Eir complaints still twice as bad as industry average

EIR might have garnered a lot of publicity for its recent customer service award but official figures show Ireland’s largest telecoms company still generated high levels of complaints in both its mobile and fixed-line services in 2021.

Latest figures published by the telecom regulator show ComReg received an average of 7.2 complaints per 100,000 customers about Eir’s mobile service last year. While it was a sizeable reduction on the previous year’s figure of 19.1 per 100,000, it was more than double the industry average of 3.3 complaints per 100,000 in 2021.

In contrast, Eir’s main competitors, Three and Vodafone, recorded complaint rates of 2.2 and 2.5 respectively about their mobile phone services.

However, Eir can point to a strong downward trend in complaints to ComReg, with the total number of individual complaints falling from 902 in 2020 to 342 last year – an annual reduction of 62%.

The volume of complaints about Eir’s landline services in 2021 was significantly higher at 1,022 but it, too, was down 62% from more than 2,700 complaints the previous year. The sharp reduction saw Eir being replaced by Vodafone as the telecom provider generating the highest rate of consumer complaints about fixed-line services last year.

An Eir spokesman attributed the improved performance to investment the company had made in customer service.

He said: ‘Over the past 18 months, Eir has focused on the resolution of underlying issues that were impacting customers by closely examining the experiences our customers were having.’

However, the spokesman claimed the most significant investment had been in its customer care agents through a focus on recruiting additional staff with extended periods of training and improved pay.

‘The vast majority of customers who talk to one of our agents are having a very positive experience. Call wait times have improved considerably,’ he added.

ComReg figures show billing issues remain the dominant source of grievance for Eir.