Eircom "stealing" dsl customers?

yankinlk

Just wondering if this has happened to anyone else.

My freind has been pursuing "Broadband" in Limerick for a few months. Numerous phone calls to Eircom AND Esat and he was getting no joy from either. Finally last week he gets the contracts mailed out from ESAT and they go about doing a line test. The same day he gets a call from Eircom saying "you rang us in the past about DSL and we have now tested your line - you have passed - Do you want DSL?"

Now, he knew the difference between the two companies so he steered clear of that phone call, but how many people dieing to get "Broadband" would just take the first and fastest offer?

This isnt an isolated incident - it happened back in December when I rang about a business to see if they could get DSL off Colt. The same thing happened, all of a sudden we had an account executive from Eircom DSL knocking our door down (this was quite a large business) to offer us DSL.

the Guru

Stealing is such a strong word i would try a different one as DSL was Eircoms product in the First place as for the Line tests whats the Point of contacting a cust if the Line doesent pass. ????

If it doesent pass for Esat it wont pass for Eircom as Eircom own the Exchange and the line until june when everything will change so when the line passed the 2 companies probably contacted the Cust Esat been first

whats the Problem. its business

cgarvey

Same thing happened to me .. Eircom told me I could "never" get DSL. I asked what never meant, and she said that most results come up as failed, that she was unsure of what "never" meant.. went to ask and the response was that my line was wholly unsuitable for DSL... I was getting 48-50kbps dialup so I don't think it was a DACS.

A month later I rang back to confirm situation was the same, and yes it was. So I ring ESat who passed my line and sent out the forms! The bizarre thing is that the following day I had a voicemail from Eircom saying I could now get DSL. Esat wasn't to be in Terenure for another 6 weeks so I went with Eircom.

Both have crap customer service, and grossly overcharge, but were the only options to me. 1MB services were the same from both, so I chose Eircom. Look at me I squirmishing to defend my Eircom choice!!

.cg

the Guru

I was getting 48-50kbps dialup so I don't think it was a DACS

You can guarantee that you where not on a Carrier line with that speed

m1ke

Hi,

I ordered DSL with eircom the day it was released. When Netsources offering was released, about a week or so later I cancelled my order with eircom. I signed up for netsources offer. I've been in contact with them earlier today, organising a date and time for the installation.

At about 1p.m today netsource told me that eircom are due to activate my line tomorrow, and that they can have one of their engineers visit me on Monday. - they explained that date was provisional providing eircom do activate the line tomorrow.

At about 1.45p.m I recieve a call from eircom asking me do I want to proceed with their DSL installation. In a confused state I said yes, they offered a date of Wednesday.... I wasn't sure if they were acting in unison with Netsource, so I asked them what was the story with Netsource.... they told me they had no idea and explained this was the order I originally placed several weeks ago and if I wanted to proceed. I told them I had cancelled it, and they said fair enuff, and said they'd pass that information along to accounts.

This behaviour from eircom is confusing and suspicious. Was it a subversive attempt to win me back? I don't know or care. It did however confuse me greatly, was it pure co-incidence. Is this grounds for a complaint? Eircom never ring me back, Netsource always provide excellent telephone support.... so why 45 minutes after I confirm an install date do they suddenly take interest?

Has anyone else experienced this recently? (sorry I haven't read many threads here recently)
Am I mistaken and were eircom phoning to confirm line activation or something like that?
Is this grounds for a complaint to comreg? As I felt harrased and tricked, and almost agreed to their installation.
Am I just thick or something?

Any advice would be appreciated, i'm just a light internet user these days and not very up on the telecom situation in Ireland and would like to be enlightened by your help.

Regards,
Mike

Dustaz

Seems to be a day for these winback storys, This seems to have been happening a lot lately. Im gonna merge this with the other threads.

spongebob

This stunt where a company with whom you have NO CONTRACT (Eircom) is attempting to steal you from Netsource with whom you do have a contract.......is called slamming. Telcos slam each others customers .....steal them.

I'd let Eircom come to balls up the Netsource installation. They will be interesting small claims court fodder once they do.

As they have no contract they could'nt possibly explain it to the judge. I see €1000 in the holiday kitty for distress / loss of service / inconvenience/ time off work and so on and so forth.

Then complain to Comreg about the slamming once the judge has found for you in court.

