Family left without TV, landline or broadband but with a bill for €1k
Eir signed them up for high-speed internet even though it wasn’t available
A WOMAN has said she had ‘eight weeks of hell’ after trying to buy a €50 phone, broadband and TV bundle from Eir as a Christmas present for her husband-to-be, but ended up with a bill for almost €1,000 for a service she never fully got.
Michelle Doyle, from Johnstownbridge, Co. Kildare, told the Irish Mail on Sunday how her nightmare began when she went into the company’s store in Liffey Valley shopping centre on December 12.
‘I was getting married shortly after Christmas and wanted to buy my husband-to-be John Rice a phone, so I wandered in for a look, and a sales assistant came over and asked me if I was interested in a bundle that would include the TV, a mobile phone, landline and high speed broadband.
‘To be honest, I wasn’t but when he showed me that the cost was a lot cheaper than what I was paying I decided I’d change.
‘In hindsight it wasn’t the best decision I ever made. I had been with Eircom previously and had nothing but problems.’
Telecoms company Eircom rebranded as ‘Eir’ in September.
‘On the day I signed up, I asked the guy on three separate occasions if he was sure the high-speed fibre broadband was available where I lived. He checked it and assured me they would have no problem fitting it in my area.’
Ms Doyle received her new mobile handset a few days later, and prepared to welcome an installation engineer to her home in the New Year. However, when the engineer went to her home on January 12, he discovered he couldn’t ‘as the high-speed fibre lines hadn’t been rolled out in our area’.
He left, ‘promising to get back to me’, on the assumption that the situation would be resolved.
Three days later, having heard nothing, and having cancelled her existing broadband and landline service, Ms Doyle rang Eir to cancel the order. However, ‘Eir refused to allow me to cancel, they said that on the contract I signed there was a 21-day cooling off period which had expired.’
Keen to end the contract, Ms Doyle drove to Liffey Valley shopping centre to return the mobile handset she received from Eir. ‘They refused to take it,’ she said. It took four trips to the shop before ‘they eventually took the phone off me’.
Also in January, Ms Doyle’s family switched their phone and TV back to their previous supplier, but they were told that Eir retained the phoneline and therefore the previous supplier could not provide them with a landline or broadband service.
To make matters worse Eir then called to say the family owed them €72 for February as the firm had charged them a month in advance.
And two weeks ago a bill arrived for almost €1,000. ‘It was for over a grand but they took some off because they had taken money from my bank,’ Ms Doyle said. ‘As of yet they haven’t been able to tell me what this bill is actually for.’
Ms Doyle says she telephoned Eir ‘countless times’, but made little progress.
Eventually Michelle’s son John took to social media.
‘When John posted the story on Facebook, Eir must have seen it because they rang me immediately said they would refund me some money and accepted we owed them nothing. They even freed up the landline and we are back up and running with a different supplier.’
In a statement issued to the Irish Mail on Sunday, Eir acknowledged that its system had incorrectly recorded that Ms Doyle’s broadband was active.
‘We recognise that this was an error,’ it said. Eir said it had agreed to ‘immediately cancel’ Ms Doyle’s contract.
‘The issues the customer has had with trying to cease the mobile service will be investigated and we would like to apologise for any inconvenience.’
It said it had waived all charges for her use of the phone between December 15 and February 2 and a cheque refund of €75.82 has been issued.
Eir said that while the mobile phone account was properly cancelled an error on its behalf caused an early cancellation charge of €924 to be applied to her account.
However, Ms Doyle said she was worried about how other customers will be treated. ‘I feel as if Eir just don’t care about their customers: once you sign up they just want your money.’
‘I wanted to buy a phone for husband-to-be’ ‘The issue will be investigated’