I’m paying twice for my eir service - when is this circus going to be resolved?

“I am unfortunately an eir broadband customer,” starts an ominous mail from a reader called Michael Ryan. He has been a customer of the company for many years but things only started to go wrong last summer.

In August 2022 Michael switched to fibre broadband at his Tipperary home. “There was a 16-day wait for the connection. At this time I cancelled my direct debit for my previous non-fibre broadband,” he says.

Eventually the new fibre connection was completed and he received a bill notification in September 2022. At €262 it was a lot higher than he thought so he contacted the company and after a discussion it was agreed that he would pay €143 and his “slate would be clean [and] from this point forward my agreed month bill would be €29.99 per month”.

“This was the agreed contract made in August. I transferred €143 on September 27th. My clear understanding was my bill would be €29.99 as agreed,” he writes.

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But when his October bill arrived it was €80.02. “This was debited from my account on November 7th. I rang to rectify the situation. I was promised all was in order after a lengthy phone call.”

It wasn’t.

“I received notification in late November that my next bill would be €82.98. I rang immediately. I was told it would take 10 working days to get the old charge for the non-fibre broadband removed from my bill. The charge was €52.99 for the old service, the one I had not used since late July 2022 when I agreed to the installation of the fibre broadband.”

So effectively he was paying eir twice – once for his old service and once for his new one.

“On each occasion I rang I pleaded and requested it be removed from my bill. I was informed I would not be charged the €82.99 as I had credit from previous payments.”

Then, in December, he got a bill for €6.99 and was pleased as he thought they had “finally got it sorted. I was debited €6.99 on January 5th. I was relieved it was eventually sorted. Time to move on.”

Things were not, however, sorted.

In late January of this year Michael “received notification that my next bill would be €82.98. I was debited €82.98. I rang. I was informed once again after a lengthy phone call that it would be rectified for good. My February bill was minus €181.97. My March bill was minus €98.99. My April bill was minus €5.98. In late May I was notified my bill would be €87.03. I was debited on June 5th.

“Good God, when is this circus going to be resolved? My old charge from my prior broadband from before July 2022 has remained on the bill after endless requests to remove it. I have been reassured more times than I want to remember that all is/was in order. The old non-fibre broadband is called Eir broad band solo at €52.99 per month.”

We contacted the company and in a statement it said that “the customer contacted eir to upgrade their service, which was processed successfully. However, due to a technical issue the termination order of the original service failed, and the service remained active on the account, resulting in the customer being billed each month thereafter. Although the charges were removed when the customer contacted eir, the issue was not resolved fully. eir has reviewed the matter and apologised to the customer for the inconvenience caused, the issue has now been resolved to the customer’s satisfaction.”