A reader called Anne has been given the right runaround by her telecoms provider. She is furious at how she has now ended up owing them €1,700 and is being threatened with debt collectors unless she pays up.
It is not an uncomplicated story, but at its heart it highlights a simple truth that it is not always straightforward to cancel a service. If you fail to jump through all the hoops exactly as a provider dictates, then you might end up paying for it.
Earlier this year, Anne switched to Vodafone having been a customer of Eir – and before that Eircom – for almost 30 years.
She switched her broadband and landline service in March, as she thought she “was entitled to do in the spirit of competition and seeking a better service. This was when the trouble started.”
RM Block
She says she is now at her wits’ end, adding: “I had no idea that changing to a new provider would result in this sort of demand for money. I had paid two bills because of aggressive reminders that bills were due, sent by text, from Eir. We now have a bill from Eir for €1,700.”
Anne’s son is an authorised user in the accounts and he takes over the story at this point.
“There were multiple faults in our broadband line in 2024, as we’ve had over the years,” he begins.
It was so bad that he recalls starting working remotely in 2020 and his employer asking him for a screenshot of his broadband speed “because they didn’t believe me as to how slow it was. This was despite us paying full price (not new-customer rates) for 100mbps broadband and being in a built-up area with neighbours having high speeds.”
There was a significant outage as a result of Storm Éowyn, and Eir advised Anne and her son “to get mobile broadband whilst Open Eir worked to get our line fixed”, he recalled. “Eir informed me this would be complimentary due to the lack of service, which turned out to be false as it cost €20 and this was on top of the monthly bill. We received no remediation for the loss of service.
“After the faults and the mobile broadband issue I decided it was time to leave to whatever provider was available. I called Eir to cancel and I was told that very day that fibre had been made available in our area and we could sign up, so we did, under the condition that there was a cooling off period and we could leave after 14 days.
“My mother was paying nearly €70 a month for this service, as she had been paying on the higher end throughout the time with Eir. After unsuccessfully trying to get the price lowered, on March 13th I called Vodafone to switch providers. There was an issue with the UAN number on the bill so I had to call Eir, inform them I was switching providers and request the correct UAN. They complied and I returned a call to Vodafone and they processed my order on the same day.”
The next day, on March 14th, Anne’s son got an email from Vodafone saying “your plan is live”.
However, Eir is now telling them that €1,700 is owed as they left their contract early; the company is saying the money is due because the porting process wasn’t completed until the day the Vodafone engineer came to the house.
Anne’s son “raised formal complaints with Eir and Vodafone. However, neither had any interest in dealing with me and continued to blame the other party. I raised a complaint with ComReg.”
He says the interactions he had with Eir directly over the phone produced no results, even after his case was escalated to the “customer solutions team”.
“However, when ComReg became involved Eir reduced the bill by €400. When I informed Eir I was switching providers they knew my cooling off period was about to lapse and conveniently didn’t say anything, which as it now turns out allows them to take €1,700 from a loyal, 30-year customer.
“Naively, after I signed up with Vodafone we received bills from Eir and my mother continued to pay them. I was under the impression this was the norm. I wasn’t advised by Eir, I didn’t have experience changing providers. I wasn’t familiar with the terms they’ve thrown at me since – terms like ‘intent to port’ and ‘porting process’."
Then, in August, Anne’s son requested Eir data via GDPR.
“They ignored this request, so I followed up on August 26th and I received the USB two days later with the letter dated August 28th. This is the only note from the interaction I had with them on March 13th: ‘Cx requested to know his broadband and Home phone UAN Number. He also claimed that the numbers are different from the numbers on his bill’.
“This doesn’t mention that the ‘claim’ was valid and new numbers were provided over the phone,” he says. “It also doesn’t mention that I told them I needed the UAN because I was changing providers (later, when disputing this, the Eir support agent stated to me the only reason I would need a UAN is when I’m changing provider). Sadly this call audio is not available as Eir informed me they only retain the previous 60 days of audio.”
He includes extracts from the internal notes, from June 2nd.
“It mentions that I made known my ‘intent’ to port. An extract of the summary of the interaction on June 2nd states that I would ‘need to cancel the service’ and that ‘the customer’s request for cancellation was not enough to warrant cancellation’.”
One extract states: “The customer had previously contacted Eir to get the correct U-number for the bill and to cancel the service. They were informed that the broadband service was added recently and that the switch was triggered after a delay. The agent explained that the customer’s cooling-off period was still active and that they would need to cancel the service within that period for it to be valid. The agent also mentioned that most people don’t want to go through the official cancellation process and that the customer’s request for cancellation was not enough to warrant cancellation.”
He says: “It seems from the above extract of their internal notes that there was a request for cancellation but it was ‘not enough to warrant’ cancellation. It just so happened that this outcome greatly favoured Eir to charge me a bill for €1,700.”
Anne wants to know what she can do. “They are saying apparently that they will refer this to a debt-collection agency with a view to taking me to court,” she said.
We contacted the company to see what it had to say, which was this: “Eir would like to acknowledge the customer’s efforts to resolve this issue. Unfortunately, in this case, while the intention of the customer was to switch service from Eir to a new provider during the cooling-off period, Eir did not receive a request from the customer’s new provider to port the service until April 24th, almost five weeks after the cooling off period had ended.
“The delay in receipt of the port request was out of Eir’s control. When the matter was raised with ComReg in June, Eir applied a goodwill credit. As ComReg had confirmed at the time that the resolution had been accepted by the customer and closed the case, it was assumed that the matter had been fully resolved.
“Notwithstanding this and following the query from The Irish Times, Eir intends to re-engage with the customer to reach a satisfactory conclusion. Separately, Eir apologises that a €20 charge was applied for a temporary mobile solution after severe weather last year; that charge was applied in error and is being refunded.”