M

yankinlk

Originally posted by the Guru
Stealing is such a strong word i would try a different one as DSL was Eircoms product in the First place as for the Line tests whats the Point of contacting a cust if the Line doesent pass. ????

If it doesent pass for Esat it wont pass for Eircom as Eircom own the Exchange and the line until june when everything will change so when the line passed the 2 companies probably contacted the Cust Esat been first

whats the Problem. its business

Are you speaking english? and can you read and understand english?

It's quite obvious that anyone competing with eircom for dsl has to give the customer contact info to eircom in order to "try" and complete their own sales. Give me an example of any other business on the face of the earth where a company is FORCED to hand their competition their own sales leads everytime they go to make a sale.

jd

Originally posted by yankinlk
Give me an example of any other business on the face of the earth where a company is FORCED to hand their competition their own sales leads everytime they go to make a sale.

It actually happens with BT, and i believesome of the baby bells in the states too.

spongebob

not so much the baby bells, the long distance carriers do it to each other all the time, Sprint ATnT and Worldcom

Comreg are still ínvestigating ' Eircom but are dithering around while Eircom slams.

Here is the FCC (US Comreg) procedure in the US

jd

I think he was talking about dsl installations-so wouldnt it be thababy bells?

Balfa

cgarvey, and anyone else this has happened to, demand all of eircom's information stored about you, under the data protection act, and see if there are any records saying things like "Right, Those Esat feckers have gone and told him that his line does work. better give him a call and tell him the truth"

seriously though. you never know what you might find.

MadsL

ASFIAK, resellers sales orders are invisible to eircom to prevent this lind of thing. I could only talk to eircom about my Netsource order a couple of days before the engineering was due.

You should have 'seen' the confusion when I rang eircom tech-support after my first modem blew up. They still tested the line tho

gombín

LAds,

None of this is slamming. This refers to the fact where a customer's traffic is taken without their knowledge. I hardly think a Sales call from eircom would justify bringing a legal case.

yankinlk

What im saying is bad is that its only one way, eircom get ALL business leads, whether its their own, or someone like esat trying to get into "the local loop".

It would be fine if Esat(and others) had the same access to all customers looking for line tests.

tho only way it can be considered good is if it reaches the levels of the states - where you can actually switch from carrier to carrier every month, gaining money and free minutes everytime you switch (my parents used to be "in credit" from all the switching)

sceptre

Originally posted by gombín
None of this is slamming. This refers to the fact where a customer's traffic is taken without their knowledge. I hardly think a Sales call from eircom would justify bringing a legal case.

There was an interesting stance taken by OfTel about two years ago wrt to something fairly like this. Customers ringing up with bill queries who hapened to have a non-BT flatrate ISP (details on bill you see) were getting recommended BT products by the operator. OfTel went gaga and slapped BT pretty hard.

Now let's look at this. A few people above, after being told they would "never" get DSL by Eircom decide to go with another company, get passed for that. In the meantime info gets passed back to Eircom that they can kiss goodbye to any dialup income from this customer. Suddenly, there's a call from Eircom letting them know that they can now get iStream and when would they like the install done?

Smells fishy. Obviously so far all we've got is circumstantial conjecture but to most people that's a kind of evidence:). It's the kind of thing Comreg would be interested in, I'm sure.

shinzon

Originally posted by sceptre
There was an interesting stance taken by OfTel about two years ago wrt to something fairly like this. Customers ringing up with bill queries who hapened to have a non-BT flatrate ISP (details on bill you see) were getting recommended BT products by the operator. OfTel went gaga and slapped BT pretty hard.

Now let's look at this. A few people above, after being told they would "never" get DSL by Eircom decide to go with another company, get passed for that. In the meantime info gets passed back to Eircom that they can kiss goodbye to any dialup income from this customer. Suddenly, there's a call from Eircom letting them know that they can now get iStream and when would they like the install done?

Smells fishy. Obviously so far all we've got is circumstantial conjecture but to most people that's a kind of evidence:). It's the kind of thing Comreg would be interested in, I'm sure.

hmm wondr should i try that tactic lol

shin

gombín

I think the point is being missed here. The customer could only have passed with the other company as soon as they had passed with eircom. In eircom's perspective said customer had already expressed an interest in getting the product from them, so I think only naturally, they would ofer them the product as soon as it becomes available. This does not constitute slamming. Being on the ball, and trying to do their rivals out of a customer-probably, but most certainly would not be entertained by Comreg, let alone a court of law.

spongebob

is the test logged in

(or test request or indication of interest IF a test is not possible because the exchange is not enabled)

....Eircoms database I suspect.

