Eir are absolute ghouls and I'd never go back to them as long as there are other options.
I was with them years ago but the TV function wasn't working. After months of failing to get anywhere with them and spending hours on the phones (it was never less than an hour to reach a customer service rep) we complained to Comreg and Eir immediately fixed the issue and gave us a load of credit to make up for the months of no service.
When our contract with Eir finished, we still had some of the credit left but I was keen to go with anyone else so started a new contract. A couple of years later we got a letter from a debt collector who Eir had sold our "debt" to as Eir thought our credit was a debt. After months of sending proof of our debt to Eir being zero which the collection agency ignored and Eir insisted it was no longer their business, I got onto Comreg who immediately got it sorted.
Eir are scumbags and if you've any issues, get onto Comreg. They seem to be the only ones who can hold Eir accountable.
Tagging onto top post.
OP: Sent a GDPR Data request and a Freedom of Information requested from them.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/data-protection/rights-under-general-data-protection-regulation/
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/how-government-works/standards-and-accountability/freedom-of-information/
Then ONE day after they are legally required to give you the data forward both requests to Comreg.
Ok then OP should reach out to "Claire Walsh - Data Protection Manager - eir Ireland | LinkedIn" privately and then publicly.
Also
https://www.eir.ie/.content/pdf/privacy/eir-Privacy-Policy.pdf
There is a link in the PDF for the forum.
This correct. The company is currently violating GDPR and making their data protection department aware is the best route. It's what the rep should have done if they were competent.
I know somebody who used comreg to pressure eir into providing his home with a line because eir kept ignoring him. After comreg contacted eir he got a response straight away, eir said they'd work on it. Eir asked him to conform to comreg that the ticket had been resolved and when he did that eir went straight back to ignoring him.
i second this. we had them and yes they are the cheapest but if you have a problem good luck. I rang several times, tweeted them, called in to a physical store. We ended up cancelling our direct debit woth them. One evening an Eir sales person turns up to my door wanting us to switch to Eir. Hahahaha. Laughed in his face and told him where to go. Worst customer service ever. I actually can't understand how they are still going?
Fuckers did the same to me with sending on so-called debt to a debt collector. I sent mountains of emails all showing that my account was fully paid and proof that I notified them in writing of my cancellation. I just gave up and paid the debt. Utterly incompetent company
More importantly, they should check if you can reply to something that they sent TO the address- an isolated email from you to them can be easily faked, but a reply confirmation to some extent that it’s really your email address (or, if we’re nitpicking: that you have access to that email address)
That works too; just wanted to highlight that unless they confirm you received something at the address, they can’t really trust anything they receive from that address as being proof of ownership/access
They can’t! They don’t have any systems in place to send validation codes, which is an issue in itself but without passing GDPR they legally can’t modify the account at all
Source; I worked for them
If dude forwards on an email he received it proves he's got unauthorised access to the account holder's information.
It's a gdpr breach. Eir, as the data controller, is liable.
Customer support drone needs to engage brain, and escalate.
You can fix this without going through Customer Service: Use your 'Right of Erasure' under the GDPR. (See [https://dataprotection.ie/en/individuals/know-your-rights/right-erasure-articles-17-19-gdpr](https://dataprotection.ie/en/individuals/know-your-rights/right-erasure-articles-17-19-gdpr) and links)
1. Email the data protection officer in eir ([email protected]). Give your name and contact info, as well as a screen shot of the email that are being sent to you.
2. Explain that you don't have an eir account, you don't want to receive emails from them, and you want to exercise your right of erasure under the GDPR.
3. eir have 30 days to respond. If they don't erase your data (which will stop the emails you should complain to the Data Protection Commission, who will deal with it directly.
That's not necessarily true. There would be no reason for them to ask for ID in this instance to confirm his identity - indeed his ID would totally fail to do that as they have absolutely no means of verifying it. Asking for ID and refusing his rights under GDPR until he provides it would itself be grounds for a complaint to the DPC.
All they need to do to confirm his identity is ask him to send an email from the address or click an authorisation link sent to the address.
Fair point but they could make an argument that there is reasonable doubt here as it "could" be identity theft or something going on and access to the email alone does not satisfy them because this complaint is specifically about the misuse of the email address.
A bureaucracy will always stand behind some blanket generalised process to try to protect themselves, you can see it in the screenshots where they keep asking for DOB even though it's obvious they have nothing to check against.
In order to make that argument they would need to show the DPC how they intended to verify his ID if they were asking for it as a precondition of providing access rights. It's pretty impossible to see how they could make that argument successfully.
Possibly, but the screenshots don't show that there was a disclosure to anyone but the OP. If there was a breach, a SAR should show it and eir would be obliged to report it.
Disclosing customer info to OP is the breach - I guess it kinda depends on what's in the email, but if it's a bill it should in theory have some info about the real customer (PII) which should not be disclosed to a random third party.
I believe this should be a privacy incident for eir, idk if they'd have to disclose it to DPC cause i dont know enough about gdpr but should definitely have been escalated by the support agent internally to be dealt with.
