Eircom Starter Price Increase RipOFF!!

fattycrowe

Need some feed back on the following:

I have Eircom Broadband Home Starter package since June ’04 and have been extremely happy with the service. Am in Nenagh, North Tipperary.

The conditions of the contract were:

• 12 month contract

• €9.99 connection fee

• €29.99 per month incl. VAT

• Free Netopia router

I got my last bill for Sep – Oct and immediately noticed that I was been overcharged by €20!!! I got onto them, now the interesting points:

1. I was informed that my contract was for a 12 month period.Now that the contract was expired I was to be charged at the ‘normal’ broadband charge of €39.99 per month!!

2. The ‘forgot’ to charge me for July – Aug of this year!

3. That I should have got a letter stating that the charge was increased – I NEVER got this correspondence!!


Needless to say that I was far from happy with this as I assumed that the original price of €29.99 per month was the price I was going to pay for the service (was I been naïve??). My original correspondence from them STATED NOTHING that this was an offer for only twelve months and that I would then have to increase my payments to the ‘normal’ charge of €39.99.

After complaining to the Bills Inquiry girl – she then forwarded me to the Customer Service section to lodge a complaint, waited on hold for 10mins to complain and them slammed down in frustration!!!

Questions:
1. Has this happened to anybody else?
2. Can I \Should I complain to ComREG and\or Eircom?
3. Anyway of coercing Eircom to charge me at €29.99?

Am so peeved that I am thinking of telling Eircom to shove it and am seriously looking at NTL – Any thoughts on NTL service??

Sarsfield

Your agreement with Eircom was for 12 months. Eircom honoured that agreement. After the 12 months Eircom can change the agreement and you are free to take it or leave it. Of course you should be informed of any changes.

By all (most) accounts NTL offers the best broadband service, so maybe you should forget arguing with Eircom and just change provider.

crawler

That is correct - and the price for most promotions will increase next March for most other eircom customers....to 39.99 unless it's changed...

It's all in the marketing....

" The eircom broadband home starter / home plus promotions includes standard and self install connections. This promotion also includes a Wi-Fi modem. This offer will apply to all orders placed by the 9th December 2005. The monthly rental of €29.99 (inc. VAT) for home starter and €42.35 (inc. VAT) for home plus will apply until 31st of March, 2006. The promotional price applies to first time broadband connections only. After the 31st March 2006, the monthly rental of €39.99 (inc. VAT) will apply for home starter and €54.45 (inc. VAT) for home plus. Once-off connection fee of €9.99 (inc. VAT) applies to self-install orders only."

robinph

They have done the same to me although I was expecting the price to go up as they had said initially that it was an offer based on the fact that I was previously on their 150hours dial up package. The last bill though they decided to charge me for the increased rate for the broadband and for some reason added a charge for the 150hours dialup package again a year after I had cancelled it?

I called them up several times to get that charge removed, but each person I spoke to claimed a different reason for what the charge was. So I'll just wait and see what the next bill says now.

If only NTL existed in my end of Lucan. I'd switch to BT but I'm wary of their billing systems.

kaizersoze

robinph wrote:

They have done the same to me although I was expecting the price to go up as they had said initially that it was an offer based on the fact that I was previously on their 150hours dial up package. The last bill though they decided to charge me for the increased rate for the broadband and for some reason added a charge for the 150hours dialup package again a year after I had cancelled it?

I called them up several times to get that charge removed, but each person I spoke to claimed a different reason for what the charge was. So I'll just wait and see what the next bill says now.

If only NTL existed in my end of Lucan. I'd switch to BT but I'm wary of their billing systems.

A similar thing happened to me when I changed from one of their dialup packages to BB in March 2004 and the following bill had the sub on it again. From what I remember, I had to contact Eircom.net(rather than Eircom billing) about it as they look after the internet subscriptions for dialup. I rang them first and they told me I needed to write to them (not email) about it. The next bill had a credit on it and sub was cancelled. Thats the way it was then so I assume it's the same process now.
Have a look here http://home.eircom.net/contact/95594. It may be some help if it's not sorted this time.
HTH:)

fattycrowe

Hey Folks!!
Thanks for the Heads - up!! I was definitely a bit niave but the B's never informed me!! I must must hassle them for the hell of it!!! NTL here I come!!

cramp

yeah i got stung with this also.....u can get put on the business starter package for 42euro a month, 2mb line 20gb dload, this is another contract for 6 months, this is waht i opted for, as i was thinking of going to a 2mb line anyway, but i dont think that i will be with eircom after the 6 months contract as i think this pacakage is normally 55euro a month!


cramp

dub45

Most isps have an 'offer' starting price which goes up after a set period.

Read the Terms and Conditions its boring but its necessary!!!!!

OfflerCrocGod

fattycrowe wrote:

Hey Folks!!
Thanks for the Heads - up!! I was definitely a bit niave but the B's never informed me!! I must must hassle them for the hell of it!!! NTL here I come!!

Can you get NTL were you are? If you can go ahead and get it and then get blueface.ie for your phone and leave eircon for good! No line rental

Cabaal

OfflerCrocGod wrote:

Can you get NTL were you are? If you can go ahead and get it and then get blueface.ie for your phone and leave eircon for good! No line rental

Agreed, there's a good few boards users doing this already
Of course the downside being if your cable connection goes you'll have no phone service but you could use the PBXGUI Blueface give you to forward calls to your mobile when your VoIP line is busy

qBot

Thats ridiculous..Does anything like this happen with BT broadband. I'm on the ordinary package

bk

qBot wrote:

Thats ridiculous..Does anything like this happen with BT broadband. I'm on the ordinary package

No, not really, they do offer a cheaper price for the first 4 months and it goes up after that (still much cheaper then Eircom), however unlike Eircom they don't try and hide this and most people are aware of it.

Of course per the contract they can change the price in the future, however you can automatically cancel the contract if they do.

So BT is (for 1mb including line rental):
€25 for first 4 months, €40 after that.

However BT's billing departement is cack, so I'd advise keeping all bills from them, check the bills very carefully and record all correspondence with them.

Also if you can get NTL, they are much better IMO.

qBot

bk wrote:

No, not really, they do offer a cheaper price for the first 4 months and it goes up after that (still much cheaper then Eircom), however unlike Eircom they don't try and hide this and most people are aware of it.

Of course per the contract they can change the price in the future, however you can automatically cancel the contract if they do.

So BT is (for 1mb including line rental):
€25 for first 4 months, €40 after that.

However BT's billing departement is cack, so I'd advise keeping all bills from them, check the bills very carefully and record all correspondence with them.

Also if you can get NTL, they are much better IMO.

Cheers bk. I have first hand experience at how bad there customer support is . As for NTL though, i don't think I can get it this far south.. Ring em up now thought to check