my non existent eir

amtc

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I switched from upc to eir a month ago. A man came out to do broadband...but I would have had to place the order for tv and phone separately for him to be despatched another twice....another two days off work....this couldn't be done for two weeks and left me with no service..some bundle. So I cancelled and went back to virgin media.

Anyway today I get a bill for 58 euro. Ring up and they can't do anything with an account number. But I don't have one...the field on the bill was blank. So eventually it turns out it was a charge for the modem. Apparently on cancellation someone should pick it up....but no one did....so the girl said to post it back. I pointed out this would cost me....
 
Great to see it still has some of that Post & Telegraphs culture!
The bearded ones should be delighted; imagine all of the unnecessary jobs they "protect"!
 
The bizarre thing is I worked for eircom, ComReg and An Post.....demons coming back to haunt me!
 
If change in the way we do business became apparent anywhere, it was especially in the Telecommunications industry. I used to work for P & T which became Telecom Eireann and later Eircom. I left many years ago and am eternally grateful for my cessation to work there. And if there is one item that came with "improvement of service" it was the dreaded telephone answering system with press 1 for this and press 2 for that which has customers going nowhere except round in circles. Eventually, you manage to source a real person to listen to you and you off-load on him. This guy is a Call Centre Jockey. Typical Paddy-the-Irishman, you get somebody to listen to you and you bug the livin' daylights out of him. Eventually, he gets tired of your complaints and no matter what you say, he cannot help you. He has every ombudsman obstacle strewn in your way and he cannot fast forward your complaint. He is on a 3 months contract and has more problems than you. At least, you are still working; he doesn't know if he will be working at Christmas.

You are then informed that Comreg approves this stupid, labourious, time-wasting voicemail and like it or not you're stuck with it. If it's not Comreg, its some EU ludicrous rule. Competition in the telecomms industry was supposed to improve customer service, not make it worse. The quicker Eir employs staff with some sort of personal responsibility the quicker they will regain customers.
 
The problem is Leper, companies like Eir have managed to successfully put enough of a barrier between the customer and those actually responsible for resolving customers issues so that the people customers speak to can do no more than listen and forward on the complaint. So ultimately the customer can no longer speak to those who can actually do something about their complaint. This is progress apparently!
Having recently experienced Eir's "customer service" all I can say is thank God there are still decent genuine engineers working for Eir - someone that you can actually speak in person with if you see them out in the community. My own issue was resolved within hours of having done this after a week of going around in circles on the phone to "customer service"! The engineer went out of his way to help but said if we hadn't asked him personally we could have been waiting another two weeks to get it resolved!
 
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Nice post Ceist Beag and I agree with all you said and fair play to that Eir technician who took personal responsibility to immediately resolve your telecommunications problem.

The trouble is if one of Eir's competitors hears about the fast-tracked solution the telecomms regulator Comreg will be on that technician's case and so will the management of Eir. So, that helpful guy could find his ass kicked bigtime for his help, I kid you not.

It's situations like this that leave intelligent people thinking.
 
I used to have a Dell laptop. It was having problems so I called their help line. I got through to a person within a minute. It was a lady in India but she was excellent and spoke perfect English. With my permission she accessed my computer and ascertained that there was a problem with the motherboard. She said a technician would call out tomorrow to replace it and asked if she could install software to save the engineer time when he got top me. She did so and I hung up.

I got a call that evening confirming the appointment for 9.30 the following morning. I got a call at 8.30 the following morning to confirm that I was still available. The engineer arrived at 9.25 and was gone by 9.40. Superb service with no stress and at a low cost to Dell as lower cost employees did as much of the job as possible remotely. Their high cost local engineer probably got through twice as many calls because of it.

The only other company who comes close for customer service is Sky.
 
The trouble is if one of Eir's competitors hears about the fast-tracked solution the telecomms regulator Comreg will be on that technician's case and so will the management of Eir. So, that helpful guy could find his ass kicked bigtime for his help, I kid you not.
Absolutely, I hear you Leper. That's why Eir won't be getting the real story from me if they enquire about how I got on - as far as I'm concerned ours was the next in line on the engineers list.
 
I used to have a Dell laptop. It was having problems so I called their help line. I got through to a person within a minute. It was a lady in India but she was excellent and spoke perfect English. With my permission she accessed my computer and ascertained that there was a problem with the motherboard. She said a technician would call out tomorrow to replace it and asked if she could install software to save the engineer time when he got top me. She did so and I hung up.

I got a call that evening confirming the appointment for 9.30 the following morning. I got a call at 8.30 the following morning to confirm that I was still available. The engineer arrived at 9.25 and was gone by 9.40. Superb service with no stress and at a low cost to Dell as lower cost employees did as much of the job as possible remotely. Their high cost local engineer probably got through twice as many calls because of it.

The only other company who comes close for customer service is Sky.
Dell is a retail client rather than a service provider so it's not really a like for like comparison but if we're going to mention retail client customer service then Amazon for me beat the rest hands down. Just today, they sent me an email saying they are refunding me for the difference in price on an item I bought 10 days ago as the price has reduced this week for Black Friday - now that's impressive customer service!
 
Well fair play to Amazon. They were under no obligation to reduce the price and they did. Look at what we're used to in Ireland e.g. you are a customer of a particular service provider for years and you pay through the nose. They are trying to attract new business (or winbacks) and they reduce prices for them while screwing those who remained loyal for years. There's a lesson in there somewhere.
 
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