We've Got Mail: Conor O'Dea from Kilmainham in Dublin has been left seething by the shabby treatment he says he has received from Smart Telecom's customer service since most of its customers had their service suspended and its financial difficulties became public last month. Some 40,000 phone line customers were told to go elsewhere while Smart said it would hang on to its 17,000 broadband customers, including O'Dea. Except it hasn't done a good job of hanging on to him.
He lost his broadband access at the beginning of October and "the only piece of correspondence I have had from them since was a letter dated October 12th saying that I should now have been reconnected - except I wasn't".
The letter advised that if he was still having problems he should contact the company using an 1800 number but, he says, this has proved next to impossible to do. He rang the number on a number of occasions without getting to speak to anyone.
Then, last week, he decided to ring the Smart sales line. "My call was answered almost immediately but when I explained the nature of my call, they immediately transferred me to customer care."
An automated message told him he was 18th in the queue waiting to speak to a live operator so he decided to wait. And wait. And wait. After 45 minutes, he got to the top of the queue only to be connected to a voice mail box which was, he says, full and unable to take any new messages.
He was then automatically returned to the queue, only to be told that there were now 20 people ahead of him. He has now been without broadband for more than a month and wants to know why Smart "seems to be taking on new customers when it can't handle its existing customers", he writes.
We contacted Smart, who told us that O'Dea was one of 2,300 broadband customers who were disconnected by Eircom. A spokesman said the company attempted to contact each of them by phone so they could restart their contracts using Third Party Verification (TPV). Smart however did not have a number for O'Dea - other than the one which had been disconnected so it was not until he made contact with them towards the end of last month that they could begin to process his reconnection, the spokesman said. His application then had to go back to Eircom to be processed.
"Eircom were able to disconnect 2,300 people in a matter of minutes but could only reconnect them at a rate of 200 per day," the spokesman said. He said that our reader had had his service restored late last week, and apologised for any inconvenience caused.
Get out by high noon
Last week we featured an item about valet parking at the Four Seasons hotel in Ballsbridge. A reader complained that he had to pay €28, double the original cost, because he collected his car left in the hotel the previous night after a midday deadline. We called the hotel and were told that the cost of valet parking was €14, which covered a 24-hour period. As part of its normal operating procedure, a spokeswoman said, staff inform people using the facility about the high noon deadline, after which a further €14 will be incurred. As soon as the piece appeared, another reader texted us to say he had his car parked at the hotel two weeks ago without any mention at all of a deadline.
Distant memory
It is the price of mobile phone memory that has prompted another reader to get in touch. "Has anyone else noticed the exorbitant prices in Dublin?" he asks. "I recently went shopping for a 1GB Transflash (micro SD) card. Amazon have them starting at £14.95 (€22.30)." In two separate outlets in Dublin city centre, however, he found the cards selling for between €79.90 and €99.90. "This is over a four-fold mark-up. How can they justify this level of blatant profiteering?"
They probably won't be able to either justify it or sustain it if trade starts moving online.
The price of medicine
The high price of prescription medicines in Ireland continues to annoy many readers, one of whom has sent in an interesting comparison. In June of this year he went to a chemist in Greece and discovered a "huge variety of medicines available without prescription" and no dispensing charges. To get Cicatrin, antiseptic powder "in dreary rip-off Ireland", he writes, you would have to pay €55 to your GP and €17.40 to the chemist, a total of €72.40. The same powder is Greece, however, cost just 90 cent, he says.
"Rather than reduce their prices here, the chemists and doctors have decided on a campaign of 'you don't know what you're getting over the internet/when you're abroad' but I beg to differ. You do; and [ pay] a fraction of what you pay for it here."
We also received a text message about pharmacies, some of which are demanding a prescription for nu-seal aspirin. "How can this be?" asks Patrick from Balbriggan. "A prescription for aspirin sounds like a money-grab by the greedy medics."
