Problems at every single stage

TheChizler

I'm starting a new thread because I feel that this has gone far beyond my original query (can I install the VDSL gateway myself). The original thread is here. We went from being happy potential customers to cursing the company (not you though Al and Tony!) in the space of a few months. The list of problems so far has been:

• Order being lost at least twice even though we received confirmation: Resolved after two weeks
• Intermittent DSL disconnects: Unresolved, sticking plaster has been applied by lowering speeds to the minimum until a senior tech support agent figures out what was going on, the last contact we had was on July 16th.
• Technicians not turning up multiple times to investigate.
• Technician calling to say stop reporting the issue.
• Being charged €150 for the free eVision box. We were assured that this was in error and would be fixed before the direct debit was taken.
• Direct debit being taken including the above charge. We were assured that a cheque would be issued to refund us immediately.
• Credit being applied to our account instead of a cheque being issued. We were assured again that a cheque would be issued.
• Informed that it was not possible to issue a cheque. We got the direct debit returned by the bank. Paid the actual bill via the online facility and informed eircom billing of this directly.
• We were assured that the time for which a fault was logged would be applied as credit. No idea what's going on with this.
• Asked for information on the complaints procedure and service level agreement so we could determine if it was being followed and go to Comreg if necessary. Haven't heard anything since July 16th.
• Newest issue: €15 penalty applied to our bill for a failed direct debit for the most recent period.
  

[*]

Regarding the newest issue, this is really the last straw. We got confirmation from the bank this morning that they had never refused or cancelled a direct debit on my partner's account. The only one that was returned was the one months ago that eircom were aware of and acknowledge was in error.

We have a transcript of a conversation with an eircom representive that there would have been no attempted direct debit last month as the account was in credit by a few cent, this was after we got the incorrect debit returned and told eircom to remove the credit, which they did.

*******: Your account is in credit of 0.77c *****, so there is no need to request a DD again, as the account is in credit. your next bill will issue on the 19th August and would be due 14 days later

Can you please let us know what is going to be done about this most recent issue and all outstanding issues? We will not be paying this penalty and IF we decide to continue with eircom we will be instructing the bank every month to not pay out more than the correct bill.

Regards,

eircom: Alan

Hi TheChizler

This does indeed give reason for concern and I genuinely sorry to again read of this.

Due to the extent of the issues I will take time to properly update you with as much as possible however this will indeed need quite a lot of attention and investigation. Please leave this with me and I will get back to you as soon as I can - this may be tomorrow afternoon but I promise you I will give this my commitment to resolve.

Thanks

Al

TheChizler

Thanks Al.

eircom: Alan

TheChizler wrote: »

Thanks Al.

No problem TheChizler - leave it with me

Al

madyoke2009

your not on your own with this. I experience the same issues.  Sales order going missing,  Then sales staff telling me I already had a phone line with another provider, whom I owe money to, and they have blacklisted me.  The sales staff told me to call EVERY phone provider in Ireland and find out which one is doing this, as Eircom DO NOT have viability to whom they have leased the line to.

Spent several days contacting phone providers to no avail.  I had to get Comreg to investigate, and of-course Eircom, never said that!!!

Cost me time and money, for a service which Eircom could not provide in the end.   

They are the worst provider I've ever had to deal with 

tootsystar

Exact same story for me too, Unfortunately Alan hasn't exactly been helpful to me plus I'm still waiting for a customer service manager to get back to me. It's pure misery with eircom.

TheChizler

Is there any update on this Al?

eircom: Alan

TheChizler wrote: »

Is there any update on this Al?

Hi TheChizler

I am still awaiting clarification from a number or departments in to the current issues. I can however assure you that the unpaid direct debit fee will certainly be waived on reflection of the culmination of issues and errors.

Thanks
AL

TheChizler

Thanks for confirming that, good to hear Al.

SniperPaddy

Hi Alan,

I wonder if you can help expedite a root cause resolution.


I've had pretty much the same experience as The Chizler, using the Eircom Moving Home process.
Multiple orders lost/confused, having to order Broadband twice and a modem twice, modem arriving late, staff constantly quoting the SLA as if it was a target rather than a limit, mis-selling a package, then switching to a smaller one without my consent, supervisor ducking me when I expressed a wish to escalate and reducing the bandwidth profile twice after without consent.
I had no choice at that stage but to record conversations (with notification) and start escalation to ComReg and a more senior Eircom manager. At that stage they put me on a switch that provided the bandwidth they originally sold me.
I was more than happy to leave it at that.

