Eir customers report continuing service issues
Former county councillor John Gilroy from Glanmire, Cork, has spoken out about Eir customer service. Picture: Dan Linehan
Telecommunications firm Eir's well-publicised customer service problems continue for long-suffering users, despite insisting it is making "substantial progress" in the past two months.
Eir's customer service record saw its leadership hauled into meetings with Government ministers in November, as well its chief executive appearing at the Oireachtas communications committee in December.
Despite vows to improve, social media channels such as Facebook continue to be peppered with users venting over lax customer care.
An Eir customer in Cork, former county councillor John Gilroy, wrote about his recent experience with the company on his Facebook page, and was soon contacted by a number of other customers who had similar experiences.
A cursory search of Eir on Facebook by the led to hundreds of negative comments on people's personal pages, but also on Eir's own channel, in recent weeks – long after the company's chief executive Carolan Lennon vowed it would improve.
Mr Gilroy, based in Glanmire, said:
"Since I put up that status on Facebook, I have been told by more people while shopping or out exercising that they are in the same boat. It is just not good enough at this stage when people badly need broadband to work and study remotely."
He said that after waiting 19 minutes, he initially reported a broadband fault, and was then asked to find his account number, before the line went dead, and the process began again. This time, he faced a much longer wait.
"Ironically, I'm happy enough with the service itself, faults can happen, but the customer care is something else altogether. I was at it from 3.30pm to 6pm, being placed on hold over and over again, until I was told at 6pm that the customer care line was now closed.
"The people responding to me are eminently sensible and reasonable people, so when they are as frustrated as I am, you know this issue is not going away for Eir. There is no excuse, they simply must get this in hand," Mr Gilroy said.
Eir's own Facebook page is inundated with customer care dissatisfaction, even when it posts statuses related to other issues, such as a new product release by the likes of Samsung.
A January 14 status from Eir offering customers the chance to pre-order a new Samsung S21 phone were met with comments that included:
- "Tried contacting customer service all day today, each time 20 minutes on hold and then cut off."
- "You can answer sales calls within one ring but but I’m in hold for two hours for customer care."
Hundreds of comments were left on other statuses in recent weeks, mostly negative.
According to ComReg statistics, Eir was far higher than any other service provider when it came to the volume of customer complaints, and the length of time it took to resolve issues.
Of the 5,354 complaints between July and September to ComReg, two-thirds involved Eir.
In response, Eir told the it "continues to make substantial progress on our care wait times and we thank our customers for their patience and support".
Eir has hired more than 200 new care agents in recent months, leading to significant improvements, it said.
"The average wait time for our main care line has been five minutes over the last two months. ComReg’s next report will show complaints are down by more than a third in the last three months.
"Despite the renewed level 5 lockdown, which has led to a substantial reduction in the number of queries our retail teams are handling, we continue to see substantial improvement in call handling times."