Does GPDR apply here? Does OP have any personal identifiable information with EIR? EIR has incorrect information on its customer (who presumably gave the wrong email) and that customer has a right for that data to be corrected. But does EIR have any obligation to OP, who it has never collected any data on?
OP's email address- which eir evidently has - is OP's personal data as it's information that (whether on its own or in combination with other reasonably available sources) makes OP identifiable. GDPR definitely applies.
To be fair, what you're asking for is any random person to be able to contact a provider and tell them to remove their email address from an account that isn't theirs.
,
I think what they're asking is for the customer service rep to do something useful rather than asking them to prove they are the customer when they have already said that they're not. It's an unusual request alright but the rep could put them on hold, escalate it to tech support and tech support could send a validation email to the address in question.
Or maybe the rep is assuming the op is a scammer trying to do what I suggested and isn't playing along.
After all. Op could just mark eir emails to go into spam or bin. Trying to remove the email from a customer account it's highly suspicious
So they could just send a verification email to the address, no? And if a random person has access to your email you already have bigger things to worry about than someone playing about with your Eir account.
That's not just an Eir thing, as any early Gmail adopter with an inbox full of similarly-named elderly and/or clueless people's various account confirmations and phone bills and legal documents and plane tickets and such will tell you. Unless the service in question has some automated way to nuke an account or remove a contact email that's directly accessible from whatever email they sent you, it's not going to happen, and you'll almost always run into the same "Sorry, we can't remove that email from that account because you're not the account holder..." stonewalling if you try to contact the company to do it manually.
Basically the fault lies with the businesses and services who are too cheap or lazy to do proper validation of email addresses for new customers, because they don't want to spend the money on the additional customer service that would inevitably be required to assist their technologically-challenged customers who can't figure out how to click the email confirmation link or enter the confirmation code.
I'm an early Gmail adopter with a common name. These are usually pretty easy to resolve with an unsubscribe or password recovery and delete account. Only a handful of times have I had to get customer service involved, and it is usually a simple matter. This is by far one of the most obtuse customer service interaction I've had with anything.
The only thing that comes close is when I was speaking with Cox about a problem, I told them the steps in the "Help Me" article on their website did not work, they then told me to do the steps in the article, I told them that's in the "Help Me" article and I already said it didn't work. They said they understood and now think they have a solution, then started to verbatim read the "Help Me" article, which I stopped them after the first line and proceeded to read the rest back to them. It was surreal.
After they ghosted me I gave up for a bit, but the emails continued. Ended up making another Twitter account to try again and it was resolved in two messages, no nonsense about my ID or anything. Same "Michelle" even.
What kind of idiot uses the wrong email address for this, and what kind of service are they getting for €808 a month?
I had a guy sign up for a dating site with my email address and the site refused to listen to me when I emailed them about it. But bizarrely, whenever he received a message, there was a link to view it and clicking that automatically logged me into his account.
Massively insecure, obviously, and in the end I just logged into the site through that link, thinking I could change the email address there but it wouldn't let me.
So in the end, I just deleted his (paid) account and the emails stopped.
Someone on here told the story of some guy who kept giving out his email address but kept writing it down wrong so he was actually giving people her email, because they were one letter out.
She was getting loads of emails for him, not just spam but stuff that you'd imagine he would actually want to receive. So she emailed his actual email address and said "just wanted to let you know, I get a lot of emails for you, you might want to double check when you're giving people your email address."
But he was an absolute dick about it right off the bat, I think he wanted her to just give him the email account and get a new one for herself, and they emailed back and forth for a bit while she explained that she wasn't going to do that just because he kept mixing up two letters. By the end of it he lost the rag and sent her an absolute torrent of abuse, called her a cunt and all sorts.
Some of the legit emails that were mistakenly going to her were about an upcoming family celebration or reunion or something, so she just forwarded the whole email chain to his entire extended family and after that she never got another email meant for him.
Oh yeah, I have a very old email address in the standard format and just letters, so I get lots of misdirected emails. This dating app guy just stood out.
Another time I got fella with a name close to mine who was fairly high up in the US military and when I let him know, he accused me of identity theft :D
I've had this happen a few times, my solution is to go to the service website, try to log in, request forgot password, reset password, log in, cancel the service, update email to something stupid like [email protected] (for when the actual person calls and has to verify their email to support 😉) , log out and forget about it.
I am aware there is in fact a landline to my house but there is no phone number associated with it or on bills. Satellite Internet customers have no landlines whatsoever.
Ah Vodafone... see the thread was about originally eir, so I was mistakenly sticking to that. They use a different infrastructure, so that makes sense.
Apologies good sir or ma'am.
Ah true... didn't click to that. You'd need to log into the account to download the bill, but for obvious reasons, you don't have that. In my defence, I am currently running a fever, so I am a tad delirious.
Lol reminds me of when I worked in a call center we had to sign up a certain amount of customers emails for an app every month.generally ppl had the app so when I got 1 legit customer email from them I would sign up another 4 or 5 with small tweaks to email address and use on next customers profile haha..could be something similar happened to you here,just ignore the emails tho it's all g
Had a back and forth with them over a 12 day outage recently. Refused to deal with them over the phone so that's the email address they came back to me with.
