Anyone else hit with 300 euro + bill from Eircom when changing to EsatBT dsl?

simonm2

seamus wrote:

Sounds like Eircom know they're going to lose and are looking at damage limitation.

They cannot change the T's & C's for existing customers, or for those who are sueing over the bills, they can only make sure that future customers can't sue too.

I got a call from the Small Claims Court yesterday. Eircom has contacted them offering a settlement. As reported to me, it is in effect that they will write off the complete amount of the overcharge as I requested. I don't know as of yet if they are trying to put in some sort of sneaky conditions - I don't think they can given the scope of the small claims procedure.

Anyway - to anyone concerned, the word is take them to the small claims court - they will settle as they effectively don't have a leg to stand on. I will summarize this thread once I have all the paperwork completed.

From the rumour mill, this seems to be a bit different to their usual behaviour in that they have actively offered to settle, rather than loosing by default by simply not responding.

The saga continues.

ShadowFax: do the small claims court thing. Even if they scream and shout, they will settle. I have an email trail which I haven't yet put on the board which blows every single argument they might use out of the water. I was half hoping they wouldn't settle so that I could produce it in court - they would be laughed out all the way to the other side of the planet. Get your money back!

simonm2

Paddy20 wrote:

Simonm2,

I know how you feel, but do you not think that moving to the UK, because you are "fed up" dealing with EirCoN, is a bit extreme. Hardly worth taking such drastic measures just because of some idiotic telecom's companie's disgraceful behaviour.

Paddy20: First of all thanks for the odca link way back when. The change in Eircon T&C is a result of my following up your suggestion. Well worth the effort. As for being fed up with the whole show -- I'm writing this from London where I took up an offer a couple of weeks ago - commuting at the moment but am likely to move soon. With Eircon's superb support of home grown businesses, it is damn hard to survive in the IT biz in Oireland.

Curiously I got a call today from Galway inviting me for an interview for a job (in the NUIG) where applications closed on the 6th of August - I politely declined - nice and all as the job was, three months for shortlisting and four months to interview doesn't work very well for me - not to mention half the salary.

Of the people I was involved with in the IT sector over the last 4 years most are working in the UK at the moment. Irritations concerning broadband/telecoms and lack of support from banks or the government for small Irish companies is the main reason why people have left.

Oh dear - I'm ranting - time to go home ...

gline

Good to hear eircom lost and admitted they were wrong, well done mate

spongebob

Good Stuff Simon.

M

simonm2

simonm2 wrote:

Hi,

I was an Anytime 150 customer - moved to EsatBts dsl trial as soon as my exchange was enabled - cancelled the Anytime sub by phone. Next bill had 296 euros plus vat (360 ish) for just over a months Anytime. Eircom claim its street legal. (section 9.3 of t&c ). I am contesting it strongly - meantime they have cut off my phone. I should note that although I was on Eircoms list for dsl I found out purely by accident that our exchange was enabled - Eircom never called me to offer me the service (so whats new baby).

Anyone else came across this? Anyone take Eircom to court on it?

Simon

Added December 28th 2004:

Summary as promised somewhere earlier in the thread:

Small Claims Court worked for me.

In July 2004 I took up the EsatBT aDSL 3 month free trial offer and cancelled my Eircom Anytime 150 subscription. In August a bill for Eircom for 360 Euros for approx 1 months Anytime 150 service arrived. Eircom's 1901 "agent" hung up on me when I attempted to query the bill (whether through incompetence, policy or accident I do not know: this is was the subject of a complaint to Comreg which has so far not been answered 4 months later). I exchanged a sequence of emails with another Eircom person which went from the ridiculous to the sublime: the writer did not seem to be aware that one email contradicted the next and indeed at times the emails were self contradictory. In essence Eircom's T & C are so complex that Eircom's employee's haven't the foggiest what they mean. The email trail that I was left with would have them laughed out of any court.

Eircom claimed in writing (email) that it would be "unfair" to other customers if they did not apply the additional charge to me (i.e 2 Euros and hour for internet instead of 20c) while at the same time it is clear that the charge was not applied to various other people and that some people were told about the possibility of this charge while others were not. Conclusion: nothing is "unfair" if it suits them.

I then initiated a small claims court procedure (in September) asking for a refund of the approx 310 Euros which I reckon was the excess charge based on a pro-rata daily rate. As Eircom plc is Dublin based I had to post the form to the Dublin small claims court. It took something like 8-10 weeks before anything happened. Eventually Eircom simply agreed to settle - as far as I can make out they did this just one to two days before they would have automatically lost by default. Someone from their legal department even rang to assure me that they weren't trying to add in some "conditions" - I had expressed concern about this to the lady from the small claims court who rang me (and was very helpful and nice I might add) to tell me that Eircom were willing to settle.