Rolling on 6 months: Two weeks ago, my data rate started dropping to unusable, every night at exactly the same time, with the same profile (<2Mb/s from 9:30-11:30 down from 14MB/s). 

An Eircom engineer came out to test the house-exchange line and found zero signal errors. The technicians tried a different switch port, in the exchange, and then informed me it was congestion. I strongly disagree for the following reasons:

(1) That does not strike me as a congestion profile. Congestion kicks in when the kids start downloads in the early evening and has a spread out distribution curve. This looks like a scheduled event because the big rate drop consistently initiates almost exactly at 9:30 and goes back up at 11:30 (high=14Mb/s vs. low<2Mb/s)

(2) The local exchange is not NGB enabled. My neighbours are on 3Mb/s ADSL profiles, I am on a 24Mb/s ADSL2+ which together seem to indicate that I am on a business DSLAM. Would I be correct in assuming that business switches are managed to provide a reasonable QoS per client? I wonder if the switch has recently been mis-configured or is there a badly designed connection?   

Great credit to the Eircom guy managing the ticket for me. He is very helpful and sympathetic. 
To date, the only actions I have seen were line testing, changing ports and the conclusion=congestion and multiple attempts to close the ticket. They are not giving him any details of their analysis.

There was no mention of throttling, profiled traffic/packet analysis, traceroutes, QoS settings or identifying if it was a single customer getting priority (network neutrality?).
To be blunt, I get the impression that somebody down the line is averse to dealing with tricky network management/configuration problems and is putting it off until FTTC is installed next year.. 

I currently have to stay very late at work these days because I do not have the bandwidth to log in from home.
Any assistance to sponsor oversight on this would be very much appreciated.


Rgds,
John

TheChizler

eircom: Alan wrote: »

TheChizler wrote: »

Is there any update on this Al?

Hi TheChizler

I am still awaiting clarification from a number or departments in to the current issues. I can however assure you that the unpaid direct debit fee will certainly be waived on reflection of the culmination of issues and errors.

Thanks
AL

Just want to point out something here, when you say the fee will be waived it sounds like a favour being done for us, but as far as I can tell there was no justification for the unpaid direct debit fee in the first place. There was no direct debit taken out last month as the account was in credit, the previous month worked without issue, and the previous month to that we got it refunded as we were billed €150 incorrectly for a free STB on top of the bill, we were notified that the bill had been amended and the DD would be the correct amount but the wrong amount came out and was thus unauthorised, and we then paid the correct bill manually. There was never an unpaid direct debit. Just wanted that on record.

You may remember last year I was dealing with an issue on behalf of my mother, I can start a new thread if you think things might get complicated. They were recently upgraded to eVDSL and similarly to us her recent bill had a line saying "Free F2000 modem" but there was a charge associated with it. Would you be able to investigate this?

TheChizler

Hi Al,

It's getting very close to the next direct debit date. Can you please update us on the status?

Also would you be able to look at the unrelated issue my mother is having if I PM you the details?

TheChizler

Hi Al,

It's getting very close to the next direct debit date. Can you please update us on the status?

Also would you be able to look at the unrelated issue my mother is having if I PM you the details?

TheChizler

Al I haven't heard from you in nearly two weeks.

punisher5112

They really have not changed one bit.

Do not join they have terrible customer service.
Actually the worst I have ever dealt with.

bikeresearcher

How could the company provide consistent and informed customer services given its recent history and well document financial troubles. I'm willing to bet that many of the people customers engage with are poorly trained and poorly paid. I'm not guessing either. I'm a former employee of the company. Was with them for many many years and I watched standards across the organisation decline significantly when it was stripped almost bare after privatization.

TheChizler

Just to update, though I'm not sure why as I haven't had a response in a while (it's a good place to keep my records!).

