Eircom to increase Internet costs even further

Dangger

Eircom have removed the ability to add an Internet access number into your circle of friends discount scheme.

In a small notice in today's Irish Times it reads:

eircom limited has today, 20th September 2002, made an ammendment to the Telecommunications Sceme, 2002. This amendment removes calls to Number Translation Codes (1850, 1890, 1891) from eircom Discounts Scemes and modifies certain Terms & Conditions of eircom's Discount Schemes.

Details including effective dates are available at eircom stores.

A list of eircom stores is available in the Telephone Directory or by dialling Customer Information Serviec on 1800 512 012.

James G Ryan Company Secretary

LoBo

Read: We will now take you for 10% more

This is how Eircom respond to UTVi's offering

buh bye!

TacT

/me gets his rifle and a swat team.

Dustaz

This beggars belief. What are they thinking of? Surely in the face of increased competition they should be introducing more features like this not removing them?

Someone make the hurt stop!

Dangger

My only take on this is that they feel they can continue to prey on people's lack of awareness, and people's fear of leaving the arms of Eircom.

BuffyBot

That is just surreal - they really dont have a clue

yankinlk

one step forward two steps back...

spongebob

€ircom knew the ODTR mob were probably on the piss last night and had this ad booked b4 they went to the ODTR conference yesterday. Theres respect for ya.

I thought that €ircom had to 'serve notice' in the paper that they intended to make changes in 28 days or something...in order to allow responses. I didn't think their licencing allowed them to unilaterally announce chagnes with effect from now.

M

Dangger

Thats covered with the "details of effective dates" sentence I'd imagine.

spongebob

Dangger

The sentence reads in full

Details including effective dates are available at eircom stores.

I stand corrected except that emmmmmm Eircom just
SOLD THEM

I suppose the next lot of 'details' about Eircoms pricing shenanigans will be read off the steps of the GPO in O'Connell street by a PR bunny to the greater unwashed.

Must ring ODTR and shout .....quietly.

M

Scruff

Hasta la vista eirconn and no, i won't be back!
UTVip here i come!!

[rant]
eircom really are a bunch of greedy ****wits.
[/rant]

they are just giving people more and more reason to ditch em, what a clever marketing department they must have...

kamobe

Are they really so narrow minded? Yeah, they're out to make money, but they need customers do that.

Dangger

Eircom just SOLD THEM

Yeah I thought that. Surely then its akin to telling us that details will be available in some um.... mouse trap shop in Doolin. There is simply no connection. But then again I don't know the details of the shop sale. The sale doesn't seem to be complete with Sigma Wireless until 4-5 weeks from Sept 4th, which brings us into October.

MrPudding

The lack of foresight from this company is breathtaking. Can they not get the concept of making a little from a lot. It all very well in the short term making large margin from a small number of users but what happens when competition finally arrives. Please take note Eircom, competition will arrive. People will leave in droves.

They don't seem to realise that people are just waiting for an alternative, as soon as it comes along it will be see you later. The UTVip offer is a case in point, sure it's not true flat rate but it's the best on offer. Can you imagine what will happen when they offer a reasonably priced DSL offer. The way UTV have operated here on boards has really impressed a lot of people, these people will probably turn into loyal customers.

Wake up Eircom

Occidental

Eircom seem to have figured out the 'Eircom Stores' ploy pretty well.

In theory you can just walk into an Eircom store and pick up a copy of the changes.

In practice you walk into an Eircom store and ask for the changes. Staff have no idea what you are talking about. After explaining what you are after and being asked by staff why you want it, staff check Eircom e-mail(this is how Eircom distribute change information) and print off the bulliten. Having waited 15 minutes while the e-mail prints off, staff will then let you have a look at the document and if you are really lucky will photocopy the pages you're after.

Eircom consider this information to be freely available, when in fact it is a royal pain in the ar$e to obtain.

Funny how they're not so keen to put it up on their web-site or in the media.

neverhappen

Details of this (and other) pending changes to eircoms price list are available here

The above change to discount schemes starts on page 55...

Occidental

Neverhappen,


Still don't know how to get to it without using the link, but well done for finding it. You would think it would be easy for them to give the URL in the newspapers, or am I missing something.

hmmm

There's changes to the pricing of 1891 prefixes all the way through this document - any idea if it's up or down (I won't be taking bets on this however, I'm sure we know what the answer is already ).

They've excluded both 1891 and 1892 prefixes (1892, it's funny how they can remember to do this with prefixes that aren't being used) from the discount schemes.

neverhappen

It looks like they are bringing 1891 and 1892 into their "non-discount calls" section throughout the price list. I cant find these numbers in the existing price list (I haven't looked exhausively though).

To find the price list (and the pending change doc), go to the main page eircom page, select About>eircom Activities>eircom price list>here>section1 retail services

Gordon

Dammit I was just this week thinking about doing that very thing - put the access number on my group of friends to get cheaper access. That or some discount scheme that notfaircom have.