The only legal getout is that no contract is signed at that point. Had a contract been signed then it wouild surely been slamming .

There is a mysterious Database in Eircom of persons who have indicated interest in ADSL where their exchange is not upgraded through that crappy java map thing. As the information is not stored on the standard database .... accessible through asking someone on 1901 who have no information on their screens.... it must therefore be a Special Database. Line test results are stored there before other carriers get them as well/

Gombin, as one who seems to know something of the system mechanics ....can you tell me who runs that database inside Eircom and why is the database has not been registered with the Data Protection Commissioner ?

hmmmm

M

Michele

I don't agree with the last post. Eircom is taking advantage of the monopoly of the dsl switches (granted by the government) to gain valuable information to put out of business competitors who don't have access to the same resources and compete honestly on the market. Shameful, expecially from a public institution.

gombín

Muck,

As far as I'm aware eircom have something on people's accounts whereby they can be contacted by them or by other companies with prior permission of the A/c holder. However, as I say, using this as an objection would hardly come in to play, if the customer had already wished to purchase the product in the first place.

By the same rationale, I'm sure the link on Esat's site, where you register your interest in IOL Broadband is not shared with eircom.

spongebob

thats a standard 1st and 3rd party marketing opt in / out system. Any 1901 operator can click those on or off for you.

I am talking about an expression submitted SPECIFICALLY through the Flash Map of exchanges where you check your line or "vote for broadband" , thats not stored on the central database along with your account information . If it was it should be visible to Biddy on 1901 . Biddy swears it isn't.

That database is maintained through here http://mmm.eircom.ie/maps/map_Pop.asp and ..........once it loads DO right click on it and check the Settings , especially the web cam settings, cough! schplutter!!!!

M

gombín

I think without any doubt, that would go straight to Marketing. Having voted for Broadband in your area, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that eircom would ring you back when they are in a position to give you what you wanted in the first place.

Slutmonkey57b

This is not a case of Eircom using its "marketing wits" to pick up customers who might have an interest in its services. The situation described is simple abuse of its monopoly status and infringement of the split-operator principle.

Eircom WHOLESALE is responsible for the network and selling space (incl. DSL space) to the telecom retailers to sell to customers.

Eircom RETAIL is one of many telcos who are supposed to be buying the DSL product wholesale and selling it on to the customer.

There is supposed to be a "chinese wall" between the two operations to ensure "fairness" to all operators. (All Irish consumers will of course be familiar with this concept... ahem)

When you ring Eircom to say "is my line able to take DSL" you are asking WHOLESALE to check for you. Not RETAIL.

When Eircom ring you to say "do you want DSL" it is RETAIL that is asking. If they just happen to have psychics employed that can tell when another retailer has put in a request to WHOLESALE to enable DSL on someone's line... that's fine.

But a cynic would say that there is a comfy arrangement between the two halves of Eircon and that the retail sales droids are accessing private information about their competitors in order to rig the market.

Of course, Eircon would have to hope this is not the case since this would lead to prosecution under European anti-competitive law. As I recall prison sentances for Directors and fines up to 15% of global gross turnover...?

jd

Originally posted by Slutmonkey57b
)

When you ring Eircom to say "is my line able to take DSL" you are asking WHOLESALE to check for you. Not RETAIL.

Are you 100% sure on that? what number do you use to ring, and are sure sure it is "wholesale" rather than "retail" you are talking to?

OHP

Originally posted by yankinlk
Just wondering if this has happened to anyone else.

My freind has been pursuing "Broadband" in Limerick for a few months. Numerous phone calls to Eircom AND Esat and he was getting no joy from either. Finally last week he gets the contracts mailed out from ESAT and they go about doing a line test. The same day he gets a call from Eircom saying "you rang us in the past about DSL and we have now tested your line - you have passed - Do you want DSL?"

I wish any company other than Eircon would ring me and say that I have qualified for ADSL / DSL so /me keeps praying

OHP

cgarvey

Originally posted by gombín
I think without any doubt, that would go straight to Marketing. Having voted for Broadband in your area, I don't think it's unreasonable to think that eircom would ring you back when they are in a position to give you what you wanted in the first place.

