Eircom stealing broadband subscriptions

Trogdor

We have two phone lines here, one home and one and business and also had a 7.6 meg business broadband package with bt until last week.

We decided to change the phone lines back to eircom from bt as there is a small fault with the business phone line where it enters the house that eircom needs to fix and they said they could only fix it if we had an account with them (bad form already). So we changed the 2 phone lines over last week and all was ok but we soon noticed that our 7.6 meg broadband connection had dropped to 1 meg.

We got straight onto BT and had correspondance with them to try and get the speeds back up again..until this morning. I got an email from a BT rep saying they could no longer test the line and that it appeared to be with eircom. So i rang up eircom and they informed me that we now have a home starter 1 meg broadband bundle with them.

There was never ANY talk of ever changing the broadband provider when we changed the phone lines and eircom appear to have simply taken ownership of the broadband subscription. Is this even legal?? To make matters worse even when we enquired to see if we could upgrade the broadband package that we now have with eircom they told us we'd have to wait at least a week before we could even order it for some unknown reason..so we're are now stuck on a 1 meg connection with a broadband subscription we never wanted or were even asked about.

Is this common practice by eircom? Can they simply just take control of people's broadband without even asking a question or providing any information?

Sponge Bob

Not that common in the past but I would put nothing past them since the illegal minimum contract on new connections.

They have no recording of your requesting a broadband change by phone so it is easy to tell them to feck off , that will require calling 1901 and asking for the complaints department right now.

Cabaal

Sponge Bob wrote: »

They have no recording of your requesting a broadband change by phone so it is easy to tell them to feck off , that will require calling 1901 and asking for the complaints department right now.

Along with asking for details of how to make a formal complaint also ask them for how you can make a data info request under the data protection act in relation to your account notes and call recordings as you want to prove you never placed a request.

This should with luck but abit of fear into them, at the end of your complaint you'll be wanting
- Refund of anything eircom charged you
- Refund of any fees BT may have charged you if you broke a contract with them
- Compensation for downtime caused
- Compensation for having to go back to BT and entering a new contract from scratch again.

Atleast thats what I;d be looking for

thefinalstage

Sponge Bob wrote: »

Not that common in the past but I would put nothing past them since the illegal minimum contract on new connections.

They have no recording of your requesting a broadband change by phone so it is easy to tell them to feck off , that will require calling 1901 and asking for the complaints department right now.

Well, maybe at 9am tomorrow. The complaints department closes at half 5.

MunsterCycling

There is no reason whatsoever for you to have had to switch back to eircon, they lied pure and simple.

Cabaal

MunsterCycling wrote: »

There is no reason whatsoever for you to have had to switch back to eircon, they lied pure and simple.

Fully agree, telling you that they could not repair a fault was completely incorrect and misleading by eircom employee's

It also raises serious questions in relation to competition between eircom and the companys it resells its products to, eircom ultimately own the lines its there job to fix them.

- If you pay eircom line rental directly then eircom repair whichever phone line fault you report
- If you pay BT or whoever line rental then THEY must report the faults to eircom on your behalf.

If you have a broadband fault and your with BT its BT's job to handle the fault reporting.

So either BT gave you incorrect information and fobbed you off or eircom lied to you or both.

None of the above makes it acceptable for eircom to affectively "slam" your line,

recycler1

Cabaal wrote: »

If you pay BT or whoever line rental then THEY must report the faults to eircom on your behalf.

If you have a broadband fault and your with BT its BT's job to handle the fault reporting.

That's the nub of the issue. If you're with BT and ring eircom direct with a fault they are legally not allowed to deal with it. So, from an eircom perspective, they cannot fix your line. What you have to do is report your problem to BT and let them worry about getting eircom to fix it.

devnull

From someone who has worked in the industry in the past this is generally how it works.

If you report a fault to am Eircom Reseller such as BT or Vodafone etc they have to log a fault with Eircom through the relevant systems, the fault then gets sent to their wholesale faults team who then are tasked with resolving the fault. They are supposed to treat every providers faults with the same priority.

If Eircom are saying to you that they know there is a fault there, but are only willing to fix this if you sign up with them, then I encourage you to kick up a huge fuss about this as that is a very nasty stunt to pull.

IrishTonyO

You should also make a complaint with comreg, otherwise Eircom will keep doing these illegal things on others. The more people complain to comreg the better

Fuzzy Clam

trogdor wrote: »

We decided to change the phone lines back to eircom from bt as there is a small fault with the business phone line where it enters the house that eircom needs to fix and they said they could only fix it if we had an account with them (bad form already).