No direct debit came out this month for the correct bill; after a conversation with Chat Now it turns out that because there was no direct debit attempt last month because the account was in credit, the system treated this as a failed direct debit, and apart from charging us a €15 failed direct debit fee, the direct debit mandate was then cancelled. So we've paid what we actually owe for this month by card, and got a new direct debit set up. There's something seriously wrong with the eircom billing system.

We also had multiple outages at the weekend for several hours at a time, the same symptoms as the original DSL sync loss problem. Slowing our connection down to the minimum speed (from ~90 Mb) has only reduced the frequency of these outages, not eliminated them or even reduced their severity.

TheChizler

Three weeks now...

punisher5112

TheChizler wrote: »

Three weeks now...

When it is possible to leave do as you will have a longer wait ahead.

Shocking customer service.

Eircom or eir as they are now called.

TheChizler

punisher5112 wrote: »

When it is possible to leave do as you will have a longer wait ahead.

Shocking customer service.

Eircom or eir as they are now called.

4 weeks now, and we had no connection yesterday morning.

gally74

SniperPaddy wrote: »

Hi Alan,

I wonder if you can help expedite a root cause resolution.


I've had pretty much the same experience as The Chizler, using the Eircom Moving Home process.
Multiple orders lost/confused, having to order Broadband twice and a modem twice, modem arriving late, staff constantly quoting the SLA as if it was a target rather than a limit, mis-selling a package, then switching to a smaller one without my consent, supervisor ducking me when I expressed a wish to escalate and reducing the bandwidth profile twice after without consent.
I had no choice at that stage but to record conversations (with notification) and start escalation to ComReg and a more senior Eircom manager. At that stage they put me on a switch that provided the bandwidth they originally sold me.
I was more than happy to leave it at that.

Rolling on 6 months: Two weeks ago, my data rate started dropping to unusable, every night at exactly the same time, with the same profile (<2Mb/s from 9:30-11:30 down from 14MB/s). 

An Eircom engineer came out to test the house-exchange line and found zero signal errors. The technicians tried a different switch port, in the exchange, and then informed me it was congestion. I strongly disagree for the following reasons:

(1) That does not strike me as a congestion profile. Congestion kicks in when the kids start downloads in the early evening and has a spread out distribution curve. This looks like a scheduled event because the big rate drop consistently initiates almost exactly at 9:30 and goes back up at 11:30 (high=14Mb/s vs. low<2Mb/s)

(2) The local exchange is not NGB enabled. My neighbours are on 3Mb/s ADSL profiles, I am on a 24Mb/s ADSL2+ which together seem to indicate that I am on a business DSLAM. Would I be correct in assuming that business switches are managed to provide a reasonable QoS per client? I wonder if the switch has recently been mis-configured or is there a badly designed connection?   

Great credit to the Eircom guy managing the ticket for me. He is very helpful and sympathetic. 
To date, the only actions I have seen were line testing, changing ports and the conclusion=congestion and multiple attempts to close the ticket. They are not giving him any details of their analysis.

There was no mention of throttling, profiled traffic/packet analysis, traceroutes, QoS settings or identifying if it was a single customer getting priority (network neutrality?).
To be blunt, I get the impression that somebody down the line is averse to dealing with tricky network management/configuration problems and is putting it off until FTTC is installed next year.. 

I currently have to stay very late at work these days because I do not have the bandwidth to log in from home.
Any assistance to sponsor oversight on this would be very much appreciated.


Rgds,
John

this seems what i have swell, actually drove to the exchange today to see if there were techs there and there was, I'm hoping i get it fixed. on friday i was told the ticket was closed congestion! , what a shower, I'm an engineer myself but they pawn you off as if you didn't know the difference between a laptop and a tablet.

gally74

I'm actually thinking the only way for them to listen is for people to have protest at their headquarters!

eir: Tony

TheChizler wrote: »

punisher5112 wrote: »

When it is possible to leave do as you will have a longer wait ahead.

Shocking customer service.

Eircom or eir as they are now called.

4 weeks now, and we had no connection yesterday morning.

