Eircom dishonesty!

Xterminator

Hi

An Eircom 'agent' called to my house while i was at work, and tried to get us to sign up to an Eircom package.

My wife told this agent he must call back when i am there, as she doesn't know a lot about broadband and phone packages etc. she gave contact details etc.

The agent never called back.

then 2 weeks later i get a mail from Eircom telling me to sign our service agreement, and when i called customer service it appears an account has been setup in my name and the line was even active for 8 days, without my consent!!!!

I've complained to them, and they are investigating but i'm absolutely furious.

X

ports best

that is serious X how can they do that, your man that called to you then just chanced his arm and set you up anyway. he is some bollox

jor el

Nothing new here. Sales reps from pretty much all the Telecos have been signing people up to packages without their consent for years. It can take months to get things put right too. A regulator would put a stop to it, but unfortunately, Telecommunications is completely unregulated in Ireland.

Silenceisbliss

surpirsingly enough, this happened to us in carlow a month or two ago aswell, sort of...

eircom said they could give us broadband....signed the contract...they came they set it up....it failed. their technitions concluded that we were too far in the back arse of nowhere and the line quality was insufficient. so no broadband, contract nullified.

yeah right. they said it was cancelled, but they never did! threw the bill in the bin when it arrived assuming it was still just in the postal system. two weeks later, our phone lines were dissconnected becasue we werent paying our bills!:eek:

furious phonecalls, they throw every excuse in the book at us and refuse to reconnect the phone line until we pay for something that never worked. 7 or 8weeks without phone in the house, numberous pointless phonecalls going in circles.

One phonecall to the regulator, one more phone call to eircom with reference number from regulator. straight away manager on the phone with most sincere appologies, phone line hooked up straight away again. took them to court about the issue. hands down win.

moral of the story; eircom = crooks

Silenceisbliss

jor el wrote: »

Telecommunications is completely unregulated in Ireland.

ehh...yes it is

edit, well actually no, but theres the consumer regulator for these matters

jor el

Silenceisbliss wrote: »

ehh...yes it is

edit, well actually no, but theres the consumer regulator for these matters

There's the National Consumer Agency, but their a bit of a toothless wolf too.

calex71

these crooks ... eh sorry sales reps work on commision so they have plenty of incentives for this underhanded carry on.

Biggins

Its about time Jail time sentences was introduced for this crap.
At the end of the day, its false representation, possible fraud (in order for a rep to gain money from bonuses, etc) and technically causeing mental distress on victims as well as time and money loss, as they try to sort out the whole mess.

What will be done? Nothing. This country is a joke when it comes to dealing with these issues also.

As for Eircom, as a pc specialist all I get is complaints about their service, backup and bills, day in, day out.
Its always Eircom that by FAR gets the most complaints in this area. I've been listening to 15 years of daily complaints about Eircom.

Eircom should be closed down - they are less than useless.

run_Forrest_run

jor el wrote: »

Telecommunications is completely unregulated in Ireland.

don't think this is true, what about Comreg?

Sam Vimes

jor el wrote: »

Nothing new here. Sales reps from pretty much all the Telecos have been signing people up to packages without their consent for years. It can take months to get things put right too. A regulator would put a stop to it, but unfortunately, Telecommunications is completely unregulated in Ireland.

that's not true, we have something even worse: A regulator that doesn't do anything

Cabaal

telecoms are regulated in Ireland by the toothless wounder that is Comreg, did you hear that.....no? Thats the sound of Eircom not giving a crap about Comreg and what they have to say

jor el

run_Forrest_run wrote: »

don't think this is true, what about Comreg?

Never heard of them. What do they do?




In case it's not obvious, I am aware of Comreg, but choose not to refer to them as a regulator anymore, because they don't, and have never, regulated anything. They are little more than a revenue generator (I wasn't aware of this till quite recently) for the government. The money they get from the Telecos to fund regulatory requirements is simply dumped into the exchequer, and no regulation is done. It's as Sam Vimes says, they're worse than having no regulator at all.

So I stand my my claim. Telecommunications is completely unregulated in Ireland. All the Telecos are free to do as they choose, at the customers expense, and the majority of them do exactly that.

seamus

I worked for eircom for six weeks about 5 years ago, and they were doing the exact same. I was in as tech support, but they had us shadow the sales guys for 2 days because they wanted us to try sign people up from the tech support line - i.e. convince them to upgrade. People would ring up asking how to get connected to the internet and without consenting or even having the thing explained to them, they would be signed up to the most expensive dial-up package there was.