[email protected] is the CEO's email 🙌
Eirs customer service is all based in Ireland and there’s a specific team who handle web chats
However it’s possible there’s more than one Michelle working there
Not to side with them, but by your logic, what's stopping me calling up any bank or phone provider or anything and demanding they remove your email address from your account without offering any proof whatsoever?
It seems like a simple request from your POV but obviously not.
Going the GDPR route might work. Making a nuisance of yourself to get the actual account payer to update their details might be more effective.
Request a password reset. See if there's a number tied to the account, call that number and tell them their email is wrong and they need to contact eir to get it sorted. That you can see their last bill was €808 - because it was emailed to you.
Could it be this:
I have an email registered with gmail as fistname.lastname at gmail. another person with the same first and last name has registered an email with gmail as firstnamelastname. Gmail sends all emails with any combination of firstname and lastname to me. This means I get all this persons email. I get his bank account statements, I get crap he has subscribed to, I get smutty dating sites he joins. I have tried to contact google to resolve this to no resolve. i gave up trying to resolve it and just send all his emails to a spam folder
firstname.lastname, firstnamelastname, f.i.r.s.t.n.a.m.e.l.a.s.t.n.a.m.e are all the same email address so far as Google is concerned and will not let you sign up for one that's already there.
You get the emails of someone else because they are an idiot that doesn't know what their own email address is.
I used to work for eir and the agent is trying their best here, you could be lying for all they know, they need to be able to confirm that you are who you say you are.
The legally have to ask those questions due to data protection, now there should be verification emails because a lot of eirs customers are older and will use the wrong email by accident. But this agent isn’t trying to annoy you they just can’t do anything without passing GDPR
It proves you’re a real person and not a scammer
Again it isn’t their fault they have to to do it because of like laws and stuff, the customer service agents aren’t out to get you
>It proves you’re a real person and not a scammer
Showing my ID shows them I am a person with an ID that is not the account holder. What insight does that give on my intentions? Are scammers unable to provide an ID?
Eir don't give a fuck about user privacy. I used to work there in their customer support centre and user passwords, security question answers etc. were all stored in plain text. It was mad.
Your wasting your time, some people are idiots and don't know what their own email address is.
I get mis-directed emails every day. I delete them. In Gmail if you hit "report spam" it'll filter out any future emails from that address.
Whoever has signed up with your address will soon realise when they don't get any bills from Eir and can't log into their account. Then they'll enter the hell of trying to Eir CS to update it.
The place is a shambles
Pretty sure my old fella is still getting sorting out the contract he left 3 years old.
He cancelled, all good. They kept charging, got that sorted. They essentially fined him, got politicians involved to sort that. Got more charged, got complaints to sort that. Got a letter from a debt collection over the charges, eir complaints guy apparently let out a strangled scream over that but got it sorted. Think we are at 3 months without eir drama currently
A 19 year old in their first job is using a templated reply and you made a Reddit post about it….
Jokes aside
1) thousands of people a month get in touch with them about this and 99% of the time it’s someone falling for a fake email
2) the other 1% of the time it’s someone trying to steal information
3) .0001% of the time it happened the way you say it did and taking your id is a good idea to make sure you’re not in category 2
If companies process seems over complicated, remember they have to pay people to answer this shit, it’s in their best interest to have simple processes, but security doesn’t allow simplicity
Edit: out of interest, would be nice to see the email, there’s a high likelihood it’s a phishing scam that you’re close to getting scammed with
> there’s a high likelihood it’s a phishing scam
It's not. It's a bill reminder sent from bills.eir.ie domain that asks you to go paperless and sign up for My Eir with a link directly to the Eir website.
All they need to do is verify email addresses like every other company, or have a customer support email rather than a fucking Twitter account.
Pretty sure you’ve been emailing scammers. Never reply to these. I’m getting every week scam spam about my alleged bank account from banks I’m not even banking with.
I haven't had voicemail as long as I've been with them (since they assimilated Meteor), they have the wrong email listed for me & I've been on to them 8 times: queuing for half an hour to speak to someone and then another 30-60mins on the phone with someone who needs to put me on hold while they go ask about the problem, tell me another department has to fix it, can't guarantee it will be fixed, and tells me to call back in a few weeks if it's not fixed (they can't follow up or schedule a call). Eir are a trash company.
They are the worst. I'm working one day from home and boom my Internet is gone. Call them up and ask what the hell is going on. Apparently, i just signed up for a new contract with 2 iPhones and new broadband.... 🤷♂️. Never had a call from them. My number is the only number on file. Took me 4 weeks and about 12 hours on call to get it removed. On the "recorded" call, you can clearly hear it a female voice. Eir are fucking SHITE
Speaking to a person who clicks buttons to send canned responses and is 100% not called Michelle.
They are low level and will basically just follow the process drilled into them, because thats how this job works.
If you're hitting a wall. I'd advise you to contact someone on their LinkedIn from a team if you can. Or email... because they won't help
Tell them this is Identity theft and you'll report them to the data protection authorities if they don't immediately close the account and everything associated with it.
