbundle" the local copper network was hanging in the balance.

Communications Minister Paul Swain and the Economic Development Ministry backed unbundling and did not support Mr Webb's recommendation.

But Mr Swain was rolled by the cabinet, which protected Telecom from unbundling. Other developed nations have forced the incumbent telecommunications company to open up its network to rivals to stimulate competition.

None of this could ever happen in Ireland because we always learn from the mistakes of others.....and thats 100% Official lads because this Sponge sez it is right ! . By the way this other recent article below details the players in this NZ battle, it is all very reminiscent of somewhere close to home.

From The NZ Herald in March 2006