Former Smart residential customer now cut off

Still not a peep. Somebody (not sure if I should name them so I won't for now) in the NCA has kindly contacted me via PM and has taken it upon himself to raise the issue directly with an NCA contact in UTV so hopefully, like Age Action Ireland were able to do with the original line blocking issue, NCA can do on the ongoing broadband service unavailability and unwarranted charges front.
 
NCA contact with UTV has at least kick started some more communication.

I pointed out to UTV that their code of practice doesn't seem to be available on their website in spite of this being [broken link removed] and they emailed me the links:

http://u.tv/talk/code.asp?loc=ie
http://u.tv/utvclicksilver/code.asp

However I still can't find out how to navigate to these from the home pages and have asked them for clarification on how to do this.

Another complication in all of this mess was that my mother was claiming the usual SW Household Benefits Package telephone allowance (which more or less covers the line rental for claimants) when she was with Smart. When her line was eventually resurrected with eircom this disappeared and she was billed in full by eircom for the two monthly billing periods that have elapsed since her line was restored. So now she also has to claim this again from SW and try to get it applied retrospectively to the most recent eircom bills (if possible).

Will this saga ever end...
 

That's a farse!!!

So i understand the statement you made except for the "(if possible)" part at the end of the post?
Are you refering to the backpay from the money she had to pay to eircom from her own pocket? Or, are you refering to her even qualifying for the "phone allowance" with the new Service Provider eircom?
 
Sn@kebite said:
So i understand the statement you made except for the "(if possible)" part at the end of the post?
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I thought that I read somewhere that strictly it cannot be backdated. However maybe I was wrong?
Are you refering to the backpay from the money she had to pay to eircom from her own pocket? Or, are you refering to her even qualifying for the "phone allowance" with the new Service Provider eircom?
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The former.
 
What I mean is that my mother was getting the SW telephone allowance up to October 2006 when she was with Smart until they stopped supplying her with a phone service. For most of November and December she had no telephone service so was not billed for phone services at all by anybody. Then at the end of December she became an eircom customer again and she has since been billed in full with no credit for the SW telephone allowance. She is trying to find out (a) how to claim this allowance again and (b) if she can get it backdated for her most recent eircom bills. She contacted SW and they simply said that it takes a few bills before she will get it (!?) but didn't clarify if it would be backdated.
 

Oh, well i will enjoy the closing end of the saga of Ms. ClubMan, please let me hear how the series concludes.
 
Right - where's that mulberry bush...

UTV are investigating on foot of the NCA contact and have come back to say that eircom tell them that they (eircom) put the original TOS (temporary out of service) block on the line, that they had valid reason to do this and it also caused the UTV broadband service to be blocked. As avid readers of this thread will already know eircom previously disclaimed responsibility for the TOS block, told us that they had no idea why it was in place and told us to take it up with our service provider (i.e. the then effectively - as far as voice only residential customers were concerned - defunct Smart). They also said that they could not lift it even though they obviously could and did in December. Another issue is that my mother's line numnber did not change but seemingly her UAN (Universal Account Number) did and that is what UTV need to attempt the transfer again. I checked the eircom bill and there is nothing that is obviously the UAN but there is an 8 digit number that I suspect is the one. Obviously it's looking more and more like eircom are mainly at fault here but UTV certainly could have kept us better informed on matters such as why things such as the broadband and line transfer were not working at their end instead of us having to chase them up all the time to be generally met with a "nothing wrong here" style answer. I feel like I have aged about 10 years since last October over this debacle...
 
As a previous Smart telephone only customer, I switched to Perlico after the demise of SMART - I refuse to move to EIRCOM at any cost.

I would now love to move my broadband from Irish Broadband to Perlico's fixed line offer but given Eircom's necessary presence in this scenario, the above story doesn't encourage me to go down this route even though the savings would be substantial for a similar level of service.
 
jpd said:
As a previous Smart telephone only customer, I switched to Perlico after the demise of SMART - I refuse to move to EIRCOM at any cost.
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Just to recap: my mother had no choice here. In order to get her line back up she had to become an eircom customer. In theory she should be able to switch now but there is still some confusion about what her new UAN is and this is what other providers need to transfer her. In addition eircom are now saying that they have a valid reason for the original TOS on her line and the fact that her broadband remains unavailable but nobody seems to know what it is! Finally to date UTV have basically said that none of this is their problem and defended their right to charge for broadband even though the service is not actully available to here. Hopefully the current NCA driven UTV investigation will yield some more progress ASAP.
 
jpd said:
As a previous Smart telephone only customer, I switched to Perlico after the demise of SMART
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I am amazed that you were able to move your line to Perlico as like the previous poster when the smart service was discontinued I spent 3 months trying to move my phone line to another provider (BT) and was only able to get my phone reconnected when I cried with sheer frustration to the eircom customer service agent who eventually reconnected my line. I had no choice but to move to eircom or I would still be without a service.

Sent a final email to COMREG explaining that I was now a reluctant eircom customer and explaning how I finally got reconnected...that's almost a month ago and I never received any reply from them...
 
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Forget about Comreg - waste of space.

Maybe try the NCA since they have kindly offered to help me with our problem and are in the process of doing so.
 
Hi Clubman

My situation while not completely similar to your mothers may help or not. Just my input because I think it's absolutely disgusting that at her age somebody at the end of a phoneline won't put their back out for her. Comreg from other issues I have are a complete waste of time and I don't know what they actually are there for. I moved into a new house in the middle of December. The previous owner was a customer of smart. They neglected to pay their bill from October onwards so the line was held by smart telecom and we were told by Smart, Eircom and BT that nothing could be done to activate a functioning line with us as new account holders. (Just as an aside BT are involved through a work related thing and we have to use them as a DSL provider).

