All I wanted was 8MB broadband.
It all started on the 22nd of September. I was looking to change my broadband provider from clearwire. I was holding out for upc simply because I think it is criminal that we still have to pay line rental just to get broadband.
At first I thought it was all straight forward. I called them up and was told that in 5 working days I would have broadband. Cool, it’s only “up to 8MB”, but whatever, it’s got a contention ratio of 1 i.e. I’m not sharing my connection.
So on the the 30th of September I call eircom to set up my direct debit. While on the call, I asked where my ADSL modem was. I was then told that broadband hadn’t even been ordered for my account. At this stage I was a little bit miffed. So I said ok, make sure that 8MB broadband has been ordered and it gets sent out to me.
In the middle of this call the sales guy tried for (what seemed like) a long time to sell me emobile.
Fine, I’ll have 8MB broadband (sorry, up to 8 MB) in 5 days time. Or so I thought.
Five (working) days later, I received the ADSL modem. I set up the ADSL modem with anticipation of my blazing fast (up to) 8MB. Hmm, it doesn’t seem all that fast. Right, off to speedtest.net, what’s this 0.8MB?
Call number 3: Tech support at 8am in the morning. According to tech support, I only had a 1MB connection. The tech support guy told me I needed to talk to sales to get it increased to 8MB. He then told me he would transfer me to the sales department. The only problem was; there was no one in the sales department. Now I’m annoyed. How is it possible that the guys in tech support don’t know what time the sales department opens? Really frustrating.
I then waited until 9am for phone call number 4. I got through to one of the sales staff. At this stage I didn’t really trust what the front line sales staff were telling me so I asked to speak to a supervisor. After being put on hold 4 times I eventually got to talk to a supervisor. I wanted someone to send me an email confirming my order. I was then told it was against company policy to send external emails.
After speaking to someone in customer care, I was told that my case would be escalated.
Yesterday, I got a call from eircom. I tried to explain to him that it’s not the people that are the problem, it’s the process.
It took me 4 phone calls to get what I ordered and at no stage in the process did I get a confirmation that anybody understood what I ordered.
So how could eircom drastically improve the experience? Well here’s a few things they could try:
One thing eircom have done right is their twitter account. I found the guys doing it to be polite, helpful and responsive.
Anyway, rant over.