UPC comes to agreement over loss of a day’s pay

READERS' FORUM:Have your say

A READER, Thomas, got in touch with us in connection with communications company UPC. Last November his TV service was “randomly disconnected” on a Monday. He called the company and was told they had been doing some anti-piracy work in the area, so it might be off for a while, and not to worry.

“On Tuesday it wasn’t back, so I rang them again and they said they’d send out an engineer on Friday between 9am and 1pm.

“On Wednesday I got an automated phone call saying ‘we think the problem has been fixed. Please press 1 if it has been fixed to cancel the engineer call’. Not being at home I had no way of checking, so I just hung up. When I got home I confirmed it was still dead and rang requesting to confirm the engineer call.”

Thomas was in the UK on the Thursday but UPC rang twice trying to re-re-confirm the engineer call. “On Friday I took a day off from work, the engineer came, plugged something in outside my home, and had it fixed within 10 minutes and without requiring access. He said before leaving, ‘yeah it was NTL cut you off’.

“I rang customer service looking for an explanation and compensation for having to take a day off, and was offered €8.50, which I declined.”

He wrote a letter of complaint, requesting a day’s wages from UPC but was told it was outside their policy to compensate for loss of wages. “I sent a registered letter back saying they had 14 days to cough up or I’d see them in District Court, at which stage they offered me two months’ free subscription, which I accepted, closing the matter. Moral of the story: keep plugging and you’ll get somewhere.”

The last on the airport panini . . . it’s now toast

STILL MORE on “panini-gate”. We were recently contacted by someone who said they paid more than €9 for a ham salad panini at Dublin airport. An airport spokeswoman responded by saying she had checked in all the food outlets in the airport and the cost was €6.95. Our reader responded with details of the restaurant where he had paid over €9 and another reader backed his price claim.

The airport spokeswoman has responded. She says all the restaurants are operated by third-party concessionaires, which are tenants of the Dublin Airport Authority. “We have double checked the prices of panini sandwiches at Dublin airport and they range from €4.00-€6.95, which corresponds with the original information supplied to Pricewatch.”

She says that based on the additional information our readers supplied “it seems that they bought a Deli open sandwich at the Foodhall, which is operated by HMS Host. These sandwiches, which are freshly made, are a premium product served on ciabatta bread. They are deep-fill sandwiches with 30 per cent more filling than a traditional sandwich and contain premium ingredients.”

She said that a full range of “premium deep-filled Deli sandwiches” is available at the Foodhall, with prices from €6.55 to €8.80. “While it is difficult to comment on specific cases, HMS Host said that your readers may not have received a sandwich made to the correct specifications. On foot of your readers’ comments, they are reviewing their systems.” And that’s the last word on it, we promise!

Why the O2 price difference for dongle?

Niall Shaw was contacted recently by O2 because he had expressed an interest in pay-as-you-go mobile broadband. “I already use O2 mobile broadband in the UK. The dongle in the UK cost me £19 and I pay £2 for 24-hour access. In Ireland they are quoting me €59 for the dongle, and €4 for 24 hours access. This is a the crazy price differential and can only be described as profiteering. How can they get away with this type of thing?