Putting closure on hold
Eircom seems to have happened upon a novel way of hanging on to its customers - by ignoring requests for accounts to be closed.
In April 2007 Katherine, from Dublin 1, e-mailed Eircom asking them to cancel her account. She got an automated e-mail reply which promised her query would be responded to within two working days, which it wasn't. "A few months later, on receiving my next bill, I paid what was owed in phone call charges up to the time I received the bill, but did not include line rental for the next billing period, since I still wanted to cancel my account," she writes. "I also included a letter asking for my account to be cancelled, and pointing out that I had deliberately not included the line rental since I no longer wished to rent the line." This letter too was ignored.
When she got her next bill she hand-delivered a letter to their offices at Marlborough St in Dublin. Her letter said that since she had twice requested her account be cancelled, she had no intention of paying the current bill, which she returned along with the letter. Incredibly, this correspondence was also ignored. Last month she received another bill - which again did not make any acknowledgment of what now amounts to three requests to cancel her account.
"It seems the only thing that will get their attention is to simply ignore this latest bill and let them cut me off. However, I am concerned that this may somehow affect my credit rating down the line. I despair of ever getting a response from them. Can you step in?"
We contacted Eircom last week and within 24 hours our reader's phone line had been disconnected as requested and a representative had apologised to her for the delay in responding to her request and any inconvenience caused. We were told that our reader was "happy that the matter is resolved". A spokeswoman said the first recorded request from Katherine was in December 2007 and said a number of attempts to contact her over the telephone and via e-mail had been unsuccessful.
Technical headache
Vincent Hargaden moved house in August 2007 and decided to shop around for a new phone and broadband provider. He opted for BT's Broadband & Talk package. "The appropriate confirmation of service and router duly arrived, at which point the grief started. I was able to get a dial tone on the phone, but on pressing the fifth digit on any outgoing call, was disengaged. Incoming calls had a ringing tone, but not in the house," he says.
Over a six-week period he had many calls logged with BT customer service but they never seemed to have any history of his previous complaints and failed to come up with a solution. Having spoken to some third party telecoms engineers, he realised the problem was at the exchange.
"But BT technical support didn't want to know. When I threatened to terminate my contract, I got a supervisor, who was apologetic but basically shrugged her shoulders and said there was nothing she could do. I promptly cancelled my contract in writing and requested my bank to cancel the direct debit."
But not before BT had managed to process the first bill, including installation charges of more than €200. He says that further written complaints and demands for a refund went unanswered and a second bill for €92 arrived which was passed to BT's account collections department "culminating in a rather sinister phone call two weeks ago from BT as to why I was refusing to pay. The individual didn't want to know about the history of the technical fault . . . the tone of the call left me in no doubt that they would do whatever was necessary to collect the debt."
He contacted ComReg who were "extremely helpful" and told him to make a formal complaint to BT, which, if unanswered within 10 working days, would allow ComReg to pursue the matter. "Needless to say the 10 working days expired last Friday with no response from BT."
We contacted BT and a spokeswoman said the company "always welcomes customer feedback". She expressed BT's "sincere apologies to Mr Hargaden for any inconvenience caused" and confirmed that "we have been in contact with Mr. Hargaden to thoroughly review his issues and appropriate actions have been taken to resolve them."
Blog on here
Customer service
I'm not so sure that the core issue is cost. Bad management has a lot to answer for. Call centre agents who are measured and bonused based on the number of calls completed will of course rush to get you off the phone. I'd do the same in their shoes. A good call centre will measure based on customer satisfaction - harder to measure, but much more effective. - Serial Complainer
I completely agree with the comments in this article; when we were searching for a mortgage a few years ago, at the height of the property speculation craze, we went with the lender who actually returned my phone calls, and answered my questions, over companies where the staff were following a script, working to make a quota of "sales" for the month. - Owen
No change there, then
It's not as though we needed a report to confirm it, but a Forfás study has found that we pay higher prices for many goods and services than our EU counterparts, despite the creation of the Single European Market 18 years ago. While the Single Market has been important to both the growth and diversification of Irish trade, the huge discrepancy between Ireland and other EU states in the price of certain internationally branded products is not easy to justify, the report says.
