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Eircom customer service manuals warned staff not to obey law, court told

Comhrá

Unbelievable the lows a company will stoop to. Amoral behaviour.

https://www.irishtimes.com/crime-law/courts/2024/04/15/eircom-customer-service-manuals-warned-staff-not-to-obey-law-court-told/

…… A training manual provided to eir employees by parent company Eircom
warned them that they would face disciplinary proceedings if they obeyed
Irish laws covering customer complaints.

The same manual also outlined a series of “trigger words” that would allow
people calling the company with complaints to have their concerns dealt
with in an expeditious fashion. If those words were not used the
concerns of customers frequently went nowhere…..

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Ciferos

Incidentally I had a complaint with them today, I know how their process is meant to work, I told them I would escalate this issue further, the person on the phone gave me 4 digit complaint number, I knew this is incorrect, but she got all narky and hung up, when questioned about this 4 digit "complaint number", so yep, definitely believe and have experienced this.

They give you the illusion of complaining, if eir cant fix or defuse it, they hang up and hope you will go away. (IF they even ring back!)

gmisk

https://m.independent.ie/irish-news/courts/mother-with-no-service-was-unable-to-ring-999-for-sick-daughter-after-eir-told-staff-not-to-handle-customer-complaints/a205359551.html

Grim.

Have always found them a PITA to deal with but with most companies like them if you mention comreg or similar there tends to be some movement the initial story proves that.

The fine is a disgrace, but in fairness the bad PR will hopefully cost them serious coin.

Floppybits

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122023948#Comment_122023948

Will it though? People have been complaining about the service from Eir for years and yet they are still operating. I can't understand how they are and why people go with them.

Cluedo Monopoly

What were the trigger words??

Eir customer service has always been utterly shocking. A lot of older people are too afraid to swap providers.

Jim_Hodge

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122024360#Comment_122024360

Triggers were 'official complaint' 'reference number for ComReg' and suchlike .

A Dub in Glasgo

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122024360#Comment_122024360

They are listed in the article

"Another section of the manual outlined the “trigger words” callers could
use. They included: “I want to log a formal/official complaint; I want a
case reference number; I want a reference for ComReg; ComReg advised me
to get a reference” and “I have a ComReg reference”. Callers using
these phrases were treated as making formal complaints and handled
relatively quickly."

Cluedo Monopoly

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122024379#Comment_122024379

Yeah it's a paywalled article for me.

TheIrishGrover

Well, it certainly made me think about moving. I've had intermittent problems with them but nothing that required contacting them for support (needed to reset router, that kind of thing). But i work from home usually so don't like the idea of that level of poor support when needed. I was with Virgin for years, when they were NTL and Chorus and I think there was some other name too. But they just got very expensive. Hear terrible things about Sky broadband and their support. 2 years away from Virgin, maybe I'll go for new customer deal.

That fine was pathetic. These companies will only learn those lesson if they lose customers because of their actions

magicbastarder

You gotta love the defence from eir that that was in the past, that their manuals are different now.

Does that work in general in court? 'your honour, I am not currently in the process of committing a crime, we are talking about something in the past so what's the issue?'

osarusan

By far the worst customer service I have ever experienced anywhere.

I literally had to send them a registered letter to end the contract, as their call line had such long queues it was never-ending. Digiweb are 20E a month cheaper and the level of service is so far superior.

magicbastarder

I once (through a rather torturous process, as I am not an eir customer) managed to get talking to someone in eir about the fact that a tree in my garden was leaning against a phone line. I'd no great love for the tree, planted by a previous owner, and was contacting them to let them know they had full permission to hack at the tree if they had a crew in the area. I thought I was being a good citizen.

After an initial 'we're not doing your tree surgery for you for free' response, they agreed to look into it, and came back to me several days later and triumphantly told me they'd found a workable solution.

I was to log a service request with my provider (virgin, as it happens) who would pass that to eir; who would then send a crew out to cut the tree, and then bill virgin for it. And that virgin may then bill me for that, but that was up to virgin.

