Comreg stoutly defend Eircom Line Rental Charges

spongebob

.....and defend them to the hilt, its not Eircoms fault (or Comreg's) because Eircom did absolutely everything right and by the book ... read on.

For starters.

ComReg received a complaint made against Esat BT for an advertisement that appeared in the Sunday Tribune and Sunday Independent dated 18th January 2004.

Ahhhh, Comreg are in charge of advertising standards now, thats a new one Here is why they have taken this over for themselves.

The Code of Practice for CPS sets out the rules and procedures which operators wishing to offer CPS services in the Republic of Ireland must follow. It covers customer contracts, use of customer information, order-handling process, promotion of CPS, bill payment, tariff presentation, complaint and enquiry handling and the activities of the telecommunications service providers to “win back” lost customers. All undertakings providing CPS and eircom are bound by the CPS Code of Practice.

You mean like not lying to customers on the doorstep, slamming them to Eircom and suchlike, quite . The following is deemed a heinous crime by Comreg, I wonder if anyone in here would agree. ?

The statements contained in both advertisements “Sick of eircom’s rental
rip off?” and “eircom rip off”, are untrue categorisations that are
misleading, derogatory and detrimental to eircom’s reputation. Esat BT
is fully aware of the basis for eircom’s line rental charges and therefore
this can be only taken as a deliberate intention to mislead customers.

Misleading customers is worse than ripping them off then is it ? Reality check time in Comreg I should think! On they go anyway.

Eircom has reduced prices significantly since
1997 and to suggest eircom does not value its customers is totally
contrary to the spirit of the CPS Code of Practice.

But the ad is about LINE RENTAL which has almost doubled since 1997 and was directly prompted by a LINE RENTAL HIKE you muppets.

"send a plain and powerful message to ripoff
Ireland’s worst offender…”. This is inflammatory, misleading and
wholly derogatory in its terms. It is made all the more objectionable
given Esat BT’s familiarity with the lack of objective truth to this
allegation.

ESAT BT were spot on there, they deserve an Advertising Award for the content and nature of the Bus Stop ads in my opinion, not a pompous polemic from a failure like Comreg.....who had a tad more to say after all the above

“24% increase in the eircom line rental in 12 months.” This is factually
incorrect and misleading. The advertisement creates the impression that
none of eircom’s prices would apply to customers that “switch to Esat
CPS CoP Breach/Esat BT advertising breach

Buy a calculator for Comreg someone. The logic behind that ad was that you take as much business off Eircom as you could....by switching to ESAT or any other CPS carrier for that matter.

This categorisation of the charges for eircom’s line
rental service as being a “rip off” which may lead consumers to believe
they are overcharging is not based on fact since the charges for line
rental are currently regulated prices as approved by ComReg from time
to time.

It IS based on fact . We were paying the highest Line Rental in the EU for years...then it went up again. ESAT could be accused of hijacking the Zeitgeist but no more. I think that ESAT should slap this crap up in a Bus shelter with Comregs number at the bottom . Call it a public service announcement. There is a load more whinging from Comreg where that came from Here (right pane) , they also tried to slap Smart Telecoms botty and they delivered a weak slap on the wrist to the Eircom winback campaign .....their knobbly kneed idea of balance I suspect but an insult to us all really both to mind and pocket.

M