Eir incurs €10,500 in court fines for overcharging customers

10 Oct 2017

Eir was fined in a Dublin courtroom over customer complaints. Image: David Soanes/Shutterstock

Eir admits to overcharging some customers following several complaints to ComReg.

Eir has been issued a €10,500 fine following its admittance that it had been overcharging customers for its services.

In Dublin District Court yesterday (9 October), the telecoms giant pleaded guilty to offences under the 2002 Communications Regulation Act.

According to RTÉ News, the prosecution arose following complaints by five people submitted to ComReg after customer service at Eir didn’t succeed in resolving their issues.

Cancellation was difficult

After agreeing to a €65 broadband plan, Irene McHugh, a pensioner and one of the complainants who attended the hearing, wanted to cancel after she became concerned about how she could make payments.

She ended up eventually being disconnected for two weeks after paying two bills, one of which she had believed had been cancelled. She has since been refunded by Eir.

The other complainants were overcharged by between €31 and €592, and have all since been refunded. Eir was convicted for similar offences in 2015 and in March of this year.

Eir implementing a new complaints pipeline

Eir cooperated fully with the investigation, and said it has now implemented a more efficient complaints system that has seen a stark drop in recorded customer dissatisfaction. The overcharging came as a result of both human and systemic errors on Eir’s part.

The operator recently announced it is one-third of the way through its planned rural broadband roll-out, having passed 100,000 fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) premises in rural Ireland as part of a €200m investment agreed with the Irish Government.

The company is one of two – the other being Enet – that submitted detailed bids for the National Broadband Plan. Siro, a joint venture between ESB and Vodafone, did not, as it could not set up a “competitive business case” to justify competing for the tender.

Ellen Tannam was a journalist with Silicon Republic, covering all manner of business and tech subjects

editorial@siliconrepublic.com