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Why is eir Customer Care and Loyalty non-existant - Really appalling customer service
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10-03-2017 4:56pm#1Having moved both my wife’s and my own mobile phone service to eir on the 25th of November and 27th of November respectively to our existing eir broadband & TV account, and purchased a Rose Gold 32GB iPhone 7 and Sony Xperia XZ as part of the move, eir set up my wife’s service under a new separate account number which cost significantly more than what we signed up for. It took until the 14th of January to have my wife’s mobile number showing on the correct account and at the correct price. Throughout the process of trying to get the number moved to the correct account I was given the run around from eir until they eventually admitted that no internal process existed to correct this error. In the absence of a process to correct this error they suggested that I return the phone, await it’s receipt at eir before they would issue a new phone & SIM on the correct account or alternatively I could pay for a new phone upfront with a new SIM on the correct account and then return the previously purchased phone and SIM on the incorrect account and await a refund. At this point I was already waiting for a month to receive a jiffy bag from eir to return my own faulty phone so didn’t have any faith in their solution to return the phone and await a replacement as it could potentially cause a lengthy loss in service. As their alternative solution was going to leave me out of pocket a significant amount of money I refused to accept either solution and continued to press them for an acceptable solution only achieving success when I warned them repeatedly that I would be referring the matter to COMREG and PriceWatch. At this point they were able to create an internal process to resolve the issue. In the meantime I had been charged for an additional SIM card on the correct account for the previous month while they tried to port my wife’s number across to it with the internal process which didn’t exist. At no point during this process was I able to successfully escalate this matter within eir. I spent several hours on the phone to them and several hours were also spent physically in my local eir shop in Ennis.
In the meantime after receiving my phone and new SIM I noted that I wasn’t receiving a 4G connection so I contacted eir about this and was told that 4G hadn’t been activated on the account. This was remedied after a bit of back and forth. Only 5 days after I took delivery of the Sony Xperia XZ I purchased with my service plan, the headphone socket on the phone proved to be faulty and I sought to return it. From the 12th of December when I advised eir of the issue, and following numerous other telephone calls to eir, eir allegedly raised in total 4 internal orders to dispatch a jiffy bag to me for the return of the phone. I eventually got the jiffy bag one month after requesting it initially and returned my phone to eir on the 20th of January. A further 10 days later eir booked the return on to their system and instead of organising a replacement handset, they cancelled the SIM contract associated with that phone. Several more hours were spent on the phone between the 30th and 31st of January trying to resolve this issue. I tried and failed once more to have this issue escalated within eir being told I’d receive a call back which I never did receive in the end. The most expedient solution offered by eir to the issue was to go to my local shop in Galway where I work, get a new SIM and do a missdin swop which I was subsequently told in the shop would not work as my number had been cancelled from their system. Having spent an hour and a half at the shop I was issued a new SIM card on my account and assured that my old number would be ported over. The following day it still had not ported over and I had not received the call back from a supervisor re this issue I yet again called eir and was passed between a number of operators until I had my number successfully ported over to the new SIM and active again, however at this stage I was still without a replacement for my faulty, returned phone. I queried how they were even going to send a replacement phone to me as the original SIM card with which this phone presumably had been associated with on their system had been cancelled in error by them, as they obviously had treated the return of my phone as a cancellation as opposed to a return for repair or replacement. Very much tongue in cheek and so as to give eir the opportunity to compensate me for the by now significant number of hours I had spent on the phone to them and in their stores trying to resolve their mistakes I requested that instead of sending me a replacement Sony Xperia XZ, they send me instead a black 128GB Apple iPhone 7. This was of course refused by eir and no counter offer of any kind of compensation was made by them to cover the cost of my time. I agreed with the agent that they issue a replacement Sony Xperia XZ and they confirmed that they would be raising the order. By the 3rd of March I still had not received a replacement handset or any notification from either eir or Nightline that an order had been processed and a phone was being sent to me. As I also had not at this point been refunded the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ if, as I suspect, in the event that they had cancelled my phone upon it’s return to them. I rang eir again and after a lengthy time and my refusal to be fobbed off I allegedly spoke with a supervisor within eir Loyalty who told me that she would look in to why an order hadn’t been raised for a replacement phone and would look in to getting a replacement order raised, however as it would need to be treated as a new order it would attract a price of €149 on their system which she would try to get waived. She confirmed that she would contact me back within 3 hours, by 16:00 that afternoon and as of today, 10/03/17 I still haven’t heard back from her, or any member of staff within eir. Neither have I received notice that a replacement order has been shipped from Nightline and the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ has not been refunded to me.
