Vodafone and eir hauled in by ministers

TELECOM giants eir and Vodafone have been hauled before Communications Minister Eamon Ryan and Tánaiste Leo Varadkar over their poor service during the pandemic lockdown.

The ministers called the two firms in separately to discuss a wave of complaints about unreliable broadband frustrating millions of people now working from home.

Minister for Enterprise, Trade and Employment Mr Varadkar said: ‘This is something which is causing a huge amount of frustration for people. These meetings were useful. It was good to hear first-hand from the companies. Both companies set out their plans to resolve the issues causing problems, so I really hope we see things improving for customers soon.’

Mr Ryan added: ‘It was important to relay the level of dissatisfaction being experienced by people who are doing their best to work from home.

‘The two companies outlined the solutions they are working on, and we should see improvements in the near future.’

Many employees have had to switch to home-working since March due to Covid-19. Complaints were passed on to the two ministers by TDs who were contacted by constituents.

Complaints to t el ecoms watchdog ComReg about eir have rocketed recently, and the two firms clocked up the most complaints among phone companies, with 2,872 landline and internet issues in July, August and September for eir and 724 for Vodafone. The level of complaints about eir is so high ComReg has fortnightly meetings with the firm to monitor its efforts to remedy the situation.

An ei r s pokesman s ai d: ‘Resolving care wait times is the number one priority for eir... we are making steady progress and wish to apologise for the delays some customers have experienced.’ A Vodafone spokesman said: ‘The Covid-19 pandemic has brought challenges to our business, which has meant that we’ve had to pivot very quickly to a new way of working

‘Our ambition at Vodafone is to ensure that we deliver a standard of excellence in our customer service, and unfortunately we acknowledge there have been situations where we have let ourselves down.’