Why didn't you report the fault to BT?:confused

Fuzzy Clam

IrishTonyO wrote: »

You should also make a complaint with comreg, otherwise Eircom will keep doing these illegal things on others. The more people complain to comreg the better

We don't know if Eircom have done anything illegal yet.

java

MunsterCycling wrote: »

There is no reason whatsoever for you to have had to switch back to eircon, they lied pure and simple.

Thats not my reading of it. Eircom said they can't fix a fault unless theres an account with them. Thats not a lie. If the OP had a line with BT then BT should be fixing or organising the fixing of the fault.

The Volt

trogdor wrote: »

We have two phone lines here, one home and one and business and also had a 7.6 meg business broadband package with bt until last week.

We decided to change the phone lines back to eircom from bt as there is a small fault with the business phone line where it enters the house that eircom needs to fix and they said they could only fix it if we had an account with them (bad form already). So we changed the 2 phone lines over last week and all was ok but we soon noticed that our 7.6 meg broadband connection had dropped to 1 meg.

We got straight onto BT and had correspondance with them to try and get the speeds back up again..until this morning. I got an email from a BT rep saying they could no longer test the line and that it appeared to be with eircom. So i rang up eircom and they informed me that we now have a home starter 1 meg broadband bundle with them.

There was never ANY talk of ever changing the broadband provider when we changed the phone lines and eircom appear to have simply taken ownership of the broadband subscription. Is this even legal?? To make matters worse even when we enquired to see if we could upgrade the broadband package that we now have with eircom they told us we'd have to wait at least a week before we could even order it for some unknown reason..so we're are now stuck on a 1 meg connection with a broadband subscription we never wanted or were even asked about.

Is this common practice by eircom? Can they simply just take control of people's broadband without even asking a question or providing any information?

Are you sure there's no chance you signed up to go back to Eircom on broadband too? Presuming they got your UAN number okay for the phoneline it would take 25 days to come back to them anyway, including 10 working days before they do anything at all.

Cabaal

recycler1 wrote: »

That's the nub of the issue. If you're with BT and ring eircom direct with a fault they are legally not allowed to deal with it. So, from an eircom perspective, they cannot fix your line. What you have to do is report your problem to BT and let them worry about getting eircom to fix it.

Yes this is correct, however eircom should refer you to your line provider if your paying line rental to another company...in this case BT.

java wrote: »

Thats not my reading of it. Eircom said they can't fix a fault unless theres an account with them. Thats not a lie. If the OP had a line with BT then BT should be fixing or organising the fixing of the fault.

Eircom saying the can;t fix the fault unless the line is with the is indeed correct, but they should explain why this is the case...its not like they don't know

I'm sure they get vodafone, smart etc customers all the time calling them asking for line faults to be fixed, very simple mistake by the end user given the dominate position of eircom in the market and the fact they likely installed the line.

The same situation happens on a day to day basis in the UK with BT Retail, but the difference being that BT Retail must explain the difference and go through a step by step signup as per OFCOM code of practice or they'd be done for slamming the customers line.

dub45

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

We don't know if Eircom have done anything illegal yet.

Indeed! Before we all allow the 'off with their heads!'' reflxed to kick in surely there are a few questions that need to be answered?

Firstly is there not (at least there used to be) a formal procedure where you have to make a statement into some third party 'thing' while on the phone that you formally want to bring your line back to Eircom?

And secondly why would BT release a bb contract so quickly? Surely even in the most ordinary of transfers they would be insisting on their contractual 28 day notice?

And most obviously why the hell did BT not get the line fixed themselves?

My only experience in this area was a very good one where a couple of months ago I rang Smart because of a line problem and there was an Eircom teccie at the door the next morning.

The Volt

dub45 wrote: »

Indeed! Before we all allow the 'off with their heads!'' reflxed to kick in surely there are a few questions that need to be answered?

Firstly is there not (at least there used to be) a formal procedure where you have to make a statement into some third party 'thing' while on the phone that you formally want to bring your line back to Eircom?

And secondly why would BT release a bb contract so quickly? Surely even in the most ordinary of transfers they would be insisting on their contractual 28 day notice?

And most obviously why the hell did BT not get the line fixed themselves?

My only experience in this area was a very good one where a couple of months ago I rang Smart because of a line problem and there was an Eircom teccie at the door the next morning.