'so wait, you want me to log a call with your competitor, to address an issue relating to your infrastructure, and that either virgin or I would pay for that?'

'yes, that's what I'm saying'.

Comhrá

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122024543#Comment_122024543

+ 1 for Digiweb. I moved to them from Vodafone a year ago and they are excellent. I used their customer support once and they were very helpful. Even phoned me a few hours after sorting my issue to see if all was working properly.

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122024567#Comment_122024567

Openeir dangerous plant division for that these days, don't care who if anyone you use

skimpydoo

A few years ago my father got a new laptop and helped him try and migrate his email across to his new computer,. I could not get his eir email address to work with Outlook. I rang up the eir customer care team and asked them what email clients they support. I was flabbergasted when they told me only support eir webmail, which is as old as the hills and has not being updated and given a refresh.

It turns out eir did not have certain security certs setup so without those certs Microsoft could not allow you to use eir as they considered it a security risk.

I ended up setting my dad up with Thunderbird and he was a happy bunny. Thankfully the only issues we have had since is with their tv service which keeps buffering. Thankfully that sheet show of a company are not providing my tv or broadband.

Floppybits

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122024543#Comment_122024543

100% on digiweb. With them 4 years now and no complaints. Was with sky which runs on the eir network and the service just kept on degrading. So much so that if my wife was on a zoom call I couldn't be on one as well at the same time. Digiweb no such problems.

Patrick2010

Do Digiweb not run on the Eir network?

L1011

Digiweb (and Sky) are available on NBI and SIRO also

Floppybits

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122025484#Comment_122025484

My Digiweb is on the SIRO network and was the main reason why I went them. Didn't want a provider that used the Eir Network

chopperbyrne

I worked in eircom.net tech support in 2004/5.

A small number of staff were directly employed by Eircom, but most (including me) were contract staff through a company called Stelfox, and Eircom ran everything themselves.

We were never encouraged in any way to not let people know the complaints process.

A few months before I left, Eircom outsourced the call centre to a company called Stream Global Services (who have since been purchased by Convergys), and everyone got full time contracts with Stream.

Immediately things changed though. Almost all of the weekend staff that were hired were Indian or Pakistani, who were perfectly capable, but honestly, their English wasn't up to scratch and calls between them and Irish customers just didn't work.

Stream also were much more concerned with answering calls quickly than providing a resolution for customers. Basically, as long as Stream met their SLA's for calls handled they were happy.

Like myself, a lot of people moved on quickly after Stream took over.

I don't think they have the contract with Eir any more, but whoever is running it is likely similar.

TheRepentent

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122025730#Comment_122025730

HCL took over the contract after Stream

10-10-20

I can't believe that it took this long for such action - and that the fine was only 7.500 EUR…? Absolute ****-show. Have a look at these as proof:

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057653942/official-eir-complaints-process

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/2057854046/lodging-a-formal-complaint-with-eir

And more here:

https://www.google.com/search?q=site%3Aboards.ie+eir+complaints&newwindow=1

L1011

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122026122#Comment_122026122

Bad to worse with that move

Eir took the customer care back in house.

XT1200

Ah come on folks. It's ComReg's fault

https://www.breakingnews.ie/ireland/comreg-dismisses-eirs-claim-of-incorrect-allegations-following-court-case-1613964.html

Clo-Clo

Years ago had no real options for BB, called Eir and they said it would work at house. Guy came out to install from KN Networks and said I would be wasting my time as it would be terrible and he wouldn't advise me to install

I spent months trying ot get them to stop the direct debit and then once it was stopped to refund me, was a total disaster, never again would I go near them

PopePalpatine

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122024630#Comment_122024630

Ugh, don't remind me about their TV service. We made the mistake of switching to them about 5 years ago when they had the bright idea of slapping their logo on some homeplugs and an Android box. The box would take about 5-10 minutes to connect to the wi-fi, and anything of HD quality was constantly buffering. Of course, because it was using our broadband connection this would hog the bandwidth, so if you wanted to watch YouTube/Netflix or play online, that'd suffer too.