Elderly couple had to call TD to get fix for eir phoneline

An elderly Westmeath couple, whose eir phoneline was down for six weeks, wrote to a local TD to in bid to get it reconnected. In their letter to Minister Robert Troy earlier this month, the couple voiced their frustration at the “appalling service of eir”.

“My wife and I are in our late 70s and we are waiting over six weeks for service despite so many requests through telephone, email and letter writing. Our three children reside out of Ireland and we desperately need to be reconnected.”

Minister Troy contacted ComReg and the matter resolved within days.

Speaking to the Westmeath Examiner, Minister Troy said that he contacted ComReg directly as he had “bad dealings with eir [in the past] and when you are trying to contact them you might as well use a carrier pigeon”. He also said that people should not have to contact their local TD to help get their phone reconnected.

“What was interesting is when I put the message about the couple on Twitter, it was liked over 2,000 times. There were over 300 comments, I have received dozens of emails. “It just proved that this was not an isolated incident. It is symptomatic of the poor customer service that eir has been providing. This is a wholesale problem that needs to be addressed.”

“The other side of it is the fact that you can have the matter resolved when ComReg intervenes within a couple of hours.” Minister Troy has been a vocal critic of eir in recent months. In October, he said the firm’s customer service is “an absolute joke”.

“To see people who are living on their own, their lines go down and they have no way in getting in contact with them. They really are an embarrassment,” he said.