Sligo people "not sufficiently skilled" to work in call centres

mariaalice

PhilOssophy wrote: »

Beat me to it, people complaining about poor customer service need to realise that the race to the bottom that this industry is, the one thing these companies don't give a f about funding is customer service. If even 90% are set up without problem, they are happy enough to just provide a minimal customer service to the other 10% and if they take their business, who cares.

People say "pay peanuts, get monkeys" - if you pay €20-30 a month for the service, you would probably baulk at a €10 "enhanced customer support fee" if such a thing existed.

Race to the bottom!

Complete nonsense I have great customer services from my mobile provider, the same with my bank. There is no connection between what you pay for something and the level of customer service.

Floppybits

The truth of it is is that Eir are not interested in Customer Service, they really don't give a crap. The reason for this is well you say to Eir right I'm sick of you and you are going to switch provider, the chances are that unless to you go with Virgin or a SIRO provider you are going to end up with another provider that is running on the Eir network so as far as Eir are concerned they are in a win win situation.

PhilOssophy

mariaalice wrote: »

Complete nonsense I have great customer services from my mobile provider, the same with my bank. There is no connection between what you pay for something and the level of customer service.

Apples and oranges, banks are borrowing out millions at 4% so can easily fund customer service, and they have skin in the game in keeping customers happy. A world apart from paying 30-40 quid a month for a broadband service.

.anon.

I had major issues with them a few years ago (Eircom, not people from Sligo). I was mis-sold a broadband package. They made all sorts of promises that the issue with my line would be resolved by their engineers, so I stupidly held off on cancelling until after the cooling-off period had lapsed. When it became clear that the problem wouldn't be solved (too far from their cabinet, apparently, despite the fact that my neighbours on both sides were availing of the service), I told them I wanted to cancel the contract, but was informed that I would be liable for an early cessation charge.

After spending hours trying to get in touch with their customer service, and being pushed from one useless rep to another, I was told that the only way they could extricate me from the contract was if I lodged a formal complaint. So I did that, and never heard anything back. I then contacted them on the old "Talk to..." forum on Boards and was told that there was no record of my formal complaint. So I made another one. And the same thing happened again. It felt like I was being trolled by them. At this point, I had already wasted hours dealing with them, so I went to the bank and cancelled/blocked the direct debit. I then cancelled the contract and told them where to shove their early cessation charge.

Eventually, after being bombarded with texts and emails about an outstanding bill of around €300 (the early cessation charge and the final month of a service that had never been provided in the first instance), I received a text from a debt collection company, telling me to contact them urgently. I was in the mood for a row, so I rang the number and they were actually lovely. Eircom could learn a thing or two from their hired goons. I explained everything to them and they told me not to worry, I wouldn't be hearing from them again.

dd973

Open the Pubs wrote: »

The French businessman that owns Eir is worth around €8 billion euros. They used to employ 13,000 people at their peak but they have cut around 10,000 jobs over the years.

The 1% are wealth creators.

For themselves, in a bent kleptocracy.

amacca

Everytime I had the misfortune to deal with eir the call centre appeared to be in india or Pakistan not sligo???????

Left them about a year ago, multiple calls beforehand, genuinely always thought I was talking to reps that could narely speak english and if the issue didnt fit neatly into the small number of straightforward situations you could fit into one A4 sheet the customer was basicallt fooked and doomed to the perpetual run around/hand off etc etc


What a scream, turned out I was talking to sligo people all along:D

HBC08

PhilOssophy wrote: »

I would say there are 2 reasons people don't want to work in Eir call centre
1. People on the other end of the line (who would want to listen to that all day)
2. Crap pay

You can ad in an arrogant middle manager somehow masquerading as a CEO throwing you under the bus on national tv.

TheRiverman

The current criticism of the company is self inflicted and deserved, but at least they have ceased outsourcing and brought their Customer Care brought back in house.They made a complete cockup doing this, especially in Sligo, but maybe with all the criticism and Carolan Lennon's awful performance on Prime Time it will bring changes resulting in a much more efficient service.They also have moved their Headquarters out of Houston South Quarter opposite Houston Station, a building that was leased, out to their own property in Citywest.

theoneeyedman

robinbird wrote: »

The CEO of EIr Carolan Lennon has put the blame for the companies appalling customer service squarely on Sligo people. She says that locating a call centre there was a mistake as the locals did not have the ability to do the job.

"Probably this is a mistake that we did make in choosing Sligo...... I think that was a challenge, it took us longer to train them".

Minister of State and Sligo-Leitrim TD Frank Feighan has since said he would write to Eir, as he does not believe the comments made about Sligo are accurate.