The eir staff clearly don’t care about their customers, their every action is to frustrate any complaints from being resolved. In addition to the above issues I have been prompted to examine the bills received to date from eir and have noted several incorrect charges for things which should be included in my plan and promotional discounts which should have been applied to the account have been removed prematurely. I can’t afford to leave eir as this would necessitate me paying in excess of €500 to get replacement phones and service provision from alternative suppliers before cancelling my service with eir so as to ensure that I don’t suffer further losses ddue to eir’s mistakes and inability and unwillingness to fix these issues in a timely fashion. Therefore I am taking the steps of:
Making an official complaint about the matter to COMREG.
Passing the issue on to PriceWatch at the Irish Times, perhaps they may find it an interesting case study which they would like to publish.
I will post this to the relevant social media platforms such as twitter, boards.ie and eir’s own online support forum.
I have documented in as much detail as possible all of my dealings on the above matters with eir, which is available in a separate document and all bill amounts and payments made by me to eir in an Excel table. In addition I will also be making a FOI request for eir to provide me with all notes made by them on my account and for a copy of any and all recordings of telephone conversations between eir and myself.0
Comments
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Hi TheLaughingDog,TheLaughingDog wrote: »Having moved both my wife’s and my own mobile phone service to eir on the 25th of November and 27th of November respectively to our existing eir broadband & TV account, and purchased a Rose Gold 32GB iPhone 7 and Sony Xperia XZ as part of the move, eir set up my wife’s service under a new separate account number which cost significantly more than what we signed up for. It took until the 14th of January to have my wife’s mobile number showing on the correct account and at the correct price. Throughout the process of trying to get the number moved to the correct account I was given the run around from eir until they eventually admitted that no internal process existed to correct this error. In the absence of a process to correct this error they suggested that I return the phone, await it’s receipt at eir before they would issue a new phone & SIM on the correct account or alternatively I could pay for a new phone upfront with a new SIM on the correct account and then return the previously purchased phone and SIM on the incorrect account and await a refund. At this point I was already waiting for a month to receive a jiffy bag from eir to return my own faulty phone so didn’t have any faith in their solution to return the phone and await a replacement as it could potentially cause a lengthy loss in service. As their alternative solution was going to leave me out of pocket a significant amount of money I refused to accept either solution and continued to press them for an acceptable solution only achieving success when I warned them repeatedly that I would be referring the matter to COMREG and PriceWatch. At this point they were able to create an internal process to resolve the issue. In the meantime I had been charged for an additional SIM card on the correct account for the previous month while they tried to port my wife’s number across to it with the internal process which didn’t exist. At no point during this process was I able to successfully escalate this matter within eir. I spent several hours on the phone to them and several hours were also spent physically in my local eir shop in Ennis.
In the meantime after receiving my phone and new SIM I noted that I wasn’t receiving a 4G connection so I contacted eir about this and was told that 4G hadn’t been activated on the account. This was remedied after a bit of back and forth. Only 5 days after I took delivery of the Sony Xperia XZ I purchased with my service plan, the headphone socket on the phone proved to be faulty and I sought to return it. From the 12th of December when I advised eir of the issue, and following numerous other telephone calls to eir, eir allegedly raised in total 4 internal orders to dispatch a jiffy bag to me for the return of the phone. I eventually got the jiffy bag one month after requesting it initially and returned my phone to eir on the 20th of January. A further 10 days later eir booked the return on to their system and instead of organising a replacement handset, they cancelled the SIM contract associated with that phone. Several more hours were spent on the phone between the 30th and 31st of January trying to resolve this issue. I tried and failed once more to have this issue escalated within eir being told I’d receive a call back which I never did receive in the end. The most expedient solution offered by eir to the issue was to go to my local shop in Galway where I work, get a new SIM and do a missdin swop which I was subsequently told in the shop would not work as my number had been cancelled from their system. Having spent an hour and a half at the shop I was issued a new SIM card on my account and assured that my old number would be ported over. The following day it still had not ported over and I had not received the call back from a supervisor re this issue I yet again called eir and was passed between a number of operators until I had my number successfully ported over to the new SIM and active again, however at this stage I was still without a replacement for my faulty, returned phone. I queried how they were even going to send a replacement phone to me as the original SIM card with which this phone presumably had been associated with on their system had been cancelled in error by them, as they obviously had treated the return of my phone as a cancellation as opposed to a return for repair or replacement. Very much tongue in cheek and so as to give eir the opportunity to compensate me for the by now significant number of hours I had spent on the phone to them and in their stores trying to resolve their mistakes I requested that instead of sending me a replacement Sony Xperia XZ, they send me instead a black 128GB Apple iPhone 7. This was of course refused by eir and no counter offer of any kind of compensation was made by them to cover the cost of my time. I agreed with the agent that they issue a replacement Sony Xperia XZ and they confirmed that they would be raising the order. By the 3rd of March I still had not received a replacement handset or any notification from either eir or Nightline that an order had been processed and a phone was being sent to me. As I also had not at this point been refunded the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ if, as I suspect, in the event that they had cancelled my phone upon it’s return to them. I rang eir again and after a lengthy time and my refusal to be fobbed off I allegedly spoke with a supervisor within eir Loyalty who told me that she would look in to why an order hadn’t been raised for a replacement phone and would look in to getting a replacement order raised, however as it would need to be treated as a new order it would attract a price of €149 on their system which she would try to get waived. She confirmed that she would contact me back within 3 hours, by 16:00 that afternoon and as of today, 10/03/17 I still haven’t heard back from her, or any member of staff within eir. Neither have I received notice that a replacement order has been shipped from Nightline and the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ has not been refunded to me.
