How Eircom Lost A Customer

**image borrowed from www.eircomtribunal.com**

Ah, sure it’s no news to anyone in Ireland that Eircom, our state phone company, are a right shower of crooks and scoundrels. Dealing with them is like taking a time machine back to the days when Haughey was Taoiseach and monopolies ruled the roost. I can’t understand why we always seem to take it though. I mean we know they are useless but we just shrug our shoulders and say “ah, that’s Eircom for you.” I suppose that’s the frustration of a monopoly. There’s nothing we can do.

As of today, we have been in our new house in Greystones for one month and one week. Before we moved I checked with Eircom to make sure that our phone was connected and suitable for broadband and they assured us it was and gave us our new number. The day we moved in we plugged in our phone and the line was dead so we rang Eircom. Here is a run down of what has happened since. I plan to update this until we finally have a connection just as an outlet for my frustration:

June 7: Line is dead so we ring Eircom. We are told that there has been an EE failure on our line which means that they cannot reconnect it electronically so a technician will have to come out. They cannot give us a date for when this might happen but the technician will be in touch to arrange an appointment.

There was a letter waiting for us from Eircom when we moved in with forms to fill out for Direct Debit billing. We fill these out and get them sent off to Eircom.

June 10: We receive a bill from Eircom charging us €28:16 for our line rental for June…on a line that doesn’t exist. There is also a charge for reconnection of €20.65 which is waived because of some kind of promotion. I can only surmise from this that if the promotion wasn’t running they would have charged us for a reconnection that never happened.

As we meet our new neighbours and get talking to them, we discover that one family waited 4 months and another waited 6. This is not good as I conduct all my business over broadband and the only broadband that is available in Greystones requires a phone connection.

We have an overlap in rent with our old house so I can continue to work there for the time being. I commute to and from Greystones for the next month in the hope that the line will be reconnected in time.

June 25: We call Eircom once more as the deadline to hand over our old keys approaches. While speaking to them they notice that the details they have for us are incorrect. Somehow they have our old details down on our files. Guess what…that means start over. AAAAH!

July 1st: Hand over of keys so I no longer have access to broadband. I move all my computer equipment to my parents’ house in Killiney so I can use their broadband. I am in the middle of a crazy deadline so I can’t stop working until this is sorted out. Being freelance, if I don’t work I don’t get paid.

July 6th: Today I ring Eircom once more to try and get some kind of answer to when they might get around to connecting to us. I’m told, in a tone of voice that suggests this is a well-used answer, that there is a minimum of 28 days waiting list for a technician to call out. When I ask what the maximum is they tell me they can give me no further information and that everyone waiting is in the same boat. When I try to explain about needing the broadband for work he repeats the mantra…”I’m sorry, but there is a minimum 28 days waiting list…blah blah blah.” He can’t even tell me when this mythical 28 days started from.

**Update. July 7th: I have discovered that there is one company that will provide wireless broadband (no need for a phone line) in my area. On paper the deal even looks better than what I had before…2mb upload and download, 1:24 contention ratio, no limit on downloads, no installation fee. Wow, sounds great right? Yeah, only problem is that it’s with Irish Broadband…one of the most complained about Internet providers in Ireland. A quick search on www.boards.ie returns pages and pages of unhappy customers. There are a few happy ones…but mostly it’s bad. I won’t know which camp I’ll fall into until it’s installed…so, do I take the chance or do I sit it out and wait for Eircom? Rock< --Me-->Hardplace

**Update. July 10th: Well to be honest, we’ve heard nothing more from Eircom; still no word from a technician, still no idea when we’ll be connected. We did however make an appointment with Irish Broadband and they will be coming over tomorrow to hook us up, so I guess we’ll see what their service is like. If it’s fast and reliable I think we’ll be looking at ditching the landline altogether and using VOIP instead. If it’s as bad as some out there on the boards are saying…we’ll drop them and be back to waiting for Eircom.

**Update. July 14th: Irish Broadband came and hooked us up with no problems three days ago. I moved my computer out of my parent’s house and started working from home again on Wednesday. Straight away the connection is faster than we had before using U.tv internet. The other thing we were worried about since it was wireless and dependent on line of sight to a radio mast, was lag but this hasn’t been a problem either. My online gaming habit is in no danger 🙂

So, yesterday, when we received yet another bill from Eircom charging us another month’s line rental for a line we cannot use, we had the pleasure of ringing them and telling them we would no longer be needing their services. We told them that Irish Broadband took three days to come and connect us whereas we’d been waiting over a month for Eircom to even give us a callback. So from here on out it’ll be Skype and mobiles for us and no more Eircom. I need to retitle this thread to “How Eircom Lost A Customer.”