It’s quiet, so I decided I’d post my Eircom rant!
My now fiancee and I moved into our new house in June 2006. This was in a new estate being built not far from Limerick city. I ordered a phone line from Eircom in July 2006, primarily to get broadband into the house. Having heard nothing, after about a month, I started ringing the customer care line to find out what was going on.
The first thing I was told was that it was a problem with the developer on site. So, I rang the foreman on the site who told me there was a dispute with Eircom over the trunking for the lines, but that it was pretty much resolved and the work should be starting shortly. So, I took that as meaning probably another month’s wait for the phone line.
Again, after no contact from Eircom, I got back onto the customer care line. This was probably around mid September 2006, and the installation date was given as December. I continued on to talk to one of the customer care agents, who could tell me nothing further. I continuously checked, and at one point was told by a customer care agent that the date in December sounded ‘made up’, and that it would probably be installed before the end of November. This didn’t happen.
On another occasion, the customer care representative patched me through to the Limerick engineer’s phone, which wasn’t answered. I left a message and a phone number, but received no response. At this point, I lodged a complaint with Eircom via their online service. I got a few automated responses from this, and one human response asking for my address. I sent back my address, my Eircom account number and my Eircom order number. I heard nothing further on this complaint.
With the complaint to Eircom going nowhere, I submitted a complaint to ComReg, the Irish communications regulator. This was about as useful as submitting another complaint to Eircom, as all ComReg did was forward my complaint to Eircom. Naturally, this was never followed up by either Eircom or ComReg.
The line wasn’t installed before the date in December either. I finally got on to a helpful customer care representative though, who went to the trouble of finding out what the problem was, and when the line would be installed. I got another installation date of the end of January 2007 – nearly 7 full months after the order was placed.
Again, approaching this date I had heard nothing from Eircom, and I was far from expectant of having the line installed by this deadline. However, the media had picked up on Eircom’s customer dissatisfaction around the country. Louise (my fiancee) heard complaints being read out on Ray D’Arcy’s show on Today FM. Not thinking too much about it, she sent in an email roughly outlining our issues up to then. She received a reply from Today FM the following day saying that both Eircom and the Irish Independent newspaper were looking for contact details for everyone who contacted the radio show, and could they pass on our details. We consented to this, and shortly afterwards Louise got another email, this time from Prime Time, a current affairs television show. They requested an interview to air that night with a piece they were planning on running about Eircom’s customer dissatisfaction. Louise was a bit shy, so I said I’d do the interview! This was aired live that night on national tv (now archived online).
I got a phone call the following morning, the day my phone line was due to be installed, from Eircom’s Head of Communications. He looked into the issues which caused the delay in my getting service, and surprise surprise – I got a phone line installed that day! Within a week it was broadband enabled, and within a fortnight I had my modem and was online from home.
I still have an outstanding issue, which is that on Eircom’s Code of Practice they state :
Installation – under the terms of our customer service guarantee if we fail to install your line within 10 working days of our agreeing to do so you can claim a credit of two months free rental.
I received a bill for the installation and 2 months rental. I’ve questioned this twice with the Head of Communications and both times he said he’d get back to me with an answer when someone else got back to him with it. I still haven’t heard back from him on it. I did hear from Eircom though that this credit is usually applied on the third bill. This was from a customer care representative, but I don’t think he was following up on my query. I think it was a followup call after the phone line installation.
Despite the horrendous customer care, the Eircom service has been fine. It’s only been installed a couple of weeks, but I have no complaints. However, Louise’s workplace are having terrible problems with their broadband connection from Eircom (it’s down more often than not), and her experience dealing with them on it is very similar to our own when we were looking for a phone line. So, while an appearance on national tv has solved my issues, it doesn’t seem to have pushed Eircom into dealing with the underlying problem – their terrible customer care.