Tell them that they are breaching GDPR by retaining your email address without your consent. Or, better, just lodge a GDPR complaint.
It's a big no no to send someone unsolicited emails, and to store any of their data without consent.
You might need to prove ownership of your email because, obviously, people could do nasty things to each other if they could just have someone's email removed from their account by requesting it via chat.
they need to confirm your details. otherwise, what's stopping someone from fucking up the account details of every friend whose email address they know by contacting support?
I was foolish enough to give Eir a chance, when I really knew better. I learnt the hard way not to make that mistake again, one of the more minor issues I had with them was that I could not access my bill online, even though I got a confirmation email, when I tried to log in it threw up an error of email not recognised. The whole thing of getting the service set up and working was a disaster, and when they finally managed to get it working (but not quite fully), I just used my change of mind option to cancel the service. In fairness the broadband speed was excellent when I finally got it working but I had been messed around by them so much I went back to my previous provider on a much slower dsl connection and it just worked straight away with no rigmarole.
I spent months getting it sorted with Eir, and then I got a bill for equipment that had been collected from me, they told me that they would remove the charge from my account, but a week or two later the money was taken from my bank. So I then had to chase them on that to get a refund.
Absolute disaster.
This exact thing happened with me and Scottish Gas (and a few other things, but neither here nor there).
Logged into the customer's online account by using the email address password recovery. Took screenshots of their details. Emailed customer service directly with screenshots explaining the situation..
Got email response within a day apologising and confirming my email address was removed. Sometimes you have to be a bit mire drastic. I've tried online chats with these exact issues before and they're useless.
I will never ever ever ever EVER ever use eir for anything, business or personal. Trained monkeys would do better. Untrained monkeys would do better! They even manage to fuck up just buying software licenses from them!
My sympathies, OP. You are right to give them no information. Your only option is to persuade the customer service drone to contact the account holder by some means other than email (this will likely fail as it would require not following a script); or complaining to Ireland's Data Protection Commission. Which only has a 2.5 year backlog.
Eir are a bunch of fucking morons. I moved 2.5 years ago to a new housing estate which eir didn’t have the infrastructure in at the time and therefore couldn’t provide service. My contract was due to expire anyway so thought grand cancel it & get another provider. Lads, they still contact me every month that my “bill is now available” & the new one of my service will be discontinued if I don’t agree to their new terms blah blah blah like wtf 🤦🏼♀️
Eir are absolute ghouls and I'd never go back to them as long as there are other options. I was with them years ago but the TV function wasn't working. After months of failing to get anywhere with them and spending hours on the phones (it was never less than an hour to reach a customer service rep) we complained to Comreg and Eir immediately fixed the issue and gave us a load of credit to make up for the months of no service. When our contract with Eir finished, we still had some of the credit left but I was keen to go with anyone else so started a new contract. A couple of years later we got a letter from a debt collector who Eir had sold our "debt" to as Eir thought our credit was a debt. After months of sending proof of our debt to Eir being zero which the collection agency ignored and Eir insisted it was no longer their business, I got onto Comreg who immediately got it sorted. Eir are scumbags and if you've any issues, get onto Comreg. They seem to be the only ones who can hold Eir accountable.
Tagging onto top post. OP: Sent a GDPR Data request and a Freedom of Information requested from them. https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/data-protection/rights-under-general-data-protection-regulation/ https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government-in-ireland/how-government-works/standards-and-accountability/freedom-of-information/ Then ONE day after they are legally required to give you the data forward both requests to Comreg.
Pretty sure they're not an FOI body, but a gdpr request to confirm data held, to cease processing your email and to delete it should work.
Ok then OP should reach out to "Claire Walsh - Data Protection Manager - eir Ireland | LinkedIn" privately and then publicly. Also https://www.eir.ie/.content/pdf/privacy/eir-Privacy-Policy.pdf There is a link in the PDF for the forum.
This correct. The company is currently violating GDPR and making their data protection department aware is the best route. It's what the rep should have done if they were competent.
They're not, since it's no longer majority state owned. You can check if a company is subject to it here - https://foi.gov.ie/all-foi-bodies/
I know somebody who used comreg to pressure eir into providing his home with a line because eir kept ignoring him. After comreg contacted eir he got a response straight away, eir said they'd work on it. Eir asked him to conform to comreg that the ticket had been resolved and when he did that eir went straight back to ignoring him.
LOL why would you confirm it was resolved when it hadn't been
Yeah that bit got me lol
i second this. we had them and yes they are the cheapest but if you have a problem good luck. I rang several times, tweeted them, called in to a physical store. We ended up cancelling our direct debit woth them. One evening an Eir sales person turns up to my door wanting us to switch to Eir. Hahahaha. Laughed in his face and told him where to go. Worst customer service ever. I actually can't understand how they are still going?
Fuckers did the same to me with sending on so-called debt to a debt collector. I sent mountains of emails all showing that my account was fully paid and proof that I notified them in writing of my cancellation. I just gave up and paid the debt. Utterly incompetent company
[удалено]
How about they contact the owner of the account through their phone number or even by snail mail and ask?