The eir staff clearly don’t care about their customers, their every action is to frustrate any complaints from being resolved. In addition to the above issues I have been prompted to examine the bills received to date from eir and have noted several incorrect charges for things which should be included in my plan and promotional discounts which should have been applied to the account have been removed prematurely. I can’t afford to leave eir as this would necessitate me paying in excess of €500 to get replacement phones and service provision from alternative suppliers before cancelling my service with eir so as to ensure that I don’t suffer further losses ddue to eir’s mistakes and inability and unwillingness to fix these issues in a timely fashion. Therefore I am taking the steps of:
Making an official complaint about the matter to COMREG.
Passing the issue on to PriceWatch at the Irish Times, perhaps they may find it an interesting case study which they would like to publish.
I will post this to the relevant social media platforms such as twitter, boards.ie and eir’s own online support forum.
I have documented in as much detail as possible all of my dealings on the above matters with eir, which is available in a separate document and all bill amounts and payments made by me to eir in an Excel table. In addition I will also be making a FOI request for eir to provide me with all notes made by them on my account and for a copy of any and all recordings of telephone conversations between eir and myself.
Thank you for getting in touch and making us aware of the situation. It certainly sounds like you've had a difficult journey so far and I can completely understand the frustration this has caused you.
I understand the impression this has left on you. This is a very unusual case and it certainly isn't typical of the support we endeavour to offer our customers.
Following on from the error setting up the account, this would generally be resolved much sooner for you.
We'd like to get more information for you and help you any way we can.
If you could please PM your full name and account number and I will look into this for you.
Thanks,
Pamela0 -
Eir: Pamela wrote: »
Hi TheLaughingDog,TheLaughingDog wrote: »Having moved both my wife’s and my own mobile phone service to eir on the 25th of November and 27th of November respectively to our existing eir broadband & TV account, and purchased a Rose Gold 32GB iPhone 7 and Sony Xperia XZ as part of the move, eir set up my wife’s service under a new separate account number which cost significantly more than what we signed up for. It took until the 14th of January to have my wife’s mobile number showing on the correct account and at the correct price. Throughout the process of trying to get the number moved to the correct account I was given the run around from eir until they eventually admitted that no internal process existed to correct this error. In the absence of a process to correct this error they suggested that I return the phone, await it’s receipt at eir before they would issue a new phone & SIM on the correct account or alternatively I could pay for a new phone upfront with a new SIM on the correct account and then return the previously purchased phone and SIM on the incorrect account and await a refund. At this point I was already waiting for a month to receive a jiffy bag from eir to return my own faulty phone so didn’t have any faith in their solution to return the phone and await a replacement as it could potentially cause a lengthy loss in service. As their alternative solution was going to leave me out of pocket a significant amount of money I refused to accept either solution and continued to press them for an acceptable solution only achieving success when I warned them repeatedly that I would be referring the matter to COMREG and PriceWatch. At this point they were able to create an internal process to resolve the issue. In the meantime I had been charged for an additional SIM card on the correct account for the previous month while they tried to port my wife’s number across to it with the internal process which didn’t exist. At no point during this process was I able to successfully escalate this matter within eir. I spent several hours on the phone to them and several hours were also spent physically in my local eir shop in Ennis.
