If you approach Liveline from a comedy viewpoint it's often comedy gold. And I don't mean the horrendous Funny Fridays. I have learnt an amazing amount about EIR listening back in my car this week alone. And got oddles of entertainment. There is a serious point to what Joe does, and he gets things done. So to summarisse on EIR:
- They exist as a result of a state sell off of the underlying infrastructure and companies taking all profits from same. As you outlined.
- The guy in charge is called Oliver
- Eir were taken to court, finally, by Com Reg.
- Court found in each of the 10 individual's cases that Eir was at fault.
- They got a paltry fine as it was the District court.
- Eir then offered a measly sop of 20K to the judge for charity. If ever there was an insult that was. The dogs on the street know Eir boses were laughing when they offered that.
- After the case Oliver came on RTE and promised that Eir was the most wonderful organisation that existed on the planet. Including, ahem, a 2 minute phone reply to customers.
- Oliver unfortunately for him, said he was available to media, so Joe lampooned that mercilessly.
- Oliver/Eir tried to 'pretend' the judgment was not so bad, and that Com Reg were wrong
- That was pretty stupid, Com Reg got mad and sent out a counter, in a carefully worded letter
- To this day Eir is pretending their staff manual instructions did not instruct staff to do everything to avoid dealing with any customer complaints.
- Com Reg is toothless, only when a company is so egregious that they cannot deliberately ignore them do they take action (so thanks Joe we all know that now)
- Com Reg should not be paid by utility companies, that's a conflict of interest
- Why is their no actual consumer champion