About a month ago (start July 2000) I had a few phone calls with esatclear, telling them that they had 30-days before I disconnected because I would rather pay for the calls than spend 2-20 minutes trying to get through every time I wanted to surf. The first call I was told that the whole system was actually down right then (fair enough, and they told me straight away) and I used the opportunity to tell them my side of the story. The second call was a few days later from a friends house (where he had fscked up and we weren't connecting) when I looked for a confirmation of why it was engaged (it wasn't the system down again), by the time I had finished with the poor woman, she actually rang the head of the department (at about 11pm) and then rang me back to tell me "there have been problems, but they will be solved on Monday" to which I replied "your 30-days are still counting down". Credit where credit is due however, I have yet to hear an engaged tone since (though the above mentioned friend has) so at least it seems like they made a noticable improvement. Lets all monitor this and be ready to jump all over them the next time they let the service slide because they are receiving a flat rate of pay whether it is working or not.

Finnally, I had previously tried to get anything out of them about the price inrease from #17 to #20...........but they told me nothing and made at least a good act of not actually knowing anything more than what the letter said (if you didn't get the letter it said the increase was due to raised interconnect charges and the HIGH LEVEL OF OFF-PEAK INTERNET DEMAND!!!!!). No answers could be gotten (I rang all the numbers I had a few times) from anybody (I think I spoke to a supervisor aswell) and they told me to ask the Telecoms Ombudsman (or whatever the department is) about the interconnect charges and the best I got about increased price due to increased demand was "it is unusual". This treatment alone has me ready to drop them (again, I already dropped their mobile service for eircell, not because I felt eircell were better but because I had to vote with my money to even have a hope of influencing anyone), all I am waiting for is another unmetered service....come on NTL, eircom, ocean, sprint, someone.

-- Niall Walsh (me@niallwalsh.net), August 04, 2000

Answers

Can't say I've had many problems with the service, but the accounts department have had a few problems with me. Their PR SUX!

-- Joel Bennett (traxxion@eircom.net), March 30, 2001.