At least 200,000 households are not taking advantage of discount schemes that could save them hundreds of euro on their Eircom phone bills, writes Jamie Smyth.
New figures supplied to The Irish Times yesterday by Eircom show that just 700,000 residential customers signed up for discounts out of a total customer base of about 1.1 million.
The discount schemes, introduced in early 2002, are only available to the 900,000 customers who use Eircom for calls and line rental. This means at least 200,000 customers have failed to sign up. The schemes can save consumers up to 25 per cent on certain local, national and international telephone calls.
The Consumers Association of Ireland criticised Eircom yesterday for not automatically making the discount schemes available to all customers. But Eircom said it could not automatically put people on certain discount schemes as it couldn't assume what people's telephone call patterns would be.