I can answer this having worked in telesales for Eircom. A company called Sykes deals with their 3rd party verification system. The telesales agent must first get the UAN number off the customer (found on any bill of the current provided, well except for Pure Telecom and Eurphony who are sly) and then the verifier checks with first the agent and then the customer to see if it's calls and line rental only or the whole shebang.

the_syco

trogdor wrote: »

We decided to change the phone lines back to eircom from bt as there is a small fault with the business phone line where it enters the house that eircom needs to fix and they said they could only fix it if we had an account with them (bad form already). So we changed the 2 phone lines over last week and all was ok but we soon noticed that our 7.6 meg broadband connection had dropped to 1 meg.

trogdor wrote: »

There was never ANY talk of ever changing the broadband provider when we changed the phone lines and eircom appear to have simply taken ownership of the broadband subscription.

Is it possible to be with one company, and have broadband under a totally different company using the same phone line connection?

The Volt

the_syco wrote: »

Is it possible to be with one company, and have broadband under a totally different company using the same phone line connection?

Yep although it makes no economical sense to be honest.

thund3rbird_

trogdor wrote: »

our 7.6 meg broadband connection had dropped to 1 meg.

anyone know if this is now standard eircom practice - ie setting up ALL new BB as 1Meg Home starter if it's a newly connected eircom line??

f****rs at it with me as well.
line is about 700M from the exchange, they tell me it can only take 1M.

unfortunately dsl has not been activated yet so I can't check the line stats but have been told that IF :rolleyes: the line is capable of more then I can up it after the service is live

well p1$$ed off

OP reminded me of the ad they've been running recently about 55000 customers switching back to them last year
wonder how many of them actuall DID want to switch & how many were forced/slammed?

recycler1

Cabaal wrote: »

Fully agree, telling you that they could not repair a fault was completely incorrect and misleading by eircom employee's

recycler1 wrote: »

That's the nub of the issue. If you're with BT and ring eircom direct with a fault they are legally not allowed to deal with it. So, from an eircom perspective, they cannot fix your line. What you have to do is report your problem to BT and let them worry about getting eircom to fix it.

Cabaal wrote: »

Yes this is correct, however eircom should refer you to your line provider if your paying line rental to another company...in this case BT.

java wrote: »

Thats not my reading of it. Eircom said they can't fix a fault unless theres an account with them. Thats not a lie. If the OP had a line with BT then BT should be fixing or organising the fixing of the fault.

Java, you are correct. The eircom agent doesn't know who the "other company" is. This is a COMREG restriction. The agent told the OP, correctly and in line with relevant leglislation that "they could only fix it if we had an account with them".

Cabaal wrote: »

Eircom saying the can;t fix the fault unless the line is with the is indeed correct,

Indeed it is.

Cabaal wrote: »

but they should explain why this is the case...its not like they don't know

And they did explain... "they could only fix it if we had an account with them".




What a train-wreck of a thread.

dub45

thund3rbird_ wrote: »

anyone know if this is now standard eircom practice - ie setting up ALL new BB as 1Meg Home starter if it's a newly connected eircom line??

f****rs at it with me as well.
line is about 700M from the exchange, they tell me it can only take 1M.

unfortunately dsl has not been activated yet so I can't check the line stats but have been told that IF :rolleyes: the line is capable of more then I can up it after the service is live

well p1$$ed off

OP reminded me of the ad they've been running recently about 55000 customers switching back to them last year
wonder how many of them actuall DID want to switch & how many were forced/slammed?

Firstly simply because you are a certain distance from the exchange it doesn't follow that you can definitely get the highest speed possible. For example your internal wiring may be a mess or there could be some interference on the line. When it was more difficult to get a line passed it used to be the standard advice on here to disconnect everything in the month preceding the test. There may something connected to your phone line which is causing it to show as only being capable of the lowest speed.

If your line has some sort of fault on it and is not capable of the higher speed then Eircom are actually doing you a favour as giving a speed that the line cannot handle will only result in a lousy performance with regular disconnects.

We are constantly criticising isps on here for selling speeds that lines are not capable of. As I understand it anyway the upgrade procedure does not take all that long and besides why would Eircom not want to sell you a higher speed product if they could as it is more money for them?

OP reminded me of the ad they've been running recently about 55000 customers switching back to them last year
wonder how many of them actuall DID want to switch & how many were forced/slammed?

As a number of posters have pointed out there are several issues in the ops post which require clarification before it can be established for definite what actually happened.

lucernarian

Thought I'd step in here:

The salesperson was in all likelihoodwrong; the line should be able to take more than 1 meg unless the poster was mistaken as to the exchange's location. For the attenuation to be that much greather than it should be (>30 dB) would indicate a major fault which would probably fail the line full stop. It's only a theoretical possibility.