The settlement took the form of a "miscellaneous" credit into my Eircom account which cancelled out the amount of notional "arrears" which was on my bill - I should add that I never paid what Eircom asked for, only what I calculated was due. These notional "arrears" resulted in my phone being cut off - service was restored a week or two after Eircom agreed to settle but only when I wrote an email pointing that out that they had no grounds to cut off my phone if I didn't in fact owe them money. It was not restored automatically. I intend to follow this up as I feel they had no ground whatsoever to cut off my phone service in the first place.

At some point I followed the suggestion in this thread to contact the Office of the Director of Consumer Affairs (ODCA) - my point was that I felt it was wrong to advertise a service as having no minimum contract and at the same time demand 30 days notice in writing to terminate the service or to backdate charges on some notional grounds. The ODCA was extremely quick to stamp on Eircom - as far as I can see Eircom rewrote a few of the offending terms within 2 weeks of my first writing to the ODCA.

If Eircom has charged you a "punitive" fee for dropping their Anytime 150 service a smalls claims process will get it back for you. They have refunded other people either because of a small claims court procedure or because the person was persistent enough on the phone. I am not sure what the maximum time you can wait is before you put in a small claims application but I suspect under the circumstances where Eircom have been forced by the ODCA to revise their terms, the time limit would be quite long. I think a refund would also be due in the circumstance where you waited 30 days during which you did not use the service and then cancelled it at the end of the period thereby paying for 30 days service which you did not receive.

I had intended to put in the small claims court reference unfortunately I can't lay my hands on it at the moment. If/when I find it I will add it in.

Thanks to all of you who helped and gave encouragement.

Simon

Nevyn

maxheadroom wrote:

So the eircom "flat rate" dial up products are actually offered through eircom retail?

Didn't know that, and it seems a bit weird. I mean, the ESB isn't allowed to cut off your electricity if you can't pay for something you bought in shop electric and "put on the bill".

Or is it just a case of CER being much better than ComReg?

haha and guess who ericom.net services are contracted to ?
wait for it indigo.

yup they feck my bill up over charging they were wrong i did not want to pay the bill in error but they could not sort the bill out and i had to wait nearly 2 months for a check for the sum in error and when it arrive with a letter with an eircom.net paper in an eircom envlope it had an indigo check in it.


just make sure simonm2 they dont charge you a reconnection fee.

Stephen

Congratulations Simon, its nice to see the consumer get the upper hand against companies like Eircom.

damien

If anyone has anymore experiences like this with eircom Anytime, please post them here.

Damien.

Marcopolo85

simonm2 wrote:

Hi,

I was an Anytime 150 customer - moved to EsatBts dsl trial as soon as my exchange was enabled - cancelled the Anytime sub by phone. Next bill had 296 euros plus vat (360 ish) for just over a months Anytime. Eircom claim its street legal. (section 9.3 of t&c ). I am contesting it strongly - meantime they have cut off my phone. I should note that although I was on Eircoms list for dsl I found out purely by accident that our exchange was enabled - Eircom never called me to offer me the service (so whats new baby).

Anyone else came across this? Anyone take Eircom to court on it?

Simon

Just checked Eircom.ie and they claim to sell a TalkTime option (including Line Rental) for €27.99 a month, which gives you 300 off-peak minutes. Am I correct in ststing that their off-peak rate is 1c per minute? If Line Rental is €24 then doesn't that also mean that they're charging you for 399 minutes, buy only giving you 300??!!

kaizersoze

Marcopolo85 wrote:

Just checked Eircom.ie and they claim to sell a TalkTime option (including Line Rental) for €27.99 a month, which gives you 300 off-peak minutes. Am I correct in ststing that their off-peak rate is 1c per minute? If Line Rental is €24 then doesn't that also mean that they're charging you for 399 minutes, buy only giving you 300??!!

Line rental is €24.18
and your forgetting the minimum call charge of 6.34c (which doesn't apply on the talktime packages AFAIK)

Marcopolo85

kaizersoze wrote:

Line rental is €24.18
and your forgetting the minimum call charge of 6.34c (which doesn't apply on the talktime packages AFAIK)

Yep, but I also forget to mention that they also give 120 minutes to anywhere in Ireland also. Which means that if you sign up to that basic package, Eircom give you a whole 20 miuntes (20c) free. You're absolutely right - I forgot about the minimum setup charge. It's interesting to note that ALL the operators charge this - but it varies. I'm with UTV Talk (has to be the best vaule around - can't get much better than free!) and I think their one is 5.07c.