Comreg consultation on Internet Diallers

mike65

The Last Word on Today FM is talking about this right now.

Mike.

spongebob

eircomtribunal wrote:

"Draft Direction 2 a) Providers of Publicly Available Telephone Services shall..."

P.

Every licencee that is !. Some phonecard systems are excluded as you ring an intermediate number first such as 1800 or 0818 before you outdial from their system at secondary dialtone.

M

Cuauhtemoc

The Last Word on Today FM is talking about this right now.

Only lasted a couple of minutes.
I thought Hugh Lenehan came across as a bit anti the proposal from comreg.

Also not a mention of the biggest earner from the scam either, pity they didn't research the story more and have some comment from sources other than comreg, who are unlikely to accuse our telco outright of profiteering from this.

Mr_Magoo

Hi. just been on to eircom customer support with no satisfaction
regarding porn dialler phone charges..see below for email we sent.




This Email is in response in not receiving any satisfaction
from a telephone converstion to your revolving door customer
service department.
The average bill for account no.
is 200 euro per month.
The bill for the last three months were 500, 400 and 300
euro plus, respectively.
These increases are intirely due to "porn dialer"
viruses that have evaded detection on our p.c. and caused
calls to premium rate numbers i.e. band 13, e.g. Diego Garcia.
Today we rang your customer service to block
calls to this "band 13" premium rate numbers and were told
they are unable to do so despite being aware of this problem
and also that BT in the uk have been proactive in blocking
these numbers for their customers.
This is a scandalous abuse of
your own customers, when to fail to take appropriate action
to protect them from future abuse. Also to fail to recognise
a commercial disaster on your part compounded by refusing
some sort of rebate on our bills, pushes us to
find an alternative supplier.
we await your comments.

p.s. anyone recommend a good supplier..?

Ripwave

Mr_Magoo wrote:

These increases are intirely due to "porn dialer"
viruses that have evaded detection on our p.c. and caused
calls to premium rate numbers i.e. band 13, e.g. Diego Garcia.

Is this dialler still evading detection? Is there any chance that these Diego Garcia calls weren't in fact made from your phone?

eircomtribunal

Mr_Magoo wrote:

BT in the uk have been proactive in blocking
these numbers for their customers....This is a scandalous abuse of
your own customers, when to fail to take appropriate action
to protect them from future abuse.

Eircom have not simply failed to take protective action for their customers, they have deliberately acted to maximise their profits from those Internet scams, by setting up the 360cent per minute Band 13, which bundles all the scam-infested regions, two years ago.
Eircom makes sure that none of their customers can protect themselves in an easy and cost-effective way against porn-diallers by blocking international calls and using a cheap 13636(Vartec) or 1890(Telestunt and others)International carrier for their international calls: They put up the stumbling blocks of a considerable set-up charge and a monthly charge – on top of that they discourage anyone who still wants to go for international call barring, by telling them, that Eircom will only guarantee international voice call blocking and not blocking of the modem.
I cannot see much difference between Eircom's and National Irish Bank's "activities", besides the fact that Eircom are using third party scams for their own interest and are not setting those stealth diallers up themselves.

While Comreg will probably put an end to this "business" by forcing the Telcos to treat the Band 13 countries as opt-in numbers, we should not turn a blind eye on what happened in the last two years.
After all National Irish Bank and AIB were not told: O.K. you were a bit naughty there, beginning next month you are not allowed to screw your customers in that way, but we will not ask you to rectify what you've done in the last years.
Alone the number of customers which have notified Comreg in 2004 and the sort of money involved would justify a thorough investigation, but surely the actual number of people and the actual amount of money involved is a multiple of those figures. And those figures can very easily be investigated from the account documents of Eircom.

Mr.Magoo, I'd be very interested to hear how your story develops. If you don't mind, please contact me by sending an email to "info@eircomtribunal.com"

Peter

PS. We've published a list of Irish Telco's and some recommendations on the last to blogs of www.comwreck.com

spongebob

Mr_Magoo wrote:

Hi. just been on to eircom customer support with no satisfaction
regarding porn dialler phone charges.?

While you are waiting you should do 2 things.

1. As a victim of fraud you should report the crime to the fraud squad, see www.garda.ie for details. Name David Mc Redmond and Phil Nolan as the suspects to be investigated, they are senior Eircom bods.

2. Clean the damn thing up WHEN the guards give you the go ahead, destroying evidence is not a good idea so you can carry on making calls after the Fraud Squad acknowledge your complaint because you have evidence on your PC.

If you are not reporting it to the Fraud Squad

3. CLEAN THE PC NOW and Patch it up .

4. Also ditch Internet Explorer forthwith and use Mozilla firefox browser instead , 3Mbit download www.mozilla.org. Switching to Mozilla will not affect the evidence already on your PC

M

Mr_Magoo

Received an email from eircom customer care saying the matter will be investigated and someone will be in touch as soon as possible. or words to that effect...
Im going to be away for the weekend, but will keep you posted.

Mr_Magoo

eircomtribunal

Has anyone access to those articles in the Irish Times and could post them or let us know the gist of them?
"State wins from telecom leasing"
"Bid to end 'modem hijacking'"

P.