In the meantime after receiving my phone and new SIM I noted that I wasn’t receiving a 4G connection so I contacted eir about this and was told that 4G hadn’t been activated on the account. This was remedied after a bit of back and forth. Only 5 days after I took delivery of the Sony Xperia XZ I purchased with my service plan, the headphone socket on the phone proved to be faulty and I sought to return it. From the 12th of December when I advised eir of the issue, and following numerous other telephone calls to eir, eir allegedly raised in total 4 internal orders to dispatch a jiffy bag to me for the return of the phone. I eventually got the jiffy bag one month after requesting it initially and returned my phone to eir on the 20th of January. A further 10 days later eir booked the return on to their system and instead of organising a replacement handset, they cancelled the SIM contract associated with that phone. Several more hours were spent on the phone between the 30th and 31st of January trying to resolve this issue. I tried and failed once more to have this issue escalated within eir being told I’d receive a call back which I never did receive in the end. The most expedient solution offered by eir to the issue was to go to my local shop in Galway where I work, get a new SIM and do a missdin swop which I was subsequently told in the shop would not work as my number had been cancelled from their system. Having spent an hour and a half at the shop I was issued a new SIM card on my account and assured that my old number would be ported over. The following day it still had not ported over and I had not received the call back from a supervisor re this issue I yet again called eir and was passed between a number of operators until I had my number successfully ported over to the new SIM and active again, however at this stage I was still without a replacement for my faulty, returned phone. I queried how they were even going to send a replacement phone to me as the original SIM card with which this phone presumably had been associated with on their system had been cancelled in error by them, as they obviously had treated the return of my phone as a cancellation as opposed to a return for repair or replacement. Very much tongue in cheek and so as to give eir the opportunity to compensate me for the by now significant number of hours I had spent on the phone to them and in their stores trying to resolve their mistakes I requested that instead of sending me a replacement Sony Xperia XZ, they send me instead a black 128GB Apple iPhone 7. This was of course refused by eir and no counter offer of any kind of compensation was made by them to cover the cost of my time. I agreed with the agent that they issue a replacement Sony Xperia XZ and they confirmed that they would be raising the order. By the 3rd of March I still had not received a replacement handset or any notification from either eir or Nightline that an order had been processed and a phone was being sent to me. As I also had not at this point been refunded the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ if, as I suspect, in the event that they had cancelled my phone upon it’s return to them. I rang eir again and after a lengthy time and my refusal to be fobbed off I allegedly spoke with a supervisor within eir Loyalty who told me that she would look in to why an order hadn’t been raised for a replacement phone and would look in to getting a replacement order raised, however as it would need to be treated as a new order it would attract a price of €149 on their system which she would try to get waived. She confirmed that she would contact me back within 3 hours, by 16:00 that afternoon and as of today, 10/03/17 I still haven’t heard back from her, or any member of staff within eir. Neither have I received notice that a replacement order has been shipped from Nightline and the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ has not been refunded to me.
The eir staff clearly don’t care about their customers, their every action is to frustrate any complaints from being resolved. In addition to the above issues I have been prompted to examine the bills received to date from eir and have noted several incorrect charges for things which should be included in my plan and promotional discounts which should have been applied to the account have been removed prematurely. I can’t afford to leave eir as this would necessitate me paying in excess of €500 to get replacement phones and service provision from alternative suppliers before cancelling my service with eir so as to ensure that I don’t suffer further losses ddue to eir’s mistakes and inability and unwillingness to fix these issues in a timely fashion. Therefore I am taking the steps of:
Making an official complaint about the matter to COMREG.
Passing the issue on to PriceWatch at the Irish Times, perhaps they may find it an interesting case study which they would like to publish.
I will post this to the relevant social media platforms such as twitter, boards.ie and eir’s own online support forum.
I have documented in as much detail as possible all of my dealings on the above matters with eir, which is available in a separate document and all bill amounts and payments made by me to eir in an Excel table. In addition I will also be making a FOI request for eir to provide me with all notes made by them on my account and for a copy of any and all recordings of telephone conversations between eir and myself.
Thank you for getting in touch and making us aware of the situation. It certainly sounds like you've had a difficult journey so far and I can completely understand the frustration this has caused you.
I understand the impression this has left on you. This is a very unusual case and it certainly isn't typical of the support we endeavour to offer our customers.
Following on from the error setting up the account, this would generally be resolved much sooner for you.
We'd like to get more information for you and help you any way we can.
If you could please PM your full name and account number and I will look into this for you.
Thanks,
Pamela
Pamela,
Details have been DM'd to you, however I must advise you that following advice from your colleague Adam on Twitter @ eircare, and given that Adam couldn't resolve anything online for me or do anything even remotely customer care related such as escalate an issue or ensure I got a call back instead of me having to once again call eir, I was forced to call eir once more on Monday to speak with alternatively customer care, loyalty and then customer care once more.
eir informed me that the only way they could send a replacement phone to me was if I made an upfront payment of €149. As you had cancelled my original SIM and phone when I returned the faulty handset to you for replacement I was assured that the only way to get a replacement phone out to me now was by putting it up as a new order, but I would be refunded the purchased price of the original, returned phone. However as I had paid €99 for the original phone the prospect of being out of pocket €50 or for having to make any upfront payment in order to resolve an error which was wholly of eir’s making is totally unacceptable.
