Is eir the worst company in Ireland for customer service?

[Johnno75]

That sounds like the issue is the insecurity of some people who heard the comment rather

I see what you did there.

 

[Purple]

I see what you did there.

Yea, I pointed out that she didn't say anything against the people of Sligo, she said that they set up a call centre in a place which did not have an existing suitably skilled workforce and so there was a delay while they trained that workforce.

If I set up a carpentry business and find there are no carpenters in the area so I have to hire plumbers and train them to be carpenters that doesn't mean the plumbers I hired were thick. It means I was thick to set up the business in a place where there was no suitably skilled workforce.

 

[Purple]

To be clear I'm no fan of Eir. They are, by a comfortable margin, the worst company I have ever dealt with. They have shoddy products, shoddy customer service and a generally shoddy attitude and culture. It doesn't help that they've been bought over and asset stripped a few times wither. They are like the child of the worst of the public sector (sorry, "commercial" semi-state sector) and the worst of the private sector.

 

[Leo]

My recollection is of her saying that Eir opened a call centre in Sligo which, as an area, doesn’t have a big history of having call centres, so the people tended to come from sectors such as retail. So, as a result, the call centre didn’t hit the ground running and wasn’t up to speed as quickly as Eir had hoped.

She said it was a mistake to open there as the town didn't have the skills required (even though Abtran and others operate call centers in the area without the fuss). Regardless, they chose Sligo, did they not even carry out the most basic assessment of the local employment market before making that decision? The Sligo center opened in early 2019 I believe, should it really take this long to train some competent staff if lack of call center experience was really the issue?

When the angry local reaction startedin the media, she retracted those statements saying she accepted there were management failings and they had underestimated the difficulty of getting a contact center up and running in Sligo. She went on to say that they were hitting every target for customer care before the pandemic hit. Threads on here from that time suggest these problems didn't just start with the pandemic.

 

[David_Dublin]

I can't understand why Eir is being singled out. Or why numpties on an oirechtais committee think they have the knowledge, insight, experience or acumen to express views on how a particular private business should be run. the exerpts I heard were pathetic.

I'm not doubting there are serious problems with Eir customer service, but this is Joe Duffy type parish pump politics at its worst. Govern the bloody country, don't be wasting your time looking to get yourself in the meedja.

Oh for only a half hour wait on a support call!! I've spent upwards of 90 minutes with Virgin Media several times, and still no satisfaction. Should they be hauled up before a comittee too?

 

[losttheplot]

I'm not with Eir so only know what I've heard in the media and here. It all seems to be focused on the call centre now. But if the actual product was up to scratch, there would be little need to contact them in the first place. The fact that the call centre is busy just indicates there are problems elsewhere and their other systems aren't up to scratch.

 

[Johnno75]

I can't understand why Eir is being singled out. Or why numpties on an oirechtais committee think they have the knowledge, insight, experience or acumen to express views on how a particular private business should be run. the exerpts I heard were pathetic.

I'm not doubting there are serious problems with Eir customer service, but this is Joe Duffy type parish pump politics at its worst. Govern the bloody country, don't be wasting your time looking to get yourself in the meedja.

Oh for only a half hour wait on a support call!! I've spent upwards of 90 minutes with Virgin Media several times, and still no satisfaction. Should they be hauled up before a comittee too?

Eir is being singled out, because, as the CEO herself said, Eir own the network and are the biggest provider.

As I posted here before, when my business fibre broadband went down (affecting also my phones), it took Eir five days to come and resolve the issue. And that was after my having spent a number of hours over three days trying to get through to a human in Eir to report the problem (their Twitter and webchat facilities were of no use to me or were offline).

My business was closed down for a week over a simple junction box issue which was fixed in five minutes. And I had to pay several hundred euro to my IT service providers to rejig my systems which went awry as a result of the outage!

I, for one am glad the politicians got on board, as Comreg have demonstrated themselves incapable of fixing things (have you ever tried lodging a complaint with them? It’s as bad as dealing with Eir!).

If Virgin or Vodafone are falling short, haul them up too!

