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Not so Smart

Residents of an apartment complex in west Dublin have contacted us after enduring more than two years of bad reception and poor customer service from a television provider.

Adrian Cummins was the first to get in touch with his tale of woe. The only television service to which residents of his 500-apartment complex in Park West have access is from Smart Telecom (satellite dishes are forbidden by the property management company and no other providers are allowed access to the complex). The service is called Smart Vision but, Cummins says, there is nothing remotely smart about the service and the vision is often seriously compromised.

Cummins and his partner bought their apartment in 2005 and have experienced heartache with their TV on an almost nightly basis ever since. He told Pricewatch that he could be watching a soccer match when the picture freezes "and you might not have any coverage for two hours". Sometimes the picture goes but the sound continues, while on other occasions the screen is pixelated, making viewing impossible.

He says that, as part of the residents' committee, he has been "battling with Smart" for more than two years now, "with no joy at all".

He says he has correspondence from Smart dating back to 2006, promising that the problem will be fixed - but it has continued. He is paying €33.60 a month for his service and, all told, has shelled out €1,141 in fees to Smart Telecom in return for a whole lot of frustration. When he told the company he was no longer willing to pay for the service, he was threatened with disconnection.

The company has recognised that there is a problem, he says, and last summer offered him and other residents a refund of €304. It also promised to resolve the issue.

We contacted Smart Telecom on the complex's behalf, and the company acknowledged "that technical difficulties in the past have caused frustration for residents" but said it believed the technical issue was now resolved "and that the new upgraded service is providing an excellent service". A spokesman said that, last June, after a €65 million refinancing package which brought a new management team to Smart, "the company pinpointed Park West Pointe as a priority legacy issue to be resolved". It identified a problem with the hardware supplying Smart Vision to 333 customers and rebuilt the infrastructure with a view to upgrading these residents.

"Since November the company has upgraded the vast majority of customers - 239 Park West residents in total. A further 94 customers are due to be upgraded by the end of January," a statement said. "The upgrade of the final 94 residents is slightly more time-consuming, as it requires individual apartment-by-apartment upgrades."

The company said that while it is the only telecommunications provider at Park West, it "is by no means the exclusive one. Smart Telecom does not have an exclusivity agreement". It added that the new management team "has been working tirelessly to improve technical support and customer service procedures".

Leather scam

Walking through Dún Laoghaire, a Dublin reader was stopped by the driver of a car who had pulled up looking for directions to the M50.

"I explained to him how he should proceed and he told me that he was a rep for an Italian leather company who was in Dublin with samples. He showed me three leather jackets on the back seat of the car and asked if I would be interested in any of them."

Our reader was told import duty had been paid on them, which could not be recovered. "He also showed me a car-rental form to prove that he would be leaving. I reckoned that there was some kind of scam going on or that the jackets were stolen. However, I said that I'd take one of them, but that I had very little money on me . . . Eventually, I gave him €85 for a black jacket in soft leather. Even if it was a scam, I thought that I had come out of it okay."

Except he hadn't. When he brought the jacket to a leather shop to have the sleeves shortened, he discovered that the jacket was PVC!

"Then I searched the internet. I found the same scam reported in the US and England. The format was identical: directions to the airport and the story about import duty. The brand name was Reportage RGA, with an Armani-style logo. The only real leather part of the jackets is the little tag which says 'real leather'!"