Furthermore when I raised the fact that I had noticed some errors in your billing I was informed that there was nothing that could be done as the maximum amount of discounts were being applied to my account already. I pointed out the fact that these discounts were simply part and parcel of the bonuses and discounts you offered to new business and that they had not been applied correctly in any event and I was being overcharged I was told there was nothing that could be done.
I tried once more, unsuccessfully to escalate the matter and in the end, and on your agents suggestion, I was transferred back to customer care so as to make an official complaint, having first enquired what would be involved at this point in cancelling all of my business with you, and telling your agent, in response to their statement that I would be breaking my contract, that in fact it was eir who had broken the contract by not supplying the services to which they were contracted for, namely provision of a phone and a 4G mobile service on either my SIM or my wife’s.
At this point, and co-incidentally only when I sought to raise an official complaint, your agent made the outrageous and frankly totally insulting claim that the reason I had never been refunded the original purchase price for the returned phone when you cancelled it in error, was that I had in fact never paid for the phones. Despite evidence to the contrary, including providing dates for when payment for the handsets which we purchased from eir in November, taken directly from my online banking screen, your agent continued to insist that I had not paid for them and therefore questioned the basis for my complaint. In addition I was told that, referring to the faulty returned handset, it was not unusual for repairs to take a month and a half. To say I was flabbergasted at this point would be a harsh understatement.
I received a complaint reference number, which I can only assume does not correctly reflect the actual issue given the attitude of the agent on the phone. Considering the agent’s, and by extension eir’s, continued mistaken and insulting belief that I didn’t pay for the handsets I had no choice but to refer the matter to my solicitor for review.
Never mind of course the fact that it reflects badly on eir’s internal order processing system and controls for your agent to mistakenly maintain that eir could indeed have dispatched phones to customers without them first having paid for them.
Additionally and as referenced in my original post above I have made a formal complaint to COMREG and I have also sent the matter to pricewatch@irishtimes.com
On the basis of my depressingly frustrating, fruitless and all too frequent and lengthy communications with eir to date on the multitude of issues due to eir’s mistakes, I can only suggest that you change your twitter handle from eircare to #eirnocare.0 -
Hi TheLaughingDog,TheLaughingDog wrote: »Eir: Pamela wrote: »
Hi TheLaughingDog,TheLaughingDog wrote: »Having moved both my wife’s and my own mobile phone service to eir on the 25th of November and 27th of November respectively to our existing eir broadband & TV account, and purchased a Rose Gold 32GB iPhone 7 and Sony Xperia XZ as part of the move, eir set up my wife’s service under a new separate account number which cost significantly more than what we signed up for. It took until the 14th of January to have my wife’s mobile number showing on the correct account and at the correct price. Throughout the process of trying to get the number moved to the correct account I was given the run around from eir until they eventually admitted that no internal process existed to correct this error. In the absence of a process to correct this error they suggested that I return the phone, await it’s receipt at eir before they would issue a new phone & SIM on the correct account or alternatively I could pay for a new phone upfront with a new SIM on the correct account and then return the previously purchased phone and SIM on the incorrect account and await a refund. At this point I was already waiting for a month to receive a jiffy bag from eir to return my own faulty phone so didn’t have any faith in their solution to return the phone and await a replacement as it could potentially cause a lengthy loss in service. As their alternative solution was going to leave me out of pocket a significant amount of money I refused to accept either solution and continued to press them for an acceptable solution only achieving success when I warned them repeatedly that I would be referring the matter to COMREG and PriceWatch. At this point they were able to create an internal process to resolve the issue. In the meantime I had been charged for an additional SIM card on the correct account for the previous month while they tried to port my wife’s number across to it with the internal process which didn’t exist. At no point during this process was I able to successfully escalate this matter within eir. I spent several hours on the phone to them and several hours were also spent physically in my local eir shop in Ennis.