 

[odyssey06]

I, for one am glad the politicians got on board, as Comreg have demonstrated themselves incapable of fixing things (have you ever tried lodging a complaint with them? It’s as bad as dealing with Eir!).

The politicians should have been reading the riot act to Comreg aswell as if not instead of Eir.
That or giving Comreg the powers to read the riot act...

 

[David_Dublin]

Sorry to hear that @Jayom75 - but as Odyssey points out, it's ComReg that should be hammering Eir. The oireachtais committee asking about salaries, determining that this is why the customer experience is so poor - thats just nonsense. Suggesting that all pensioners should be offered a month's waiver etc, its in the realms of Healy Rae bs that does nobody any favours, and is very unlikely to do anything but get the squeakiest wheel some media attention and a better chance of re-election.

 

[Leper]

I can't understand why Eir is being singled out. Or why numpties on an oirechtais committee think they have the knowledge, insight, experience or acumen to express views on how a particular private business should be run. the exerpts I heard were pathetic.

I'm not doubting there are serious problems with Eir customer service, but this is Joe Duffy type parish pump politics at its worst. Govern the bloody country, don't be wasting your time looking to get yourself in the meedja.

Oh for only a half hour wait on a support call!! I've spent upwards of 90 minutes with Virgin Media several times, and still no satisfaction. Should they be hauled up before a comittee too?

Eir is not being singled out. The members of the Oireachtais are not numpties. They like most of us are fully aware that Eir is falling down on the job for a long time.

1. This thread started over 5 months ago. It's not like we started shooting yesterday. My difficulties in contacting Eir go back nearly 12 months where to contact them was like landing a man on Saturn launched on a three wheeled push bike. I wrote long-hand to them too when everything else failed. Needless to say Eir didn't reply and still haven't although I gave them the options of my email address and mobile telephone number along with our land line.
2. Even after several hours of trying to contact an Eir call centre and on separate days you were eventually answered by somebody who had little or no knowledge of (a) Good Customer Service and (b) Even scant knowledge of his/her job (c) Probably ill trained too.
3. There are similar complaints about Eir's call centre performance on other threads with much earlier dates.
4. Eir is a telecommunications company with which there is much difficulty in communicating and things haven't improved in a long time. Have no doubt the fault lies with Eir. A telecommunications company should at least be able to communicate.
5. Then Eir's CEO comes on live television and informs us Eir's difficulties are post Covid. Who or what does she think we are? We're not fools but she takes us for fools. All she had to do is inform us that they've been getting things wrong for a long time and that she would ensure that Customer Service would be customer focused in future. But, instead she waffled on with an obvious unprepared tittle tattle that didn't reflect well on her or on Eir. She is with the company for 10 years; it's not like she inherited the problems recently.
6. Nobody from Eir management or call centre staff has come on here although invited on several occasions. There is only so much people will take and I for one am fed up with the way Eir has treated its customers.

 

[Johnno75]

Yea, I pointed out that she didn't say anything against the people of Sligo, she said that they set up a call centre in a place which did not have an existing suitably skilled workforce and so there was a delay while they trained that workforce.

Yes.

But you also said that the offence some people (quite rightly) had taken at the comments of the Eir CEO was down to their own insecurities.

 

[David_Dublin]

I have very little regard for most politicians, hence my calling them numpties. Their observations, questions, suggestions and requests didn't change my mind.

Leper I can see you are furious, and with good reason. But what has their appearance in front of the committee achieved? What powers to the committee have? I think its akin to some sort of political virtue signalling.

I'll be delighted to be proven wrong. I am absolutely and utterly frustrated with Virgin myself. So much so I've chosen to watch This post will be deleted if not edited to remove bad language reception telly with a coat hangar aerial in the back of the telly, rather than continue to pay for their crap service. I know this is in now way akin to business struggling, no Internet etc.

 

[mathepac]

You too ??

Yes communications with the communicators are improving!! Delighted you got some kind of answer.