I have come across lines which come up as "amber" aka "your line may be suitable subject to confirmation" which would normally be straight fails in the past. E.g. pairgained or new lines which haven't been tested yet. The salesperson interpreted this as a long/dodgy line which isn't a terrible mistake to make as eircom's silly system only has either a pass, amber or fail status for every line. I don't know if they can tell when the line was last tested, perhaps that would point out if I'm right on my guess or not.

I bet if the poster would ask eircom to recheck the line, the result would be different. At worst it should change in a month.


As for the main topic, it looks like BT are the people most in the wrong. Eircom are wrong in they possibly interpreted a result similarly to the above. Maybe all new lines initially show up as amber, so they put on a 1 mb package? But of course, that line wasn't a new line from what I can tell...

thund3rbird_

Firstly, it's a brand new line, secondly I spoke to the engineer that called out to connect the line & he told me it was perfect for any of eircoms broadband services.

I do know where the exchange is - I pass it on my way to work

There's only one socket in the house.
master > filter > phone & router
no extn leads , no sky, nothing else connected to the line
the socket is on the same wall as the eircom cabinet outside - the width of 2 cavity blocks between them

Lo & behold I arrived home last night & switched on the router to see if it would sync - surprise, surprise it did. Bonus - I could get online
on checking the line stats (on 2 different routers) I got the following:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1024 kbps 128 kbps
Line Attenuation 13 db 3.5 db
Noise Margin 31 db 23 db

these stats indicate I can get WAY higher than 1Meg.

entering the stats here & here both indicate I should have no problems with the 7M service. The exchange is unfortunately not ADSL2 enabled.

unfortunately I now have to try & convince eircom to put me on the service I ordered in the first place. hope they dont rely on their line test as gospel.

recycler1

thund3rbird_ wrote: »

Firstly, it's a brand new line, secondly I spoke to the engineer that called out to connect the line & he told me it was perfect for any of eircoms broadband services.

I do know where the exchange is - I pass it on my way to work

There's only one socket in the house.
master > filter > phone & router
no extn leads , no sky, nothing else connected to the line
the socket is on the same wall as the eircom cabinet outside - the width of 2 cavity blocks between them

Lo & behold I arrived home last night & switched on the router to see if it would sync - surprise, surprise it did. Bonus - I could get online
on checking the line stats (on 2 different routers) I got the following:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1024 kbps 128 kbps
Line Attenuation 13 db 3.5 db
Noise Margin 31 db 23 db

these stats indicate I can get WAY higher than 1Meg.

entering the stats here & here both indicate I should have no problems with the 7M service. The exchange is unfortunately not ADSL2 enabled.

unfortunately I now have to try & convince eircom to put me on the service I ordered in the first place. hope they dont rely on their line test as gospel.

Those stats show that your telephone line to your local exchange will support the max speed on ADSL and ADSL2+.

Only eircom can confirm whether all the other bits and bobs, necessary to provide a higher speed service are in place.

Many companies have problems changing orders that are in progress. This may be why you were asked to wait until after service was provided before a speed upgrade could be considered.

Why don't you give them a ring and see what happens?
(It would probably be best to avoid some of the more emotive language used on this thread.)

lucernarian

thund3rbird_ wrote: »

Firstly, it's a brand new line, secondly I spoke to the engineer that called out to connect the line & he told me it was perfect for any of eircoms broadband services.

I do know where the exchange is - I pass it on my way to work

There's only one socket in the house.
master > filter > phone & router
no extn leads , no sky, nothing else connected to the line
the socket is on the same wall as the eircom cabinet outside - the width of 2 cavity blocks between them

Lo & behold I arrived home last night & switched on the router to see if it would sync - surprise, surprise it did. Bonus - I could get online
on checking the line stats (on 2 different routers) I got the following:

ADSL Link Downstream Upstream
Connection Speed 1024 kbps 128 kbps
Line Attenuation 13 db 3.5 db
Noise Margin 31 db 23 db

these stats indicate I can get WAY higher than 1Meg.

entering the stats here & here both indicate I should have no problems with the 7M service. The exchange is unfortunately not ADSL2 enabled.

unfortunately I now have to try & convince eircom to put me on the service I ordered in the first place. hope they dont rely on their line test as gospel.

It can be a "Computer sez no" problem basically. So they *can't* do an order for bb if it fails. I don't know how rigid it is for 7 mbps on an amber result. But if your line is now connected to broadband, hopefully there should be a proper result recorded in the test database at the same time.

