Pity the poor reader who ordered and ended up paying for broadband with two different providers and still wound up with no service.
First up, Caoimhe ordered from Three given that she was a Three mobile customer and she was happy with a monthly charge of €20.
“I was told on the phone that I had a 30 day cooling off period in which I could cancel my subscription – which I did,” she writes.
She cancelled the subscription not because she was unhappy with the service, the customer service or the size of her bills but because her landlord said they would not permit the drilling required for the installation to be completed.
“The internet was never even installed,” she writes. But despite that, her account was not cancelled “and I am now paying for a service that they are not even providing. I just want that to be cancelled as requested,” she writes.
After her landlord put the kibosh on her Three plans, Caoimhe ordered Sky Broadband, which was due to be installed in the middle of last month.
“Sky have called me a few times to schedule installation. However, the sky box for broadband which was supposed to be delivered never arrived. Sky told me to track the package with DPD. When I tracked the package it said it was delivered to this address but it never came. None of my neighbours had the package either. I called the DPD helpline but no one picked up and their mailbox is full.”
We contacted both Three and Sky to find out if we could get Caoimhe her broadband sorted.
Three explained that after our reader made contact to explain that she could not proceed with the service an email was sent to her with some questions surrounding the validation of the account. The details the company was looking for were the name, address and date of birth of the account holder. We were told that the company had not heard back from Caoimhe.
We put this to our reader, who said she had “told them it couldn’t be installed because my landlord hadn’t given the permission, yet it was first put in for a reschedule and then after that I emailed to cancel and then I called them”.
It would appear then that there was a breakdown in communication – and such things happen.
We went back to Three and, in a statement, a spokeswoman said Caoimhe “requested a cancellation by email, and as per Three’s standard data protection processes, was asked by our customer care team to validate the account by providing additional information, in order to progress the cancellation.
“As the customer did not respond to this request for validation, we were unable to process the cancellation without this. The customer’s account has now been cancelled, and all associated charges have been waived.”
And as for Sky, a spokeswoman said the company was “sorry for the inconvenience caused for this customer. We have since confirmed with them that a replacement has been ordered, with installation scheduled in the coming days.”