Replacement home-plugs arrived via courier at lunchtime. I installed them and got up and running quickly. So far the strange "disconnected" and "Reconnected" messages have vanished, *but* this is only day one.

The replacement devices are TP-Link branded rather than the eir-branded ones I was supplied with originally.

Happy as Larry for a while until I looked at my new eir bill which includes a line item, c. €15, for "EXCESS BROADBAND USAGE"!!!! With the majority of my services knackered in the past few weeks how can I have "EXCESS USAGE" was my question for Nicole today. I await her response with baited (no, that's not a misspelling) breath.

 

[horusd]

I thought the Eir response at the committee was cringeworthy and the TD McSharry rubbished it on the radio (Drivetime I think) but I sense that lousy service and a near impossibility in making contact with a Telecoms 'service' (sic) provider is par for the course. I'm with SKY - they've bumped up my TV & BB package nearly 50% and they are nigh impossible to make contact with. I had intended to get on, haggle to reduce the price and stay, but after 3/4 hours chasing around Twitter/webchat (incl. a 50 mins hold being transferred from the UK webchat to IRL) and the like with no phone number available to contact them (I'm abroad at the minute) or even a service email, I've simply decided I'm leaving them at whatever price. I fired off a complaint giving them notice I'm leaving (literally the only way to make contact - I suppose I should be grateful for that) The bottom line here for me has to be to vote with my feet. What's equally galling about all these companies is that they attach a premium to new customers over and above the existing ones.

 

[odyssey06]

I thought the Eir response at the committee was cringeworthy and the TD McSharry rubbished it on the radio (Drivetime I think) but I sense that lousy service and a near impossibility in making contact with a Telecoms 'service' (sic) provider is par for the course.

That's why it should have been the head of Comreg up before the Committee asking how public funds were being spent, why customer service is so bad in the sector under their remit, and what resources or powers they need to correct it.

 

[Purple]

Yes.

But you also said that the offence some people (quite rightly) had taken at the comments of the Eir CEO was down to their own insecurities.

Yes, I did.
There is much wrong with Eir but the excuses made by their CEO were not an attack on the people of Sligo.

 

[horusd]

I'm currently on hold for Laya- 35 minutes and counting, from 8:50 this morning. Hold message keeps trying to redirect you to website where you can get access to 'personalized member area - whatever that is.' Is there no cop on that no one would willingly hold for ages if they could have gotten the required info from the website? The message is interspersed with we appreciate your call..blah, blah blah. They just don't appreciate it enough to adequately resource the phones unit. I imagine the standard response to complaints is to blame COVID - I suspect that if they are all equally bad they figure they will get away with it, and this applies to any sphere where there's an element of customer care and service. in a restricted market

 

[Leo]

I can't understand why Eir is being singled out.

Oireachtais committees regularly bring in representatives from private companies who are in receipt of state funding. This one is only making so many headlines because it happens to be a company that lots of people have had issues with over the years. She spoke of 200,000 faults they have resolved since April for their 1,000,000 customers. Can that be right? 1 in 5?

Eir have a public service obligations, they are answerable to the state on their performance against those obligations. Agreed it should be Comreg enforcing standards here, but that does not mean that Eir should not be forced to answer publicly.

 

[Johnno75]

t's ComReg that should be hammering Eir.

I agree entirely. But when you have the Chief of Comreg coming on to RTÉ stating that Eir’s problems are for Eir to fix, it doesn’t exactly instil confidence in the regulator. Maybe the regulator isn’t in possession of sufficient statutory powers but that’s another conversation.

 

[Seagull]

I'll give you another example of their daft systems. We had to move temporarily for pyrite remediation, so I moved the account to the new address. They don't seem to have the ability to just move it. They close the account at the old address and open a new one for the new address. This cues a load of emails
"We're sorry to see you go"
"Welcome to eir"
and others that I can't recall offhand.

They also send a new router and tv box with every move, regardless how long it is since the last. So when we moved back home, the same thing happened again. So after 2 months we had another new router and tv box. And I can't just carry on using the old ones and send the new ones back unopened, because the new ones are now linked to the account.