In the meantime after receiving my phone and new SIM I noted that I wasn’t receiving a 4G connection so I contacted eir about this and was told that 4G hadn’t been activated on the account. This was remedied after a bit of back and forth. Only 5 days after I took delivery of the Sony Xperia XZ I purchased with my service plan, the headphone socket on the phone proved to be faulty and I sought to return it. From the 12th of December when I advised eir of the issue, and following numerous other telephone calls to eir, eir allegedly raised in total 4 internal orders to dispatch a jiffy bag to me for the return of the phone. I eventually got the jiffy bag one month after requesting it initially and returned my phone to eir on the 20th of January. A further 10 days later eir booked the return on to their system and instead of organising a replacement handset, they cancelled the SIM contract associated with that phone. Several more hours were spent on the phone between the 30th and 31st of January trying to resolve this issue. I tried and failed once more to have this issue escalated within eir being told I’d receive a call back which I never did receive in the end. The most expedient solution offered by eir to the issue was to go to my local shop in Galway where I work, get a new SIM and do a missdin swop which I was subsequently told in the shop would not work as my number had been cancelled from their system. Having spent an hour and a half at the shop I was issued a new SIM card on my account and assured that my old number would be ported over. The following day it still had not ported over and I had not received the call back from a supervisor re this issue I yet again called eir and was passed between a number of operators until I had my number successfully ported over to the new SIM and active again, however at this stage I was still without a replacement for my faulty, returned phone. I queried how they were even going to send a replacement phone to me as the original SIM card with which this phone presumably had been associated with on their system had been cancelled in error by them, as they obviously had treated the return of my phone as a cancellation as opposed to a return for repair or replacement. Very much tongue in cheek and so as to give eir the opportunity to compensate me for the by now significant number of hours I had spent on the phone to them and in their stores trying to resolve their mistakes I requested that instead of sending me a replacement Sony Xperia XZ, they send me instead a black 128GB Apple iPhone 7. This was of course refused by eir and no counter offer of any kind of compensation was made by them to cover the cost of my time. I agreed with the agent that they issue a replacement Sony Xperia XZ and they confirmed that they would be raising the order. By the 3rd of March I still had not received a replacement handset or any notification from either eir or Nightline that an order had been processed and a phone was being sent to me. As I also had not at this point been refunded the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ if, as I suspect, in the event that they had cancelled my phone upon it’s return to them. I rang eir again and after a lengthy time and my refusal to be fobbed off I allegedly spoke with a supervisor within eir Loyalty who told me that she would look in to why an order hadn’t been raised for a replacement phone and would look in to getting a replacement order raised, however as it would need to be treated as a new order it would attract a price of €149 on their system which she would try to get waived. She confirmed that she would contact me back within 3 hours, by 16:00 that afternoon and as of today, 10/03/17 I still haven’t heard back from her, or any member of staff within eir. Neither have I received notice that a replacement order has been shipped from Nightline and the original purchase price of the Sony Xperia XZ has not been refunded to me.
The eir staff clearly don’t care about their customers, their every action is to frustrate any complaints from being resolved. In addition to the above issues I have been prompted to examine the bills received to date from eir and have noted several incorrect charges for things which should be included in my plan and promotional discounts which should have been applied to the account have been removed prematurely. I can’t afford to leave eir as this would necessitate me paying in excess of €500 to get replacement phones and service provision from alternative suppliers before cancelling my service with eir so as to ensure that I don’t suffer further losses ddue to eir’s mistakes and inability and unwillingness to fix these issues in a timely fashion. Therefore I am taking the steps of:
Making an official complaint about the matter to COMREG.
Passing the issue on to PriceWatch at the Irish Times, perhaps they may find it an interesting case study which they would like to publish.
I will post this to the relevant social media platforms such as twitter, boards.ie and eir’s own online support forum.
I have documented in as much detail as possible all of my dealings on the above matters with eir, which is available in a separate document and all bill amounts and payments made by me to eir in an Excel table. In addition I will also be making a FOI request for eir to provide me with all notes made by them on my account and for a copy of any and all recordings of telephone conversations between eir and myself.
Thank you for getting in touch and making us aware of the situation. It certainly sounds like you've had a difficult journey so far and I can completely understand the frustration this has caused you.
I understand the impression this has left on you. This is a very unusual case and it certainly isn't typical of the support we endeavour to offer our customers.
Following on from the error setting up the account, this would generally be resolved much sooner for you.
We'd like to get more information for you and help you any way we can.
If you could please PM your full name and account number and I will look into this for you.
Thanks,
Pamela
Pamela,
Details have been DM'd to you, however I must advise you that following advice from your colleague Adam on Twitter @ eircare, and given that Adam couldn't resolve anything online for me or do anything even remotely customer care related such as escalate an issue or ensure I got a call back instead of me having to once again call eir, I was forced to call eir once more on Monday to speak with alternatively customer care, loyalty and then customer care once more.
eir informed me that the only way they could send a replacement phone to me was if I made an upfront payment of €149. As you had cancelled my original SIM and phone when I returned the faulty handset to you for replacement I was assured that the only way to get a replacement phone out to me now was by putting it up as a new order, but I would be refunded the purchased price of the original, returned phone. However as I had paid €99 for the original phone the prospect of being out of pocket €50 or for having to make any upfront payment in order to resolve an error which was wholly of eir’s making is totally unacceptable.
Furthermore when I raised the fact that I had noticed some errors in your billing I was informed that there was nothing that could be done as the maximum amount of discounts were being applied to my account already. I pointed out the fact that these discounts were simply part and parcel of the bonuses and discounts you offered to new business and that they had not been applied correctly in any event and I was being overcharged I was told there was nothing that could be done.