Hi TheChizler, yes you should certainly have had a reply, and a response on here. I have collected info from your and gally74 posts and PMs and will see what the delay in resolution and response is. Al has been away for last two weeks but had chased this issue up before hand. I will be back with update.
Tony

TheChizler

Thanks Tony, didn't realize you worked Sundays!

brian_bugle

And I thought I had problems! Holy crap! The complete lack of response on here is amazing. This used to be my first port of call (ahead of ringing Eircon directly) but having had the problems I've had and then reading here (where you've been completely ignored for weeks at a time) makes me feel how lucky we are to have had no connection for 24 hours. Unbelievable. How are you still even a customer after this nonsense??

TheChizler

Lack of choice and an 18 month contract... I'm sure it's been broken at this stage though...

eir: Tony

TheChizler wrote: »

Thanks Tony, didn't realize you worked Sundays!

No TheChizler, not usually, but though this thread needed some priority..
I have asked for all angles to be covered here, order and provision, charges and actual service .. It may take me a while to get to bottom of these but I will be back as early as I can.
Tony

The Ayatolla

TheChizler wrote: »

Lack of choice and an 18 month contract... I'm sure it's been broken at this stage though...

Cancel your direct debit, write a letter to eir/eircom's director of customer service advising of this and then move to Sky Fibre. 

12 month contract and much better customer service. 

eir: Tony

SniperPaddy wrote: »

Hi Alan,

I wonder if you can help expedite a root cause resolution.


I've had pretty much the same experience as The Chizler, using the Eircom Moving Home process.
Multiple orders lost/confused, having to order Broadband twice and a modem twice, modem arriving late, staff constantly quoting the SLA as if it was a target rather than a limit, mis-selling a package, then switching to a smaller one without my consent, supervisor ducking me when I expressed a wish to escalate and reducing the bandwidth profile twice after without consent.
I had no choice at that stage but to record conversations (with notification) and start escalation to ComReg and a more senior Eircom manager. At that stage they put me on a switch that provided the bandwidth they originally sold me.
I was more than happy to leave it at that.

Rolling on 6 months: Two weeks ago, my data rate started dropping to unusable, every night at exactly the same time, with the same profile (<2Mb/s from 9:30-11:30 down from 14MB/s). 

An Eircom engineer came out to test the house-exchange line and found zero signal errors. The technicians tried a different switch port, in the exchange, and then informed me it was congestion. I strongly disagree for the following reasons:

(1) That does not strike me as a congestion profile. Congestion kicks in when the kids start downloads in the early evening and has a spread out distribution curve. This looks like a scheduled event because the big rate drop consistently initiates almost exactly at 9:30 and goes back up at 11:30 (high=14Mb/s vs. low<2Mb/s)

(2) The local exchange is not NGB enabled. My neighbours are on 3Mb/s ADSL profiles, I am on a 24Mb/s ADSL2+ which together seem to indicate that I am on a business DSLAM. Would I be correct in assuming that business switches are managed to provide a reasonable QoS per client? I wonder if the switch has recently been mis-configured or is there a badly designed connection?   

Great credit to the Eircom guy managing the ticket for me. He is very helpful and sympathetic. 
To date, the only actions I have seen were line testing, changing ports and the conclusion=congestion and multiple attempts to close the ticket. They are not giving him any details of their analysis.

There was no mention of throttling, profiled traffic/packet analysis, traceroutes, QoS settings or identifying if it was a single customer getting priority (network neutrality?).
To be blunt, I get the impression that somebody down the line is averse to dealing with tricky network management/configuration problems and is putting it off until FTTC is installed next year.. 

I currently have to stay very late at work these days because I do not have the bandwidth to log in from home.
Any assistance to sponsor oversight on this would be very much appreciated.


Rgds,
John

Hi SniperPaddy,
did you get this resolved? If you are still experiencing same issue can you PM me the ticket number you mention above and I can follow up on this. Tony

eir: Tony

brian_bugle wrote: »

And I thought I had problems! Holy crap! The complete lack of response on here is amazing. This used to be my first port of call (ahead of ringing Eircon directly) but having had the problems I've had and then reading here (where you've been completely ignored for weeks at a time) makes me feel how lucky we are to have had no connection for 24 hours. Unbelievable. How are you still even a customer after this nonsense??

Hi brian_bugle
there is pbviously no excuse for not having had a reply at this stage. We are chasing this again and will update. Re your own case. If still an issue can we help here? We will chase and get back within 24 hours.
Tony

TheChizler

Hi Tony, any update?