Its not unreasonable, no, but I would have preferred if they had originally asked me would it be ok to do so, it doesn't bother me really though.

I just thought the co-incidence was a bit ... eh, co-incidental, as seen as two different operators at two different times were very definite that my line would (and I quote) "never" be DSL-capable.

I'm not complaining about being contacted, as it happens I'm with them now, just the timing was a bit funny, that's all.

gombín

A Chinese Wall........yeah. When you ring eircom for them to test your line you are speaking to RETAIL, this I can vouch for. Do you honestly think that eircom Wholesale, which essentially consists of Operations Teams, would have people answering thew phone to take abuse (much of it warranted)? I think not.

This "cosy cartel" idea is verging on the stage of gross paranoia. eircom Wholesale is not subsidising Retail, in the same way that Retail does not subsidise eircom.net. I think many of us can recall being shifted fom Paddy to Mick to Jack in "different" companies. However, eircom Wholesale provides DSL, eircom Retail sells it. Wholesale, in all probability do not give a rat's arse if your line passes or not.

As for testing your line over the eircom.ie (Retail) site, to me it only seems natural, take given a base of customers, the company would contact the ones that were most eager for the product.

spongebob

yep ....but if I vote for DSL in my area (in aint there) .....where is the voting data stored?

M

gombín

Marketing. It is then given on to Sales teams to contact customer.

Slutmonkey57b

When I say wholesale are checking your line, I don't mean the person on the end of the phone line. I mean that wholesale are responsible for creating the DSL capacity, and providing the DSL check service. Every telco should have access to this service, if the split provider mechanism is operated properly. As it happens, Wholesale are creating the list of enabled exchanges, passing this on to Retail, and providing Retail with access to the database in order to answer queries from their customers, and to pass on requests for activation to Wholesale.

HOWEVER:
If Retail are getting information from this database that includes tidbits like "Operator X will take over this customer on Day Y", then Eircom is in serious breach of the law.

But of course no Irish company would be that corrupt.

gombín

As I posted earlier on in the thread, this nearly verges on the paranoia. eircom Wholesale have nothing to do with the checking of bandwidth on lines or the provision of DSLAMS (the latter, they just happen to be nominally in control of). eircom Wholesale are essentially a reseller of an eircom product. In a kind of warped way, eircom Retail/Operations provide a product to Wholesale, so that they, or IOL/Netsource, can then buy it back from Wholesale.

The below shows a typical example of a customer from an OLO purchasing DSL through a reseller:

IOL/Netsource customer calls Esat/Netsource
-Esat/Netsource pass their request on to eircom Wholesale
-eircom Wholesale get eircom Operations to provision DSL on line
-When DSL is provisioned, Operations bill Wholesale, who in turn would bill IOL/Netsource.
-The fact that the billing arm of eircom Retail haven't been consulted, essentially means they will be billed by IOL/Netsource.

The database in question, is essentially just a listing of all nos. which are periodically frequency-tested. Retail have the same access as Wholesale, not because it has been provided for them, but because they are selling the same product. As regards, if there is any "corruption" of this database, is what I would refer to as the paranoia. As many people on these boards will vouch for, when you get through to one of the biddies on the phone in eircom Retail, they are only in a position to tell you if the line passes or not. It has nothing got to due with impending orders from any other companies.

In relation to enabled exchanges, these are logged with Comreg, having being enabled by eircom Operations. When given the green light by Comreg, eircom Wholesale is then able to "launch" the exchange, and take orders from eircom Retail or from IOL/Netsource.

spongebob

Either way Eircom Retail know if another carrier wants to 'resell' one of their lines.

This is when the order comes through from wholesale , the intermediary entity, for line x

Wholesale is primarily a trade billing entity which bills another carrier in lieu of normal billing, thats cool.

Where has me vote for Broadband gone then, Biddy got thick with me when I told her about the vote for broadband flash thingy and said she didnt have the data at all. The Data Protection persons are unaware of there being any database in Eircom apart from the normal CRM/Billing one. There is no Marketing database registered anywhere, taking lists off the normal database is allowed under the registration terms of the CRM/Billing database anyway so I am confuzled.

The votes may be all be going to /dev/null which is perfecly legal of course.

I'm still somewhat confused and have no hope of seeing much BB out my way anytime soon so I wont be stolen by anybody....

M