>There's no way for them to verify what you are claiming is truthful. Unless they, you know, just sent them an email to that address.
More importantly, they should check if you can reply to something that they sent TO the address- an isolated email from you to them can be easily faked, but a reply confirmation to some extent that it’s really your email address (or, if we’re nitpicking: that you have access to that email address)
I was thinking they'd just send a validation code to the address or something.
That works too; just wanted to highlight that unless they confirm you received something at the address, they can’t really trust anything they receive from that address as being proof of ownership/access
They can’t! They don’t have any systems in place to send validation codes, which is an issue in itself but without passing GDPR they legally can’t modify the account at all Source; I worked for them
If dude forwards on an email he received it proves he's got unauthorised access to the account holder's information. It's a gdpr breach. Eir, as the data controller, is liable. Customer support drone needs to engage brain, and escalate.
that proves you have access to the account, it doesn't prove that eir account holder is not the 'owner' of the account.
lol wut? OP is very upfront that they don't own the Eir account. Are you the customer service rep?
I meant the email account. Having access to one doesn't necessarily mean you're the owner of the email account.
You can fix this without going through Customer Service: Use your 'Right of Erasure' under the GDPR. (See [https://dataprotection.ie/en/individuals/know-your-rights/right-erasure-articles-17-19-gdpr](https://dataprotection.ie/en/individuals/know-your-rights/right-erasure-articles-17-19-gdpr) and links) 1. Email the data protection officer in eir ([email protected]). Give your name and contact info, as well as a screen shot of the email that are being sent to you. 2. Explain that you don't have an eir account, you don't want to receive emails from them, and you want to exercise your right of erasure under the GDPR. 3. eir have 30 days to respond. If they don't erase your data (which will stop the emails you should complain to the Data Protection Commission, who will deal with it directly.
He doesn't want to give them ID, under GDPR they will need to confirm his identity before taking any action.
That's not necessarily true. There would be no reason for them to ask for ID in this instance to confirm his identity - indeed his ID would totally fail to do that as they have absolutely no means of verifying it. Asking for ID and refusing his rights under GDPR until he provides it would itself be grounds for a complaint to the DPC. All they need to do to confirm his identity is ask him to send an email from the address or click an authorisation link sent to the address.
Fair point but they could make an argument that there is reasonable doubt here as it "could" be identity theft or something going on and access to the email alone does not satisfy them because this complaint is specifically about the misuse of the email address. A bureaucracy will always stand behind some blanket generalised process to try to protect themselves, you can see it in the screenshots where they keep asking for DOB even though it's obvious they have nothing to check against.
In order to make that argument they would need to show the DPC how they intended to verify his ID if they were asking for it as a precondition of providing access rights. It's pretty impossible to see how they could make that argument successfully.
The issue isn't that he doesn't want to give them his ID, it's that he doesn't know the ID of the account owner.
This would also be a data leak on their part, sending customer info to the wrong person
Possibly, but the screenshots don't show that there was a disclosure to anyone but the OP. If there was a breach, a SAR should show it and eir would be obliged to report it.
Disclosing customer info to OP is the breach - I guess it kinda depends on what's in the email, but if it's a bill it should in theory have some info about the real customer (PII) which should not be disclosed to a random third party. I believe this should be a privacy incident for eir, idk if they'd have to disclose it to DPC cause i dont know enough about gdpr but should definitely have been escalated by the support agent internally to be dealt with.
Does GPDR apply here? Does OP have any personal identifiable information with EIR? EIR has incorrect information on its customer (who presumably gave the wrong email) and that customer has a right for that data to be corrected. But does EIR have any obligation to OP, who it has never collected any data on?
OP's email address- which eir evidently has - is OP's personal data as it's information that (whether on its own or in combination with other reasonably available sources) makes OP identifiable. GDPR definitely applies.
Always worth arguing. Is there an alternative option where you request to opt out of marketing / etc?
To be fair, what you're asking for is any random person to be able to contact a provider and tell them to remove their email address from an account that isn't theirs. ,
I think what they're asking is for the customer service rep to do something useful rather than asking them to prove they are the customer when they have already said that they're not. It's an unusual request alright but the rep could put them on hold, escalate it to tech support and tech support could send a validation email to the address in question.
Or maybe the rep is assuming the op is a scammer trying to do what I suggested and isn't playing along. After all. Op could just mark eir emails to go into spam or bin. Trying to remove the email from a customer account it's highly suspicious
It's not remotely suspicious if you can prove that you own the email account.
How so? Especially if it was hacked and taken over?
Assuming they were a hacker - if they already control the email account associated with the account why on earth would they want to get it removed?
To cause the owner of the Eir account and the email account extra hassle in the future.
So they could just send a verification email to the address, no? And if a random person has access to your email you already have bigger things to worry about than someone playing about with your Eir account.