The sales people in eircom are on big commission. When I was there, you got €10 commission for signing someone up to a €35/month package. So someone who signed up 20 people a day would make €1,000 a week. That's big money, and there were people in there who were buying houses and cars and getting married on the strength of how many people they could sign up. So all they cared about was signing people up, nothing else.

Assuming that you don't need the eircom line, just write back telling them to shove it and forget all about it.

Nody

seamus wrote: »

The sales people in eircom are on big commission. When I was there, you got €10 commission for signing someone up to a €35/month package. So someone who signed up 20 people a day would make €1,000 a week. That's big money, and there were people in there who were buying houses and cars and getting married on the strength of how many people they could sign up. So all they cared about was signing people up, nothing else.

Assuming that you don't need the eircom line, just write back telling them to shove it and forget all about it.

Try AOL, the "cancellation department" listed where not allowed to actually cancel contracts but instead was there to give you "incentives" to stay on

gerryo

Xterminator wrote: »

Hi

An Eircom 'agent' called to my house while i was at work, and tried to get us to sign up to an Eircom package.

My wife told this agent he must call back when i am there, as she doesn't know a lot about broadband and phone packages etc. she gave contact details etc.

The agent never called back.
X

This sounds like American telco's tactics to get people to change long distance carriers. Known as slamming, the agent calls your number, when you answer, they slam the phone down & commence signing you up as a new customer (obviously without your knowledge). When (eventually) you get a bill see you've been signed up, you call them up & they say "you must have agreed, we have a record of the call to your number from the sales..."

Course they can't produce a recording saying you agreed to change :rolleyes:
Probably best not to answer unknown numbers, sad I know, but (from experience), if the callers number is hidden or unknown, they're calling to sell you something you probably don't want or tell you you've won something & you need to pay a small amount to claim the prize.

Sponge Bob

what planet are ye on that ye only noticed now that

1. eircom are cnuts
2. comreg are even bigger cnuts

Xterminator

I complained to eircom, and in their defense they handled it well and quickly.


I feel less angry, but its amzing that they do this.

x

thefinalstage

Xterminator wrote: »

I complained to eircom, and in their defense they handled it well and quickly.


I feel less angry, but its amzing that they do this.

x

Simply a bad sales rep. Well, from our point of view anyway.

shuga

An "Eircom" agent called to me a few weeks ago... I was a previous customer and was thinking of going back anyway. Anyway, the following week, this guy started texting me and asking me out... Freaked me out a little. I'm thinking of calling them now to cancel it.

Thoie

gerryo wrote: »

Probably best not to answer unknown numbers, sad I know, but (from experience), if the callers number is hidden or unknown, they're calling to sell you something you probably don't want or tell you you've won something & you need to pay a small amount to claim the prize.

Or else it's my mother...

Any ex directory number will show up as "private" or "unknown" - not just sales people

Stench Blossoms

shuga wrote: »

An "Eircom" agent called to me a few weeks ago... I was a previous customer and was thinking of going back anyway. Anyway, the following week, this guy started texting me and asking me out... Freaked me out a little. I'm thinking of calling them now to cancel it.

How did he get your mobile number?

shuga

orla wrote: »

How did he get your mobile number?

a technician had to call out to fix the old line and I wanted them to call me before hand cos I work full time and they only give you afternoon or morning slots. So I gave him my mobile number so the tec could call me before he called out....

parsi

gerryo wrote: »

Probably best not to answer unknown numbers, sad I know, but (from experience), if the callers number is hidden or unknown, they're calling to sell you something you probably don't want or tell you you've won something & you need to pay a small amount to claim the prize.

Ah do answer them and leave the phone down and go make a cup of tea and see how long they hang on....

Solair

Eh, harassing you by text messages for dates isn't allowed and is more than likely in breech of his employment contract and could potentially be illegal depending on what the content of the messages was and how frequently they were sent etc.

As for dodgy sales reps, best to report them a.s.a.p. Unfortunately, you get unscrupulous characters and practices in sales when commission is at play.

That being said, there's no reason to be rude to telesales reps, they often *HAVE* to do things like make an objection when you say "I'm not interested". It doesn't mean they're being rude, but rather their call's monitored / recorded and they get into trouble if they don't push.

Slamming your phone down / not responding will often mean that you're logged into their data base as "unanswered" or "line busy" so someone else will call you again... and again.. and again...

Often the best method of dealing with them is enter a conversation. Explain you're not interested, be nice and then ask to be removed from their sales database.

If you're rude to a telesales rep, they will invariably retaliate by putting your name back into their dialling database. Or scheduling call backs.

They're often quite nice people and it's a nasty, boring and very mind-numbing and soul destroying job where someone can end up taking a lot of abuse all day.

That being said, I wouldn't take any crap like being signed-up against my will. It's fraud, plain and simple.