I tried once more, unsuccessfully to escalate the matter and in the end, and on your agents suggestion, I was transferred back to customer care so as to make an official complaint, having first enquired what would be involved at this point in cancelling all of my business with you, and telling your agent, in response to their statement that I would be breaking my contract, that in fact it was eir who had broken the contract by not supplying the services to which they were contracted for, namely provision of a phone and a 4G mobile service on either my SIM or my wife’s.
At this point, and co-incidentally only when I sought to raise an official complaint, your agent made the outrageous and frankly totally insulting claim that the reason I had never been refunded the original purchase price for the returned phone when you cancelled it in error, was that I had in fact never paid for the phones. Despite evidence to the contrary, including providing dates for when payment for the handsets which we purchased from eir in November, taken directly from my online banking screen, your agent continued to insist that I had not paid for them and therefore questioned the basis for my complaint. In addition I was told that, referring to the faulty returned handset, it was not unusual for repairs to take a month and a half. To say I was flabbergasted at this point would be a harsh understatement.
I received a complaint reference number, which I can only assume does not correctly reflect the actual issue given the attitude of the agent on the phone. Considering the agent’s, and by extension eir’s, continued mistaken and insulting belief that I didn’t pay for the handsets I had no choice but to refer the matter to my solicitor for review.
Never mind of course the fact that it reflects badly on eir’s internal order processing system and controls for your agent to mistakenly maintain that eir could indeed have dispatched phones to customers without them first having paid for them.
Additionally and as referenced in my original post above I have made a formal complaint to COMREG and I have also sent the matter to pricewatch@irishtimes.com
On the basis of my depressingly frustrating, fruitless and all too frequent and lengthy communications with eir to date on the multitude of issues due to eir’s mistakes, I can only suggest that you change your twitter handle from eircare to #eirnocare.
I'm really sorry you feel this way and I can assure you we will do all we can to assist you with this from here. Your complaint has been placed as a high priority and I have sent you a PM to advise.
Thanks,
Pamela0 -
Pamela, having considered your last DM I have to say that your assurance that my issues have been escalated and will be addressed as a matter of urgency is too little too late on eir's behalf at this stage. Given the fact that eir has erroded any trust I have for them and their ability to manage my account in a manner that I would deem acceptable, I really can't see any way forward for me to continue giving you my business. It's just not worth it and based on your performance to date I have no confidence in you to resolve any future issues should they arise.0
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I have to say I agree and from what I can see it's not as unusual as Pamela claims. My mother had it installed and except for a weeks delay the technician was great. However we received ZERO documentation from Eir! No welcome letter with our details or any account information of any kind! There was no mention of this elusive €100 cash back and when we were lucky enough to get through to CC we were passed from pillar to post. If it hadn't been for a lovely lady working in the local store we wouldn't even know our account number. Had it been me I'd have paid the €100 and gone back to Sky but my mother isn't the boat rocking type!TheLaughingDog wrote: »Pamela, having considered your last DM I have to say that your assurance that my issues have been escalated and will be addressed as a matter of urgency is too little too late on eir's behalf at this stage. Given the fact that eir has erroded any trust I have for them and their ability to manage my account in a manner that I would deem acceptable, I really can't see any way forward for me to continue giving you my business. It's just not worth it and based on your performance to date I have no confidence in you to resolve any future issues should they arise.0 -
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I had similar issues. Took over a hundred phone calls to resolve all the issues and eight weeks of frustration. That is a pity because now after 6 months I can say when all the issues are finally resolved, all systems are working well.
Eir needs to get better organised with new customers and especially customer care issues regarding billing.0 -
Well that's the thing the service from a technical point (signal, box etc) is quite decent. Just zero Customer Care.I had similar issues. Took over a hundred phone calls to resolve all the issues and eight weeks of frustration. That is a pity because now after 6 months I can say when all the issues are finally resolved, all systems are working well.
Eir needs to get better organised with new customers and especially customer care issues regarding billing.0 -
So has anyone actually read that wall of text or just scanned for keywords?
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Hi TheLaughingDog,TheLaughingDog wrote: »Pamela, having considered your last DM I have to say that your assurance that my issues have been escalated and will be addressed as a matter of urgency is too little too late on eir's behalf at this stage. Given the fact that eir has erroded any trust I have for them and their ability to manage my account in a manner that I would deem acceptable, I really can't see any way forward for me to continue giving you my business. It's just not worth it and based on your performance to date I have no confidence in you to resolve any future issues should they arise.
I am very sorry you feel this way and I can assure you that Pamela has escalated this for you and we are still awaiting an update.
We will be in touch as soon as we have an update.
I apologise for the inconvenience that has been caused to you.
