Eircom phone line problems

sully32

I have had service problems with my phone line for the past two years. I have logged the fault with eircom (once again) but I would be amazed if they do anything to sort the matter out.
I live in Drumcondra on the Phibsborogh exchange and am on a carrier system. For the past two to three years my phoneline has operated intermittantly at best. The signal drops on average every half an hour from anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes. There is regularly noise on the line especially before the signal drops. I have contacted eircom regarding this problem on numerous occasions and they have never sorted the problem to my satisfaction. The last two times they were out they have said that line tests were fine and that it was a problem with the internal wiring and therefore it is my problem and not their's. Considering that eircom are the only people who have done anything with the internal wiring since I have lived at the house I can't see why it should be my problem. In any case I get the distinct impression that eircom have no intention of solving this problem as the last two times they I have contacted them they have just done line tests and left the situation pretty much unchanged. One engineer even got annoyed with the person in the house (not me or things might have got very nasty) at the time and said basically we were wasting eircom's time and would be charged the next time anyone was called out. I wouldn't mind being charged as long as the fault was fixed.

I am looking for some advice on how to proceed.
Are eircom obliged to provide some minimum level of service i.e a phone line that works?
If they say that their line test is OK can they pass the problem back to the consumer? This is what eircom seem to be saying. But all I see, as the customer, is that I am paying for a service that is not being provided and I am not being given assistance by the service provider as to how problems with the service might be resolved. If I get no satisfaction from eircom (which I can predict with absolute confidence) will comreg be of any benefit to me or are they as useless as everyone on the broadband forum seem to suggest?
Any help would be geatly appreciated as this issue has been extremely annoying and frustrating

beller b

afaik Sully, Eircom are only responsible for the line to your house.They are not responsible for internal wiring or extension sockets etc.
Your best bet is to get an electrician to check out the internal wiring. if you want to eliminate this as the problem find the line coming into the house & connect your phone directly to that.If after doing that there is still a problem then it is something Eircom need to fix...

sully32

Thanks for the response. Never thought about connecting the phone to the line coming into the house. Hopefully this help me isolate the problem.

NutJob

Noise usually means interfearance or dodgie wireing somewhere. Spent 2 days looking throug all the wires in my house before i found why my dsl was dropping

sully32

Have eircom coming out tomorrow to verify that everthing on their side is OK. They will do the usual, test the line coming in and absolve themselves of all blame. After that I am going to use eircom's external contractors to check all the internal wiring. I know this costs but it will be worth as they will either solve the problem or prove for all time that it is an eircom issue. The whole thing is ridiculous, I am twenty minutes walk from the city center using a telephone service that seems to have been installed when Dublin was still under the jurisdiction of the British empire.

mrblack

NutJob wrote:

Noise usually means interfearance or dodgie wireing somewhere. Spent 2 days looking throug all the wires in my house before i found why my dsl was dropping

What caused your wiring problem?

mrblack

dam099

Do Eircom have some sort of termination point where the external wiring meets the internal wiring? If there is a socket there plug the phone directly into it, if it still doesn't work then it would indicate that problem is on their end, if it works fine from there it is your internal wiring. If you don't know ask the guy when he is out where this point is.

sully32

I rang eircom on Thursday about the problem and I must say they have been more than helpful. Engineer was out on Friday and seemed to have a genuine interest in solving the problem. He even said that since eircom had done all the internal wiring it should be there responsibility no matter where the problem lies . He called me this morning to say that he had done some repair work externally and he would give me a call back on Wednesday to see how I was getting on so hopefully things might improve. I am aware that there are no guarantees that this isn't merley the start of another repair saga. Eircom are such a weird company, most of the people in Eircom, I have dealt with have been both pleasant and helpful (there was one noticeable exception) they just never seem to do anything. Once they are exposed to any meaningful competition I can't see how the organisational culture will allow them to survive. What really surprises me is that there doesn't seem to be any initative from senior management to provide any meaningful service to residential customers and thus help prevent the massive customer churn that will occur once the market does open up. Real head in the sand stuff unless the real strategy is to maximise profits in the short term and sell the company once conditions become a bit harsher, in which case the state must bear a heavy responsibility for the whole privatisation fiasco.