eircon..
I was extremely pissed off earlier. However, I'm back now and a little more calm and collected. The source of my anger? Well let me tell you a little story...
Last year, I signed up to eircom's "unlimited" dial-up access plan due to the non-availability of broadband. Last month, I switched to broadband and cancelled by eircom dial-up account. I rang, told them what I wanted to do, e-mailed the confirmation as requested and everything seemed fine and dandy. Until today, when a phone bill dropped through the door for €314. Now our bill is normally €100 approx, so as you can imagine we were a little surprised when we read that figure. I looked at the bill, and found they had billed me for all my access calls since the previous bill.
For example, we'll say my previous bill was on August 15th, and our next bill was October 15th. I call to cancel on October 4th. Instead of saying to me "you should stay on this plan and cancel on the 15th" etc, they said nothing. Because, in their terms and conditions (which, of course, was agreed to one year ago) it allows them to cancel the account and revert all the calls you made on their "unlimited" plan back to normal rate calls. Nice of them to remind you about that when you call, huh? So instead of billing you for €60, they bill you however much the normal rate calls add up to - in this case €187 plus VAT. Nice little earner for eircom, isn't it?
So naturally I rang to complain. After navigating eircom's interactive voice response (where the computer, pretending to be a person tries to pre-empt your query instead of putting you through to a live person), I finally got through to someone in eircom billing, who couldn't help me. So after humming and hawing, he transferred me to eircom.net billing, who couldn't help me as I was being billed through my phone bill with their parent, eircom. So they transferred me back to eircom billing, to an agent whom I complained about a) the bill and b) the runaround. After about five minutes of this, she finally has a moment of realisation and asked me if I want to make a complaint. I responded yes, sort of dazed by the fact it took her this long to realise what I was doing. Unfortunately saying yes was a fatal mistake, as she transferred me into the queue for eircom "Customer Care". I waited for someone from "Customer Care" to come on the line when an automated voice informed me that "Customer Care" couldn't take my call right now, and I should email my complaint (great service from a telephone company!). At that point, I gave up and sent them said email. Apparently they shall reply with two days. I'm not exactly holding my breath for a quality response.
Last year, I signed up to eircom's "unlimited" dial-up access plan due to the non-availability of broadband. Last month, I switched to broadband and cancelled by eircom dial-up account. I rang, told them what I wanted to do, e-mailed the confirmation as requested and everything seemed fine and dandy. Until today, when a phone bill dropped through the door for €314. Now our bill is normally €100 approx, so as you can imagine we were a little surprised when we read that figure. I looked at the bill, and found they had billed me for all my access calls since the previous bill.
For example, we'll say my previous bill was on August 15th, and our next bill was October 15th. I call to cancel on October 4th. Instead of saying to me "you should stay on this plan and cancel on the 15th" etc, they said nothing. Because, in their terms and conditions (which, of course, was agreed to one year ago) it allows them to cancel the account and revert all the calls you made on their "unlimited" plan back to normal rate calls. Nice of them to remind you about that when you call, huh? So instead of billing you for €60, they bill you however much the normal rate calls add up to - in this case €187 plus VAT. Nice little earner for eircom, isn't it?
So naturally I rang to complain. After navigating eircom's interactive voice response (where the computer, pretending to be a person tries to pre-empt your query instead of putting you through to a live person), I finally got through to someone in eircom billing, who couldn't help me. So after humming and hawing, he transferred me to eircom.net billing, who couldn't help me as I was being billed through my phone bill with their parent, eircom. So they transferred me back to eircom billing, to an agent whom I complained about a) the bill and b) the runaround. After about five minutes of this, she finally has a moment of realisation and asked me if I want to make a complaint. I responded yes, sort of dazed by the fact it took her this long to realise what I was doing. Unfortunately saying yes was a fatal mistake, as she transferred me into the queue for eircom "Customer Care". I waited for someone from "Customer Care" to come on the line when an automated voice informed me that "Customer Care" couldn't take my call right now, and I should email my complaint (great service from a telephone company!). At that point, I gave up and sent them said email. Apparently they shall reply with two days. I'm not exactly holding my breath for a quality response.