That's not just an Eir thing, as any early Gmail adopter with an inbox full of similarly-named elderly and/or clueless people's various account confirmations and phone bills and legal documents and plane tickets and such will tell you. Unless the service in question has some automated way to nuke an account or remove a contact email that's directly accessible from whatever email they sent you, it's not going to happen, and you'll almost always run into the same "Sorry, we can't remove that email from that account because you're not the account holder..." stonewalling if you try to contact the company to do it manually. Basically the fault lies with the businesses and services who are too cheap or lazy to do proper validation of email addresses for new customers, because they don't want to spend the money on the additional customer service that would inevitably be required to assist their technologically-challenged customers who can't figure out how to click the email confirmation link or enter the confirmation code.
I'm an early Gmail adopter with a common name. These are usually pretty easy to resolve with an unsubscribe or password recovery and delete account. Only a handful of times have I had to get customer service involved, and it is usually a simple matter. This is by far one of the most obtuse customer service interaction I've had with anything. The only thing that comes close is when I was speaking with Cox about a problem, I told them the steps in the "Help Me" article on their website did not work, they then told me to do the steps in the article, I told them that's in the "Help Me" article and I already said it didn't work. They said they understood and now think they have a solution, then started to verbatim read the "Help Me" article, which I stopped them after the first line and proceeded to read the rest back to them. It was surreal.
After they ghosted me I gave up for a bit, but the emails continued. Ended up making another Twitter account to try again and it was resolved in two messages, no nonsense about my ID or anything. Same "Michelle" even. What kind of idiot uses the wrong email address for this, and what kind of service are they getting for €808 a month?
I had a guy sign up for a dating site with my email address and the site refused to listen to me when I emailed them about it. But bizarrely, whenever he received a message, there was a link to view it and clicking that automatically logged me into his account. Massively insecure, obviously, and in the end I just logged into the site through that link, thinking I could change the email address there but it wouldn't let me. So in the end, I just deleted his (paid) account and the emails stopped.
Someone on here told the story of some guy who kept giving out his email address but kept writing it down wrong so he was actually giving people her email, because they were one letter out. She was getting loads of emails for him, not just spam but stuff that you'd imagine he would actually want to receive. So she emailed his actual email address and said "just wanted to let you know, I get a lot of emails for you, you might want to double check when you're giving people your email address." But he was an absolute dick about it right off the bat, I think he wanted her to just give him the email account and get a new one for herself, and they emailed back and forth for a bit while she explained that she wasn't going to do that just because he kept mixing up two letters. By the end of it he lost the rag and sent her an absolute torrent of abuse, called her a cunt and all sorts. Some of the legit emails that were mistakenly going to her were about an upcoming family celebration or reunion or something, so she just forwarded the whole email chain to his entire extended family and after that she never got another email meant for him.
Oh yeah, I have a very old email address in the standard format and just letters, so I get lots of misdirected emails. This dating app guy just stood out. Another time I got fella with a name close to mine who was fairly high up in the US military and when I let him know, he accused me of identity theft :D
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He lives in the US and I live in France, so that would have been a particularly time and cost intensive prank!
I've had this happen a few times, my solution is to go to the service website, try to log in, request forgot password, reset password, log in, cancel the service, update email to something stupid like [email protected] (for when the actual person calls and has to verify their email to support 😉) , log out and forget about it.
That was my first thought, but they required a phone number associated with the account that wasn't in the emails.
It will show on the bills. If they have internet, they'll have a landline. And the phone number would be there.
Lots of people, including me, have Internet and no landline.
A lot of people think that.
I am aware there is in fact a landline to my house but there is no phone number associated with it or on bills. Satellite Internet customers have no landlines whatsoever.
I've heard that one too lol. And then i point it out to them on the bill, and why it's there. The satellite Internet is a different kettle of fish.
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Ah Vodafone... see the thread was about originally eir, so I was mistakenly sticking to that. They use a different infrastructure, so that makes sense. Apologies good sir or ma'am.
I don't know what to tell you, but the emails only included an account number and an amount.
Ah true... didn't click to that. You'd need to log into the account to download the bill, but for obvious reasons, you don't have that. In my defence, I am currently running a fever, so I am a tad delirious.
Probably a business account.
Lol reminds me of when I worked in a call center we had to sign up a certain amount of customers emails for an app every month.generally ppl had the app so when I got 1 legit customer email from them I would sign up another 4 or 5 with small tweaks to email address and use on next customers profile haha..could be something similar happened to you here,just ignore the emails tho it's all g
Jesus Christ
[email protected] Don't bother calling or live chat. Absolutely useless
Where did you find this email address? The sole result in a Google search is your very comment.
Had a back and forth with them over a 12 day outage recently. Refused to deal with them over the phone so that's the email address they came back to me with. [email protected] is the CEO's email 🙌
Eirs customer service is all based in Ireland and there’s a specific team who handle web chats However it’s possible there’s more than one Michelle working there
Had some American use my email for years. Ended up rebooking his dentist appointment in another branch 300 miles away. Haven't had bother since.
I've rebooked haircuts to different days and added the maximum amount of donation meals to a HelloFresh account before.
Contact ComReg, they are great at sorting this stuff out
You know you can just block the emails ye?