In a statement, he said: "I have been receiving phone calls all morning from irate staff at Eir and from the business community in Sligo who are concerned about the consequences of such comments on future investment from call centre companies in Sligo. I don’t believe the comments made about Sligo to be accurate".

https://www.joe.ie/news/eir-staff-sligo-709978

Be more like their business to get off the phone to Frankie and answer the phone calls from the customers.

RandomViewer

dd973 wrote: »

The 1% are wealth creators.

For themselves, in a bent kleptocracy.

Eir has had so many owners if it were a car it would be the ultimate lemon

seligehgit

Richard Hillman wrote: »

I bought a phone online off them. I had been with meteor for years and obviously they changed over. I was expecting the phone in 2-3 days, didn't come. 2-3 weeks didn't come. Spend 1, 2, 3 hours on hold for them, nothing. About 6 weeks after I called my bank and they reversed the transaction. I then buy the same phone with Tesco mobile and switch to them (decent service BTW)

A few days later the phone from Eir arrives. I packaged it up and posted it back to them. I wrote in a letter that I don't want it, I'll never use them again. A week later I get a 2nd refund, so I was up around €140 :pac:

There was not one iota of my conscience that considered giving them back the €140. The amount of time, stress and effort I put in trying to contact them, I didn't care that they lost out.


I would advise actually sending them a written letter to their Dublin office. It's the only way you will get through to them.

Ha Ha!

I can't think of a worse company to deal with.

I decided to leave them as Pure Telecom were offering a better deal.I rang their awful customer care service.I was charged for a period post the end of my contract while I transitioned to Pure Telecom in spite of the fact same transition should have been seamless.

I was subsequently sent a letter from a debt recovery agency for monies apparently owed for either a router that had been returned or a bill that had been paid.

I lost count of the number of mind numbing oeriods I spent on their customer care,eir chat and reps on this very website.

For months I received a monthly bill to my email although I was no longer a customer.There was certainly contact with Com Reg re this issue.

In the end I sent a letter to the head office and that sorted the issue fairly lively.

Much like yourself I received to 2 cheques in a flash as a form of reimbursement.

I was lacking in your courage as I thought Eir might have Martin Foley on my case fairly lively!:pac:

Re this matter I found the CEO's tone extremely condescending,the ease with which she was willing to throw low paid employees under the bus was shocking.

I hope the people of Sligo vote with their feet and walk away from the basket case that is eir.

Hilarious on Drivetime this evening.Frank Feighan was interviewed but the auld line dropped.Cue the presenter Cormac O hEadhra "There's a problem there,we might have to get an eir connection I suppose to get a better line.I'm only joking".:D

Vodafone are a close second in terms of poor customer care in my experience.

arctictree

The lesson here is if you want to leave them just write them a letter and cancel your direct debit with your bank. Don't waste your time trying to contact them.

Purple Mountain

RandomViewer wrote: »

Big one you should watch for on landline bills is "Appliance Rental" they keep charging for phones forever if you don't pull them up on it.

Yup. I noticed that with my mothers landline years ago. I rang them to tell them we no longer had their original phone, they cancelled the fee on the spot but wouldn't entertain refunding any of it.

RandomViewer

Purple Mountain wrote: »

Yup. I noticed that with my mothers landline years ago. I rang them to tell them we no longer had their original phone, they cancelled the fee on the spot but wouldn't entertain refunding any of it.

Dearest phone you'll ever buy

TheRiverman

RandomViewer wrote: »

Eir has had so many owners if it were a car it would be the ultimate lemon

Some of those owners almost bankrupted the company over the years since privatisation, at least the current owners are not asset stripping by selling off property etc.

RandomViewer

TheRiverman wrote: »

Some of those owners almost bankrupted the company over the years since privatisation, at least the current owners are not asset stripping by selling off property etc.

Is there much left to sell? Any of the vans I'm seeing around are 8 or 9 years old, staff are of an age as well,

TheRiverman

RandomViewer wrote: »

Is there much left to sell? Any of the vans I'm seeing around are 8 or 9 years old, staff are of an age as well,

They have had Apprenticeships in recent years, resulting in employing some younger Technicians, but there are some of the older staff still there, as far as I know they are gradually phasing them out through retirement schemes.They also use contractors quite a lot.

