Broadband, TV - oh and a burglar alarm too: you can get telecom services you don't understand at a special price, writes Ann Marie Hourihane.
WHAT IS bundling? I don't understand it. Wasn't it bundling when medieval people used to sew two sacks together, each containing a nubile young person, and then leave them together for the night to see if they were sexually compatible, prior to their betrothal ? A concept which was both sensible and erotic.
Our bundling doesn't seem to work that way. We keep our young people tied up in call centres, poor things. It is from these call centres, one assumes, that our young people start cold-calling the customers of the telephone companies.
A couple of weeks ago my call came, from Jimmy (not his real name) who was American and very enthusiastic. If he asked me once if I was having a good day, he asked me seven times. The fact that I continued to reply in the affirmative is a tribute to Jimmy's interpersonal skills.
Eircom was offering a wonderful deal, Jimmy said. I wanted to know why Eircom was offering this wonderful deal at this time. Jimmy said it was because Eircom wanted the best for its customers. I tried to explain how the Irish public feel about their utilities providers , but it is kind of complicated and we were both tired. Jimmy offered a very good deal indeed, with huge reductions in the charges for broadband and some phone calls. But in Ireland, decades of oppression have left your average consumer - or perhaps in this case your below-average consumer - with a suspicious turn of mind.
Time to phone a friend who knows about bundling. She's the one who found out that you can't bundle your phonewatch burglar alarm with a company other than Eircom unless you buy a mysterious special box . The new company, which was trying - successfully - to seduce her away from her monogamous relationship with Eircom, had never explained this point about the burglar alarm to her. When she raised the issue during the final negotiations, the new phone company replied, rather magnificently, "We've outsourced our marketing." In other words, they are not responsible for what their sales staff say or neglect to say. Nice.
My friend then had two telephone lines and, after weeks of research, had to wait 30 days for the new digital one to be disconnected She now has two telephones, one for which Chorus-NTL did not charge her. This, somehow, is capitalism.
My friend thought Jimmy was offering a great deal too. "Phone Eircom back immediately," she said. "And accept." When I phoned back Eircom's 1-800 number, a very nice man called Donal answered. (Donal is not his real name). He explained that Jimmy should never have offered that very good deal in the first place. The price was too low. Donal didn't say that Eircom had outsourced its marketing but he made it pretty clear that he, Donal, was the supervisor. He said that he, Donal, worked in Eircom all the time. That seemed to come quite close to saying that they had outsourced their marketing. No one should have offered such a low price, Donal said. He gave a significantly higher offer for my broadband and phone services combined.
I phoned Chorus-NTL. I spoke to a very nice man called Brian (not his real etc). He said that he could offer me X rate for broadband and Y rate for phone calls but nothing for the television, even though NTL has been our television provider, as it were, for years.
Then he found out where I lived and said that this offer was not available in our postal district. Brian was the team leader. We arranged that I would phone him back. That was in June. In July, Chorus-NTL confirmed that the offer was not available in our area.
Meanwhile, my friend was wading her way through a lot of bundling literature and the red leaflet from Smart which urged us all to "Fall In Love With Your Broadband Again". Hopefully Smart didn't send this leaflet round the country, where quite a lot of people never had an opportunity to fall in love with their broadband in the first place, no matter how many amorous letters they wrote.
My friend is still reading "Get More From Your Phonewatch Alarm", issued by Eircom. It offers a GSM monitoring unit, which used to be €270 but was subsequently reduced to €149.
And there's an interesting piece of news: "If you have recently changed to a digital phone line . . . we are unable to monitor your alarm over a digital phone line such as VoiP. To continue with your 24-hour monitoring you will need to have a GSM monitoring unit installed . . . Your broadband connection will not affect the monitoring of your alarm provided you have a broadband splitter installed." So here we have the mysterious special box that the rival telephone company failed to tell my friend about.
But the thing is she doesn't know if she has a broadband splitter or not. And she's too exhausted to find out. She wants to be a good consumer - knowledgeable yet tempestuous, the kind of woman who can take up her mortgage and walk. But she's just too confused to save money: I believe many of us are.
My phone call to BT is just a blur. Being a consumer these days is a full-time job.