Go call eircom again, ask for what speed your line can handle. I expect the result will be different.

recycler1

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

It can be a "Computer sez no" problem basically. So they *can't* do an order for bb if it fails. I don't know how rigid it is for 7 mbps on an amber result. But if your line is now connected to broadband, hopefully there should be a proper result recorded in the test database at the same time.

Go call eircom again, ask for what speed your line can handle. I expect the result will be different.

Its a big jump to imply that a "proper result" was not given. All we know for certain is that the telephone line to the exchange supports a higher speed service. (Based on the results posted, we can be certain of that.)

That is not enough to guarantee a higher speed service. We do not know what equipment is installed in the exchange, or how the exchange is connected to the rest of the ISP infrastructure. All the elements have to be in place. I would be surprised if a "Amber" result was based solely on the line speed. It is far more likely that it also takes these other elements into account.

The best advice, really, is to get back to eircom and be ready to quote the line statistics. If the agent cannot help you, ask for your request to be escalated.

If you still cannot get the product you want, your options depend on your location. Some ISP's install their own equipment in the eircom exchange, but only in more densely populated areas. In such cases there is a chance that an alternative ISP will be able to offer a better speed. Other options include wireless or, where available, cable.

Trogdor

Sorry for the slow reply here, basically the powers that be (ones who pay the bills here:pac:) have decided to stay with eircom as we had a lot of trouble and hassle the last time there was a switch between the two companies here that ended up lasted a month or two. We're getting the speeds put back up to 7 meg with eircom next week and they say they'll come out to run a new line in when our first bill comes in..
Not really happy about the issue at all myself, but have complained to eircom and also reported the issue to comreg.

Fuzzy Clam wrote: »

Why didn't you report the fault to BT?:confused

We did and were told eircom deal with it! Whenever there's ever any issue they seem to pass it on by blaming each other :rolleyes:

Cabaal

trogdor wrote: »

We did and were told eircom deal with it! Whenever there's ever any issue they seem to pass it on by blaming each other :rolleyes:

BT lied to you then, they should have never refereed you to Eircom if you were paying line rental to BT

lucernarian

recycler1 wrote: »

Its a big jump to imply that a "proper result" was not given. All we know for certain is that the telephone line to the exchange supports a higher speed service. (Based on the results posted, we can be certain of that.)

That is not enough to guarantee a higher speed service. We do not know what equipment is installed in the exchange, or how the exchange is connected to the rest of the ISP infrastructure. All the elements have to be in place. I would be surprised if a "Amber" result was based solely on the line speed. It is far more likely that it also takes these other elements into account.

The best advice, really, is to get back to eircom and be ready to quote the line statistics. If the agent cannot help you, ask for your request to be escalated.

If you still cannot get the product you want, your options depend on your location. Some ISP's install their own equipment in the eircom exchange, but only in more densely populated areas. In such cases there is a chance that an alternative ISP will be able to offer a better speed. Other options include wireless or, where available, cable.

Unfortunately I can't recall saying that a proper result was not given. I did say that eircom's system only reports 3 statuses for lines. I also said that it can happen that lines which do not fit in the pass or fail category get lumped in with the "amber" status. I've seen examples of this on boards before, and the reality is that new lines have been reported as "passing subject to confirmation" or outright failing on this forum before.

For your information, 7 mbps or 8 mbps or whatever is the max ADSL1 speed that eircom offer is available on all exchanges that have DSL enabled. Higher speeds are only available on the more recently enabled and the largest exchanges. If your line is good enough (<5 km long I think?) and it's connected to a DSL-enabled exchange, then you are automatically able to order up to 7.6 mbps.

Eircom's system cannot quote line statistics except for attenuation (they quote distance based on the attenuation value) unless there's an active DSL connection on the line.

There shouldn't be any result complications once the line is successfully working with 1 mbps, so I'd advise anyone wanting higher speeds to call eircom back when it's connected to arrange an upgrade. You have to be actually living near the exchange and ideally with the line stats to support it to be certain of getting an upgrade.

recycler1

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

For your information, 7 mbps or 8 mbps or whatever is the max ADSL1 speed that eircom offer is available on all exchanges that have DSL enabled. Higher speeds are only available on the more recently enabled and the largest exchanges. If your line is good enough (<5 km long I think?) and it's connected to a DSL-enabled exchange, then you are automatically able to order up to 7.6 mbps.

You are misnformed. My origional post was correct.

To_be_confirmed wrote: »

(eircom) quote distance based on the attenuation value

Indeed they do.

APM

How did you log into eircom's broadband network with putting in a username and password + changing settings?

Your broadband hardly just dropped from 7 to 1mb without changing settings?