/Gordon roams off to the UTV website to get info on their service.

Nobody

Maybe they're getting ready to introduce their own "Flat-Rate" offering... once they've finished increased all other charges, like line rental, etc.

Rumour has it that Eircon are pleading to have the basis rate charges to other Telco's increased. (article in one of last weeks papers)

bricks

Nothing else makes a difference to them.
I think the only thing that will reduce the cost of broadband and get them to release flat rate is when NTL start to expand their broadband again. They get no cut at all from NTL's broadband.
Even with UTV's flatrate they are still getting their per minute charges indirectly so it probably doesn't really bother them.
And correct me if I'm wrong but if you have the 2-way NTL thingy can't you make phone calls that bypass Eircom almost entirly when phoning other NTL subscribers.
And if you're getting Esat DSL then its 50Euro a month to Eircom which is more than enough to keep'em happy.

longword

Originally posted by bricks
And if you're getting Esat DSL then its 50Euro a month to Eircom which is more than enough to keep'em happy.

Aren't EAST using unbundled loops rather than Eircom's madcap wholesale bitstream access? If that is the case, Eircom should be getting a quarter of that figure per month - less than you'd be giving them for standard PSTN line rental.

Dustaz

Originally posted by bricks

Even with UTV's flatrate they are still getting their per minute charges indirectly so it probably doesn't really bother them.

This is something that has been bothering me since the rollout of Utv and esats flat rate services. No matter how many people move to utv and esat, eircom continue to get the same wholesale price they got in the first place. I doubt this puts a huge hole in thier profit margin (though im open to correction on that). Only FRIACO could fully strip them of thier continued ill gotten gains.

Bard

what with the sale of their shops and the increases in charges being implemented, do ye reckon they're strapped for cash at the moment?... or just monopoly-mad thieving money-grabbing bastards ?

sceptre

Originally posted by Bard
what with the sale of their shops and the increases in charges being implemented, do ye reckon they're strapped for cash at the moment?... or just monopoly-mad thieving money-grabbing bastards ?

Oh, definitely option... er dammit, can I just tick "both of the above" seeing as they're paying all that money back to various banks sometime soon?

SkepticOne

Originally posted by Dustaz


This is something that has been bothering me since the rollout of Utv and esats flat rate services. No matter how many people move to utv and esat, eircom continue to get the same wholesale price they got in the first place. I doubt this puts a huge hole in thier profit margin (though im open to correction on that).

I believe it. Eircom net, the ISP, will suffer, but Eircom Ireland will gain since people will be using the Internet more. Overall, I think Eircom will gain from the new ISP offerings.

amen

Irish Times Thursday 26th Sep Page 9 bottom left corner

ericom Limited
From October 11th calls made to 1850,1890 and 1891 numbers will no longer eligble for discount under eircom's options, optimiser, performance, multi-site, business selections, cirlce of friends na dbusiness circles discoutn schemes.

Is anyone doing anything about this ? I have my pop number in circle of friend but now I'm losing the discount.
:-(

tuxy

this was posted before some people are doing something about it
....they are moving to utv

Dangger

More here ......

ihatemushrooms

Two options here really NetSmart from Esat BT or UTVip, UTVip you have to move your phone bill totally NetSmart you don`t.

One good thing about these is that you now have a choice which u mightn`t have had before... a little progress no less. Each company offers different prices for different options

Dustaz

threads merged.

Krouc

****For those who don't know****

Any one on the free service with the Pop number on their circle of friends?
Be ready for a screw, 1892 cant be added so you access cost will go up and
*you* will be forced to use it after a few weeks and the change over starts
this week.

Cheaper access, thank you ODTR!

Krouc

(Funny tho, doesn't apply to me but I care)

The Cigarette Smoking Man

1892 isn't meant to be cheaper, it's meant to include the ISPs costs in the phone call. (ie you don't need a subscription to an ISP)

1892 Pay-as-you-go (PAYG): the customer pays for the telephone calls to access the Internet but does not pay any subscription fees to the Internet Service Provider (ISP);

sceptre

Ties in with the removal of 1891 from the circle of friends

With the inclusion of 1892 this will affect everyone using a local Eircom POP when the numbers are replaced soon (odd though, I don't think they included 1892 in their original notice).

Threads merged

Krouc

Its simple

* Anyone using the pop number on Circle of Friends will have higher Net access costs.

* If a pop goes down your ****ed. Before you could just dial a pop out of the trouble area, with this you wont. It all maps to the local pop, no more 01 pops..... You will have to have a connection for another ISP. Now if all the Dublin pops went down you could call one anywhere in the country, for example 049 and being after 6 all national calls are at local rate. Now with the new routing this wont work. If you area is down, tough.

* And the Free service was always PAYG so all that talk is BS.

The ODtr should have planned this a bit better, eircom are on a winner so far.

Krouc