READERS' FORUM:Have your say

A reader called Róisin contacted us to complain about Airtricity. One of its sales reps called to her house last September and, as she had previously switched her electricity supply to the company from the ESB, she was interested to hear more about the gas deal it was offering.

She discussed the details and decided to change supplier, then signed up. She got a letter confirming that Airtricity was in the process of transferring her account, but it went on to say she could no longer avail of the budgeting service for electricity billing because she was now a dual account holder. She contacted the company and cancelled her transfer to Airtricity for gas. She said it was important to her to budget to cover her bills.

“I was reassured that the application to cancel my supply from Bord Gáis had not yet been processed and that my account and supply with Bord Gáis would be uninterrupted.”

Being somewhat sceptical, however, she rang a week later. She was again reassured that the application had been cancelled. Cue a series of problems, the most serious of which saw her hit with an unexpectedly large gas bill from Bord Gáis Energy (because of hitches in the aborted changeover), and Airtricity cancelling her budget plan even though she had not become a dual-fuel customer.

We contacted the company on her behalf and were told that her electricity account had been restored to her chosen payment method, the Airtricity Budget Plan. Not so. We got another mail from her last week. “Is there no end to this saga?” she asks. She was contacted by Airtricity’s customer service manager following our intervention and, after “a lengthy discussion”, was assured that her monthly budget plan for her electricity account was being reinstated. She was offered a token payment of €100 to help address her gas bill. She was assured this €100 would appear in her current account within a few banking days.

“Well, here we are, it’s now March 19th and I’ve not seen a single cent credited to my bank account from Airtricity, and I have just received my online Airtricity bill for €143.21, a two-monthly bill with the full amount due to come out of my bank account via direct debit on March 22nd,” she writes.

We called the company again. A spokesman said Airtricity was “extremely embarrassed” that it had not followed through on resolving our reader’s problem “as we promised we would”. He said that “sometimes, despite our best efforts, we simply make mistakes, as we did in this instance . . . We have now returned Róisin’s account to her chosen budget plan and have applied an additional goodwill gesture to her account. We can only apologise again and commit to ensuring that we don’t let such simple errors reoccur.”

Modem problems

A reader from Shankill, Co Dublin has been driven to near distraction by 3 Mobile, a company she bought a modem from last October. She paid €49.95 for it and there is an ongoing charge of €20 a month, which she pays by direct debit. She says she has had problems from the outset but every time she tries to contact the company, she is put through to a call centre in Mumbai which seems unable to resolve her problems.

She said the call-centre operatives frequently tell her that she has no modem, despite the fact that she is staring at it, and she adds that the service continually dips and takes her offline. “At weekends, when people are watching sport, I can’t get online at all,” she writes. “If I really push it they will refund me a couple of euro but that is not what I want. I want a modem that actually works.”

She says that dealing with the company is “like talking to a wall. All I want is a regular service for the money I am paying”.

3 Mobile says that, after our intervention, its customer service team spoke to our reader. She is apparently on the edge of coverage and the company is the process of trying to resolve the issue in her area. “Unfortunately it has taken too long for us to communicate this situation to her, and for that we apologise,” a company spokeswoman says. She adds that the company has agreed to refund her line rental in full and the cost of the device.

Hidden gift-card costs

Gavin Keane writes to complain about the policies of the PerfectCard gift voucher card for use in Dundrum Town Centre in Dublin.

“I have been unable to redeem the full value of cards I have received, for a number of deeply unsatisfactory reasons,” he writes. He adds that cards having an expiry date is “ridiculous”, pointing out that money has no expiry date. “The honest intention of people to re-package money in a more gift-friendly format should not be punished in this fashion.”

Keane is also critical of the €3 service charge incurred on a monthly basis and “slowly ticking away at the value of the card”. He says that these drawbacks “need to be brought to the attention of as many people as possible in the hope that they will not innocently hand over money for gift cards”.

The card has been run by a company called PerfectCard since 2008. It carries a €3 monthly charge, starting in the 13th month after the card becomes valid. “This is clearly stated on the back of the card, the packaging, the sales desk and our website,” says a company spokeswoman. She also states that there are more than 120 shops where a card be used and that there is a lost card service.

“Given the range of places to spend the card, the fact that your funds are protected, the option to close your account, the lost card facility, the 24/7 customer service number, the clear communication of the fees on the card, packaging and website, the year to spend the card in a considerable variety of places before any fees are charged, and the fact that the card does not expire for a minimum of 2.5 years, we believe this is the best gift card on the market.”