Catherine Murphy from Dublin asked us for tips on getting fault repair status information from Eircom. Her elderly parents reported a problem with their phone line – a crackling sound – on October 27th and were advised that a technician would contact them over the next four days.

On day four she phoned Eircom’s fault line for an update. “The fault line agent advised me that he had no status update and had no account of a technician picking up this job and could not give me any information,” she writes. “I explained that my elderly parents were relying on their phone for obvious reasons and did not know whether they could go out of the house as they were worried about missing the technician. Zero interest.”

She was transferred to the customer services department who told her that they had no status update either and said she could log a complaint. “If I logged a complaint,” Catherine was told, “this would be reviewed at some point during a 10-day period, even though we were hoping to have a technician on site on day four.”

Three days later – last Monday – the complaints department phoned and promised to call back on the same day to advise on an update. “He did mention,” says Catherine, “that there was a note on their file that referred to Eircom phoning my parents but there was no answer, so I reiterated that the phone was not working. Unfortunately he hasn’t phoned me back yet to give me that status update.

“Anyway, whether it’s day four, seven or 10, why does it take so long to get a phone line reviewed by a technician in a busy Dublin suburb? Why does Eircom have a fault line agent and a customer services department if they can’t advise on your query. This is a big company, surely someone who works there can advise when this phone line will be reviewed? And surely Eircom should want to hold on to landline customers?”

We contacted Eircom to get a “status update” for Catherine’s parents. A spokeswoman apologised that the “query was not handled in the correct manner and there was an unnecessary delay in responding to their issue”. She said the fault had been resolved and, by way of apology for the manner in which the query was handled and to compensate, Eircom has applied a credit of two months line rental to their account.

UK versus Irish prices

One of the many things about this country that makes Aoife Murray’s blood boil is “the guilt trip that is being imposed upon us about shopping local”. She asks: “That’s well and good when it comes to small stores and locally produced food, but what about the mainly British high street stores who seem to have no qualms about ripping us off?”

She cites a leather jacket in Topshop. In stores in the UK it sells for £160. “This means the price in Ireland should be about €180. When I heard that Topshop here were offering a 20 per cent discount on every item, I went looking for a bargain.” She found that Topshop was charging “a whopping €243 for the jacket!”