For the last 6 weeks, I have rung all 3 companies, previous owner, comreg the works. Finally out of complete and total frustration I rang smart again, not expecting anything and was told I couldn't discuss an account that wasn't in my name but re-explained my frustration in minute detail to the person on the phone - he sighed and said - ok I'll end this now - 2 mins on hold and the previous owners line was shut down - just the right person at the right time.

Rang eircom the following day 8 times in 3 hours to push it forward

First response - line not released
Second response to my partner ringing (5 mins later different person) - line released, will be active in 28 days
Third response (I rang to question the 125 euro line setup charge) - line hasn't been released, the eircom representative then proceeded to hang up on me after questioning on how another eircom representative had said different!
Fourth Phone Call - Line not released, get back on to smart
Fifth Phonecall - Line is waiting for release, 28 days, service charge is to reinstall wires over smart
Sixth phonecall - line is released, but has technical issues
Seventh phonecall - line has not been released get onto smart telecom
Eight phonecall to the new customers/sales department - finally - a girl called miriam in the sales department said "I have no record of a request for a line at your address (!), but on checking it I can see that smart relinquished all hold on the line approx 8 hours ago, the reason you are being shoved from pillar to post is when you dial 1901 (and in an obsolete kind of way she suggested that those operators were lower in the food chain in eircom!) "they can't see what I can"

I now have a phoneline and broadband 7 days later - not 28.

Basically what I am, suggesting to you first and foremost is take UTV out of the equation for now. I personally think who you should be calling is Smart for line relinquishment, stress her age and situation and ask for the manager. They still hold the line somehow. Get the line re-established through eircom - forget 3rd parties, it's not right but they control everything. And then put UTV into the equation.

It is the most frustrating, dire situation I have ever seen (my previous posts on broadband say what I had to deal with with BT) but ultimately the problem lies with eircom and their monopoly and what happened smart telecom but I do believe who you should be calling is smart and then eircom sales. If you need phone numbers let me know, I don't have them at hand at the moment

Panathon
 
Thanks for your comments.
panathon said:
I personally think who you should be calling is Smart for line relinquishment
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I don't think so. Smart are out of the picture as far as I can see now. My mother is now an eircom voice line customer, her phone line works and she is currently billed by eircom. eircom have now told UTV that it was they and not anybody else who put the original TOS block on the line for "valid reasons" which they have never told us. In fact they previously disclaimed responsibility for this TOS block altogether every time I spoke to them and blamed it on Smart! Her UTV broadband stopped working when they put this block on the line but UTV never alerted us to the problem and they continue to bill us for the service which is not available. Basically both eircom and UTV are culpable in this situation for different reasons. I spent about three full days in December calling eircom and UTV to no avail (well - I did managed to get UTV to credit the account termination penalty fee back since they levied this claiming that my mother had cancelled her account when she had not). Only Age Action Ireland were able to make progress and managed to get eircom to do what they claimed they could not do, namely lift the TOS block which they claimed had nothing to do with them (the same one they now admit to having put in place for "valid reasons") and reinstate her line (with the side effect of her becoming an eircom customer since then).
They still hold the line somehow.
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I don't believe that this is the case. eircom now hold the line.
Get the line re-established through eircom - forget 3rd parties, it's not right but they control everything.
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We already did.
 
My mother called eircom today asking for her current UAN. They refused to give it to her saying that they don't give out such information!
 
Turns out her new eircom account number IS her new UAN. But eircom couldn't tell her that because it's a big secret! She called Comreg to complain about this and they said that they couldn't do anything unless she had the name of the person in eircom to whom she had spoken this morning. They also said that telcos are not obliged to give out the UAN (the number required for switching providers don't forget!) on bills or over the phone but if you write to them then they must write back with it. What a joke!

UTV are attempting to reenable broadband now with the new UAN. Then they will attempt the line rental transfer. They are still stalling on crediting/refunding the charges to date though. They are asking why the block was put on the line even though I have explained that we don't know other than eircom originally telling us that this was Smart's doing and only they could lift it. This in spite of the fact that eircom did manage to lift it, that they are now telling UTV that it was their own (eircom's) doing and that they had valid reason for doing so. Basically UTV are saying that they incur costs every time something happens (e.g. broadband enabled, broadband disabled, broadband reenabled) even if this is due to a TOS block being imposed and then lifted and they need to establish that the block was not my mother's responsibility before they can consider refunding/crediting charges.
 
Still no joy. The NCA called my mother asking what the story is. She told them it's still unresolved. UTV have not contacted me for a week. All I want at this stage is for them to refund charges levied for a service that was not provided. Last contact from them was to tell me that eircom once again failed to transfer the line because of an invalid UAN error.
 
Eh, three things.
1) When is this saga out in hardback, and
2) ClubMan, glad to hear you have a mum. I often wondered if you were an e.t. being.
3) Have found in cases like this that it is often cheaper in terms of time & frustration to let go of some of these injustices. Feck 'em, learn & move on.
 
I'm not yet willing to pay c. €60 for the privilege of learning a lesson about the incompetence of telecom service providers and the regulator.
 
How much time have you put into it so far, and how much will you have to, What value do you put on your time, now how much of that €60 is left?

I had a similar saga with a tile & flooring company who gave me a raw deal in Castleblaney. And I almost went to the small claims court in Monaghan, when a friend of mine told me I was being stupid. It was going to cost me a days pay, even if I won, I lost. Tis a wise warrior that picks his battles.

p.s. I dont work for UTV (although I am a happy customer of theirs)
 
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