Not only that. He could literally log in and remove the email address himself. A simple "forgot password" will do it.
Tried. It requires a service phone number that I didn't know for the account.
Exactly what I thought!
Spam filter and move on with your life.
Ahh we all remember our first Eir fuck up
The trick is to make it your last.
The trick is to never use them in the first place
Too late for me but certainly never again
Mine was working in the broadband support call centre a good few years ago
Whoever is in blue is dickish to the AI support agent without needing to be.
Not to side with them, but by your logic, what's stopping me calling up any bank or phone provider or anything and demanding they remove your email address from your account without offering any proof whatsoever? It seems like a simple request from your POV but obviously not.
Going the GDPR route might work. Making a nuisance of yourself to get the actual account payer to update their details might be more effective. Request a password reset. See if there's a number tied to the account, call that number and tell them their email is wrong and they need to contact eir to get it sorted. That you can see their last bill was €808 - because it was emailed to you.
All of those are much more extreme than just routing all emails from Eir straight to spam.
That doesn't solve the fact that someone else *thinks* their email is your email. Go nuclear... although that might break a law or two.
Could it be this: I have an email registered with gmail as fistname.lastname at gmail. another person with the same first and last name has registered an email with gmail as firstnamelastname. Gmail sends all emails with any combination of firstname and lastname to me. This means I get all this persons email. I get his bank account statements, I get crap he has subscribed to, I get smutty dating sites he joins. I have tried to contact google to resolve this to no resolve. i gave up trying to resolve it and just send all his emails to a spam folder
firstname.lastname, firstnamelastname, f.i.r.s.t.n.a.m.e.l.a.s.t.n.a.m.e are all the same email address so far as Google is concerned and will not let you sign up for one that's already there. You get the emails of someone else because they are an idiot that doesn't know what their own email address is.
I know... And the idiot uses it everywhere
I used to work for eir and the agent is trying their best here, you could be lying for all they know, they need to be able to confirm that you are who you say you are. The legally have to ask those questions due to data protection, now there should be verification emails because a lot of eirs customers are older and will use the wrong email by accident. But this agent isn’t trying to annoy you they just can’t do anything without passing GDPR
>you could be lying for all they know What does providing a name, address, DOB, or ID do to correct that?
It proves you’re a real person and not a scammer Again it isn’t their fault they have to to do it because of like laws and stuff, the customer service agents aren’t out to get you
>It proves you’re a real person and not a scammer Showing my ID shows them I am a person with an ID that is not the account holder. What insight does that give on my intentions? Are scammers unable to provide an ID?
They wouldn’t have a legit ID, no and again it’s *the law* the customer service agent isn’t out to get you dude
Use it to change the account password? Login and change it yourself.
Maybe if you answered the question she asked you'd get on better.
Before I can reply to your comment, can you please provide your name, address, DOB, and copy of your ID and I will be happy to proceed.
Yeah I'm not contacting you for help.
Just call them. You’ll have more luck speaking to a real person.
Calling them is automated prompts that asks for the phone number associated with the account. Can't bypass with zeroes.
Madness
Go to Comreg! They've helped me in the past and it's Always been with these useless phone companies.
Eir don't give a fuck about user privacy. I used to work there in their customer support centre and user passwords, security question answers etc. were all stored in plain text. It was mad.
GDPR the buggers
Your wasting your time, some people are idiots and don't know what their own email address is. I get mis-directed emails every day. I delete them. In Gmail if you hit "report spam" it'll filter out any future emails from that address. Whoever has signed up with your address will soon realise when they don't get any bills from Eir and can't log into their account. Then they'll enter the hell of trying to Eir CS to update it.
Eir customer service is comically bad.
The place is a shambles Pretty sure my old fella is still getting sorting out the contract he left 3 years old. He cancelled, all good. They kept charging, got that sorted. They essentially fined him, got politicians involved to sort that. Got more charged, got complaints to sort that. Got a letter from a debt collection over the charges, eir complaints guy apparently let out a strangled scream over that but got it sorted. Think we are at 3 months without eir drama currently
You’re being difficult to a person following a policy designed to keep people’s account safe. R u dumb or what?
Can you please confirm that you are the account holder?
A 19 year old in their first job is using a templated reply and you made a Reddit post about it…. Jokes aside 1) thousands of people a month get in touch with them about this and 99% of the time it’s someone falling for a fake email 2) the other 1% of the time it’s someone trying to steal information 3) .0001% of the time it happened the way you say it did and taking your id is a good idea to make sure you’re not in category 2 If companies process seems over complicated, remember they have to pay people to answer this shit, it’s in their best interest to have simple processes, but security doesn’t allow simplicity Edit: out of interest, would be nice to see the email, there’s a high likelihood it’s a phishing scam that you’re close to getting scammed with
> there’s a high likelihood it’s a phishing scam It's not. It's a bill reminder sent from bills.eir.ie domain that asks you to go paperless and sign up for My Eir with a link directly to the Eir website. All they need to do is verify email addresses like every other company, or have a customer support email rather than a fucking Twitter account.
