The eircom handset handover

billy the squid

A couple of weeks ago I suggested that everyone should hand in their eircom handsets as a way of protesting over how eircom were catching us at every opportunity and to let the general public know how easy it is to knock a few euros off their phone bill by handing in their eircom phone and replacing it with one they could buy in argos or roches stores.

I was just wondering if there was any decision made on the proposal

phaxx

You can do that? Throw the handset back at €ircom? Do you send it back to their offices in Dublin or where?

billy the squid

As far as I know you can but was hoping that we could get as many people as possible to do it on the same day so as to get some publicity

SkepticOne

A problem with this, I think, is that it doesn't have much to do with the Internet and is likely to be interpreted as an phone rental protest or a general anti-Eircom protest.

meglome

Yup I had a pretty decent phone lying around so I told Eircom to take back theirs and I plugged my own in.

SkepticOne.. you are correct this would be a Eircom protest specifically but lets face it they are pretty responsible for the state of the internet in Ireland.

sceptre

Originally posted by phaxx
You can do that? Throw the handset back at €ircom? Do you send it back to their offices in Dublin or where?

Bring it into the local office.

Phone 1901 and get it taken off your phone bill - bit nutty paying them for rental of a phone when you can get one cheaply to replace it and pay no rental (Argos comes to mind but there are obviously lots of places that sell phones)

Advantages (even not as a protest or whatever) - just one financial one - stop paying them 3 euro a month for renting something you can buy for under 10

And the satisfaction advantage - Eircom are making quite a few notes from this (though it's all from old subscribers, they haven't been renting phones for about a year now)

And don't forget to tell your neighbours.

Kix

I did this about a month ago (or rather I asked my g/f to drop it in to €ircom when I was at work). I had two perfectly good handsets at home as it was. It was just a silly expense.

K

Mountjoy Mugger

I hope they stopped billing you for it.

I remember having paid for barring International calls until one day, I got a bill for £80 worth of calls to the US and at the same time the International call barring charge also being on the same bill. I was told it was their policy to encourage (sic) the use of the phone.

They're a crafty bunch!

seamus

Originally posted by Mountjoy Mugger
I hope they stopped billing you for it.

I remember having paid for barring International calls until one day, I got a bill for £80 worth of calls to the US and at the same time the International call barring charge also being on the same bill. I was told it was their policy to encourage (sic) the use of the phone.

They're a crafty bunch!

Im confused...did you forget a sarcasm device?
How could they bill you for £80 worth of calls that 1. You didn't make, and 2. shouldn't have been billed for even if you did, because you shouldn't have been allowed

Mountjoy Mugger

Originally posted by seamus


Im confused...did you forget a sarcasm device?
How could they bill you for £80 worth of calls that 1. You didn't make, and 2. shouldn't have been billed for even if you did, because you shouldn't have been allowed

I don't need a sarcasm device.

I was billed for the £80 because they reckoned that as the person responsible for the phone, I should monitor it! (to hell with the fee I was paying at the time for blocking the calls).

I went to the Consumers Association and about a year later, I got a "miscellaneous" credit of £160 to my account. They can be thieving bas&*$%s.

That's why I asked if they had stopped charging for the handset.

Manic

Between my house and my work i have 5 that i can hand back in so just say a date and i will do it

billy the squid

I know some people might the idea to be an anti-eircomprotest but heres the way i see it.

I consider it an opportunity to highlight how eircom are fleecing not just the internet using public but the entire population.

emmet

The extent to which we're being screwed by Eircom is quite remarkable.

As a very good example, anyone involved in IP telephony will confirm that hop-off point providers in the US charge as little as $0.02 (yes, 2 cents) per minute to connect calls to anywhere in Ireland.

What this means is that it's significantly cheaper to get an account with a retail online telephony provider, dial up your chosen ISP, and use the online service to call your auntie in Kerry than it is to just pick up the phone and call her. How can it be cheaper to route your calls over the internet to actually be connected to the PSTN via Los Angeles? Answer: it isn't, we're being soaked.

Incidentally, call quality is excellent -- not quite as good as ordinary phone, but not so much worse that you wouldn't be happy to accept it for the enormous savings.

Emmet.

timod

Yeah,

I was in Canada for a while, and I got a prepaid international calling card thingy. It was cheaper for me to call home from Canada than it was to make a trunk call in Ireland.

Quite amazing.

BTW, I too have an Eircom phone to hand in...