Apologies,
Anna.0 -
Anna,
What baffles me is why it should take this long to resolve a serious issue. What baffles me even more is that you have not requested more detail from me on the matter. In my OP above I noted that I had logged everything in detail in a separate document and that the invoice discrepancies were noted in an Excel file. Nobody from eir has contacted me to request this, nobody has requested details of the invoice discrepancies which I believe to exist. So I fail to see how this could be being taken seriously by eir. Believe me I do not wish to have to waste another God knows how many hours on the phone explaining and re-explaining the issues just because the notes your agents made on my account aren't comprehensive or are obviously incomplete. You have already cost me countless hours on the phone and in your shops. Who is going to pay for my time in this matter? I've lost a days worth of working time just trying to sort this mess out. You've cost me enough, I don't see any possible solution that would convince me to continue giving you my business.0 -
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The only time Eir sat up and took notice of me was when I gave up and said I didn't want their service any more and canceled my direct debit. Suddenly everything swung into action. I was contacted by one of Eir's managers and offered the same deal at half the price and without a direct debit if I agreed to continue. All issues got quickly sorted and I have lived happily ever after ever since. Eir have an excellent broadband and TV service but sometimes they just need a kick up the a***0
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Hi Nomis21,The only time Eir sat up and took notice of me was when I gave up and said I didn't want their service any more and canceled my direct debit. Suddenly everything swung into action. I was contacted by one of Eir's managers and offered the same deal at half the price and without a direct debit if I agreed to continue. All issues got quickly sorted and I have lived happily ever after ever since. Eir have an excellent broadband and TV service but sometimes they just need a kick up the a***
I am really sorry to hear about your past eir experience and I will replay your feedback to the relevant teams. If there is anything else I can help you with please feel free to PM me.
Thanks,
Leanne.0 -
Pamela has sent you a PM in relation to this.TheLaughingDog wrote: »Anna,
What baffles me is why it should take this long to resolve a serious issue. What baffles me even more is that you have not requested more detail from me on the matter. In my OP above I noted that I had logged everything in detail in a separate document and that the invoice discrepancies were noted in an Excel file. Nobody from eir has contacted me to request this, nobody has requested details of the invoice discrepancies which I believe to exist. So I fail to see how this could be being taken seriously by eir. Believe me I do not wish to have to waste another God knows how many hours on the phone explaining and re-explaining the issues just because the notes your agents made on my account aren't comprehensive or are obviously incomplete. You have already cost me countless hours on the phone and in your shops. Who is going to pay for my time in this matter? I've lost a days worth of working time just trying to sort this mess out. You've cost me enough, I don't see any possible solution that would convince me to continue giving you my business.
A member of our complaints team has been trying to contact and sent you an email outlining everything that is being done for you.
Again, I do apologise for all of the inconvenience caused to you.
-Anna.0 -
I too have experienced problems - eventually got broadband (debatable) after three months of constant calls and complaints (which fell on deaf ears)
After three months of then complaining about the speed I decided that my only course of action was to cancel so made a call today _ I have ow been advised that the cheeky F*******s now have the audacity to charge €150 to get out of a contract for a service that they have never provided me with.
I then asked for contact details for Eirs Chief Executive - Dale from he Loyalty team didnt have the details and couldnt get them!!!!!!I then requested contact details for the complaints team - again Poor Dale didnt have those details either
I refuse and will not pay for a service that has not been provided they promise 4gb and I am not even getting 1 it is not good enough
I want full complaints procedure from one of your reps along with direct contact details for the Mr Moat your chief executive
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Hi miicknothappy,miicknothappy wrote: »I too have experienced problems - eventually got broadband (debatable) after three months of constant calls and complaints (which fell on deaf ears)
After three months of then complaining about the speed I decided that my only course of action was to cancel so made a call today _ I have ow been advised that the cheeky F*******s now have the audacity to charge €150 to get out of a contract for a service that they have never provided me with.
I then asked for contact details for Eirs Chief Executive - Dale from he Loyalty team didnt have the details and couldnt get them!!!!!!I then requested contact details for the complaints team - again Poor Dale didnt have those details either
I refuse and will not pay for a service that has not been provided they promise 4gb and I am not even getting 1 it is not good enough
I want full complaints procedure from one of your reps along with direct contact details for the Mr Moat your chief executive
I am very sorry to hear of your ongoing issue with ourselves.
Unfortunately, we would be unable to provide these contact details from here.
To log an official complaint you can do so online here or post a letter to the following address ensuring to add the following information:
- First name and surname
- Your eir account number
- Nature of complaint
to:
Customer complaints
5th Floor,
Telephone house
Marlborough Street,
Dublin 1.
Please feel free to PM me if there is anything I can help you with.
Thanks,
Anna.0
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