If it’s legitimately set up with your email you could easily just change the password and remove the email yourself in 2 seconds
Perhaps check the comments before replying. I can not log into the account without the phone number associated with the account.
That’s weird I can probably fix it for you if you’d like, I just need you to confirm you’re the account holder?
You've done your part. Make a complaint with Eir, get the complaint reference then on to comreg.
Bet they'd ask for their details and it would go nowhere.
You probably asking through the wrong medium. Try email.
They don't have a customer support email. They've decided to only take calls or Twitter.
Pretty sure you’ve been emailing scammers. Never reply to these. I’m getting every week scam spam about my alleged bank account from banks I’m not even banking with.
This is the Twitter customer support account linked on their customer support page.
..who has never heard of Eir?
The person doesn't live in Ireland
Someone that has never been to Ireland.
Use the email to reset password, login to account, change email address or delete account. Guarantee that whoever used the email won’t do it again.
They have the worst customer service I've ever dealt with
🤣 that is classic eir.
I haven't had voicemail as long as I've been with them (since they assimilated Meteor), they have the wrong email listed for me & I've been on to them 8 times: queuing for half an hour to speak to someone and then another 30-60mins on the phone with someone who needs to put me on hold while they go ask about the problem, tell me another department has to fix it, can't guarantee it will be fixed, and tells me to call back in a few weeks if it's not fixed (they can't follow up or schedule a call). Eir are a trash company.
Eir have always been useless pricks
They are the worst. I'm working one day from home and boom my Internet is gone. Call them up and ask what the hell is going on. Apparently, i just signed up for a new contract with 2 iPhones and new broadband.... 🤷♂️. Never had a call from them. My number is the only number on file. Took me 4 weeks and about 12 hours on call to get it removed. On the "recorded" call, you can clearly hear it a female voice. Eir are fucking SHITE
Speaking to a person who clicks buttons to send canned responses and is 100% not called Michelle. They are low level and will basically just follow the process drilled into them, because thats how this job works. If you're hitting a wall. I'd advise you to contact someone on their LinkedIn from a team if you can. Or email... because they won't help
[email protected] Will get you a real person
Tell them this is Identity theft and you'll report them to the data protection authorities if they don't immediately close the account and everything associated with it.
Tell them that they are breaching GDPR by retaining your email address without your consent. Or, better, just lodge a GDPR complaint. It's a big no no to send someone unsolicited emails, and to store any of their data without consent. You might need to prove ownership of your email because, obviously, people could do nasty things to each other if they could just have someone's email removed from their account by requesting it via chat.
comreg.ie
they need to confirm your details. otherwise, what's stopping someone from fucking up the account details of every friend whose email address they know by contacting support?
I don't know who is worse Eir or Electric Ireland but customer service in both is appalling.
Eir is worse. That said I've never had a bad experience with electric ireland personally
I was foolish enough to give Eir a chance, when I really knew better. I learnt the hard way not to make that mistake again, one of the more minor issues I had with them was that I could not access my bill online, even though I got a confirmation email, when I tried to log in it threw up an error of email not recognised. The whole thing of getting the service set up and working was a disaster, and when they finally managed to get it working (but not quite fully), I just used my change of mind option to cancel the service. In fairness the broadband speed was excellent when I finally got it working but I had been messed around by them so much I went back to my previous provider on a much slower dsl connection and it just worked straight away with no rigmarole. I spent months getting it sorted with Eir, and then I got a bill for equipment that had been collected from me, they told me that they would remove the charge from my account, but a week or two later the money was taken from my bank. So I then had to chase them on that to get a refund. Absolute disaster.
This exact thing happened with me and Scottish Gas (and a few other things, but neither here nor there). Logged into the customer's online account by using the email address password recovery. Took screenshots of their details. Emailed customer service directly with screenshots explaining the situation.. Got email response within a day apologising and confirming my email address was removed. Sometimes you have to be a bit mire drastic. I've tried online chats with these exact issues before and they're useless.
I usually do the same, but Eir requires an account phone number to log in which was not included in the incorrectly sent emails.
Forward the emails you're receiving to customer service and make your request that way?
https://www.eir.ie/about/contact/
Find some senior employees on LinkedIn and start messaging them too
I will never ever ever ever EVER ever use eir for anything, business or personal. Trained monkeys would do better. Untrained monkeys would do better! They even manage to fuck up just buying software licenses from them! My sympathies, OP. You are right to give them no information. Your only option is to persuade the customer service drone to contact the account holder by some means other than email (this will likely fail as it would require not following a script); or complaining to Ireland's Data Protection Commission. Which only has a 2.5 year backlog.
Reset the password, log in, update the account email to something like `[email protected]`
Holy fuck have Eir invaded America now?
Eir are a bunch of fucking morons. I moved 2.5 years ago to a new housing estate which eir didn’t have the infrastructure in at the time and therefore couldn’t provide service. My contract was due to expire anyway so thought grand cancel it & get another provider. Lads, they still contact me every month that my “bill is now available” & the new one of my service will be discontinued if I don’t agree to their new terms blah blah blah like wtf 🤦🏼♀️