[Article by SBP] Eircom is caught out on overcharging firms (again)

damien

Following up from last weeks story the SBP gets more mileage again from this.


Eircom is caught out on overcharging firms
03/10/04
By Gavin Daly

Eircom has admitted overcharging business customers for obsolete and non existent equipment, documents obtained by The Sunday Business Post reveal. This is despite denials from the company last week that customers were paying hidden charges for equipment that did not exist. Documents provided by David G Nolan, an independent consultant who has investigated telecoms charging since 1987, show that Eircom has given rebates and credits to companies, in some cases running into tens of thousands of euro.

Nolan, who has worked with hundreds of companies and has almost daily contact with Eircom, said its rejection of claims about hidden charges was "quite unsustainable''. He said almost every client he worked with had been charged by Eircom for redundant or non-existent equipment. "The charges range from a few euro a month to a few hundred euro a month." Nolan - whose documents show Eircom has been overcharging customers for at least ten years - said he believed the firm was "collecting substantial charges for non-existent or obsolete services''.

Last May, Nolan secured a refund of €16,291.75 for a hospital after Eircom admitted overcharging for non-existent equipment. As revealed in The Sunday Business Post last weekend, the telecoms giant has charged customers for equipment such as switches, wooden plinths and connecting apparatus. Last year, following pressure from Nolan, Eircom paid a rebate of €9,300 to a customer it had wrongly charged for 16 external extensions. It gave a credit of a further €1,747.33 to the same customer for a discount scheme that had not been properly applied, according to a letter to Nolan from Chris Lowe, Eircom's director of retail business.

In that letter, Lowe confirmed that Eircom could not charge its customers for directory entries following the 2002 sale of its directory business. However, as recently as last month, Nolan discovered one of his clients - a large Dublin retailer - was being charged €21.28 a year for "directory main entry'' and €9.85 a year for "directory extra entry''. "It's a fairly typical scenario, though very mild in comparison to many others," he said.

In December 1998, Nolan secured a rebate of £16,984.40 (€21,565.74) for a hotel business that was charged incorrect equipment rental. Eircom had continued to charge the company, despite being instructed by Nolan to discontinue charges in April 1994. "An instruction was sent to our accounts department to cease all equipment rental in April 1994, but unfortunately this was not acted upon and as a result the equipment rental continued to be charged on the account," one of Eircom's business account managers wrote to Nolan in 1998.

Nolan has also discovered overcharging in the public sector and urged the Department of Finance to instruct all government-funded bodies to review their Eircom bills. "The potential saving for the public purse would run into millions of euro," he said. He disputed claims by David McRedmond, Eircom's commercial director, that the company's billing and discount schemes were transparent. "Eircom's own people have a lot of difficulty responding when asked to itemise these charges," said Nolan.

He said Eircom had adopted a policy of "total non-cooperation'' to queries from business customers about their bills and often took more than 18 months to pay refunds. He dismissed claims by Eircom that it issued regular reminders to customers that they should check what equipment they were no longer using.

Mr_Man

Noticed that in Adam Wreckler's column, in the Market section of the SBP, that he was still quoting Christian as the chair of IOFFL. Might want to biring him up to date.

Also Peter's comwreck site was quoted as praising Dermo in the IT magazine ?


M

P.S. The IOFFL stickie also lists Christian as the current chair.

damien

Mr_Man wrote:

that he was still quoting Christian as the chair of IOFFL. Might want to biring him up to date.

Ahhh, so maybe that's why I didn't get his fruit basket when I moved into the Chairmans suite on the top floor of the IrelandOffline building. I'll have my people contact his people.

Moriarty

Mr_Man wrote:

P.S. The IOFFL stickie also lists Christian as the current chair.

'Fixed'.

eircomtribunal

Mr_Man wrote:

Noticed that in Adam Wreckler's column

Also Peter's comwreck site was quoted as praising Dermo in the IT magazine ?

At least Adrian made it through the first two lines of our press info about the new articles, which started out with the sarcastic sentence:

Farewell, Dermot,
We'll remember you as the Minister for Communications who had a lot of good intentions.

before going on to recommend reading:

Blog 24 September: about the "Rotten State of Broadband Ireland" http://www.comwreck.com/blog_25_sep24.html
Blog 25 September: Dermot is not telling the truth about Irish Broadband pricing http://www.comwreck.com/blog_26_sep25.html
Blog 26 September: Comreg is in contempt of the Minister's directive. We are used to one detrimental action following another, but this one trumps them all.
Part one: http://www.comwreck.com/blog_27_sep26.html
Part two: http://www.comwreck.com/blog_28_sep26.html

One just can't be careful enough with those journalists.
P.