Bowlardo

Heard that about 100 of the staff took Covid payment instead of working and that was one of the contributing factors to the big wait times.

iamnotme

I'm from Sligo, and i was in stitches laughing earlier. As a lot of posters above point out, it's not a Sligo problem. Starts at the top. I just watched Miss Lennon's performance at the committee. Crikey!!

cannotlogin

With comments like that, it speaks volumes about the culture in Eir. No wonder they have problems. Talk about a way to alienate an already struggling and under pressure workforce.

Yellow_Fern

At some stage they will need to improve quality to maintain customers.

moceri

Eircom has no interest in care or their customers. Their business model is to cut costs in the face of declining revenues. The company is in decline, albeit slowly. Carolan has delivered to her boss Xavier Niel on a revenue down 2 %, profits are up 10%...

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/eir-revenues-continue-to-slide-but-results-in-line-with-expectations-1.4006167

Somethings gotta give.

Greyfox

Yellow_Fern wrote: »

At some stage they will need to improve quality to maintain customers.

They dont, they just need to do another one of their fancy ads and people will forget about all the very old people stuck on hold for half a day.

The Continental Op

I thought Eir didn't give a fcuk because they still owned most of the infrastructure that most of the other cable broadband providers have to use?

Greyfox

RandomViewer wrote: »

Dearest phone you'll ever buy

Thousands of people in Ireland still pay handset rental, you could move provider and still get billed for a handset you got rid of years ago.

HBC08

Bowlardo wrote: »

Heard that about 100 of the staff took Covid payment instead of working and that was one of the contributing factors to the big wait times.

Not sure you understand how the Covid payment works.

Floppybits

The Continental Op wrote: »

I thought Eir didn't give a fcuk because they still owned most of the infrastructure that most of the other cable broadband providers have to use?

Thats my thought as well. Surprised they haven't just phased out the individual customer and just gone down the wholesale route or else split the company and have a commercial part and a wholesale part. It is mad moving provider if they are using eir all you are doing is swapping one customer service for another. At least if you are with eir they might know what is going on with the line. What chance have you with Vodafone or sky who would probably need to contact eir to find out if there is a problem.

amacca

Floppybits wrote: »

Thats my thought as well. Surprised they haven't just phased out the individual customer and just gone down the wholesale route or else split the company and have a commercial part and a wholesale part. It is mad moving provider if they are using eir all you are doing is swapping one customer service for another. At least if you are with eir they might know what is going on with the line. What chance have you with Vodafone or sky who would probably need to contact eir to find out if there is a problem.

The problem most of the time I was with eir was you couldn't actually contact them

Oh sure you could ring them or use a webchat but no actual meaningful communication was happening, you were invariably waiting, passed from billy to jack, etc etc they were the ****8ng chocolate teapot of customer service imo.....probably not the fault of the individual on the line but at least with sky you could speak to person get your point across and have the issue resolved without countless hours of frustration and sheer ****wittery of monumental proportions........ regardless of whether they were renting the infrastructure or not

Id never even contemplate using an eir service again such was the irritation and time wasted and sheer frustrating hassle to get some relatively simple issues sorted/get a straight answer to a questiin

At one stage they denied a service to me because they said my credit rating was bad (:D news to me) so naturally I questioned whose arsehole they were pulling that from (Id actually requested my credit rating a couple of weeks before and it was pretty much as good as it could be /never missed a loan payment in my life) ....flunky insisted computer says no, naturally I couldn't let it sit as it coukd be something I didnt know about....I insisted they provide me with details, no joy multiple contacts, eventually browbeat a csr to put me on to a team leader/supervisor, no joy eventually after a whole lot of hassle find out its not my actual credit rating but rating with their accounts dept for a line that was incorrectly in my name and get this there was 5 euro and 8 cent outstanding from 10 years beforehand ...ffs and they couldnt tell me this info they (mistakenly as it turned out) had on me......such dazzling incompetence, we cant provide you service becuase your credit rating is bad, but we cant tell tou how this is the case either....even though its data about you so you cant remedy it...meanwhile you think its your actual credit rating they are talking about...........this is just one of many interactions with eir that left a bad aftertaste.........Once and only once did I deal with a very nice CSR that couldnt do sny more to be helpful and listened to what the issue was and sorted it out....but an interaction like that was very much the exception to the rule in the year and a bit I had the misfortune to do business with eir.

TheRiverman

cannotlogin wrote: »

With comments like that, it speaks volumes about the culture in Eir. No wonder they have problems. Talk about a way to alienate an already struggling and under pressure workforce.

Carolan obviously never heard of the Richard Branson philosophy, "the clients don't come first, the employees do, look after the employees and they will look after the clients".

garrettod

The people of Sligo should all boycott Eir, much in the same way as the people of Liverpool boycott that rag of red top tabloid.