Sinn Féin TD Pearse Doherty has hit out at telecommunications company Eir, calling their practices "harsh and unfair."
In a statement issued on Monday afternoon, Doherty said he had recently been contacted by an elderly couple in Donegal who had signed up for the 'eir Broadband Talk Mobile World' package.
The package purports to offer "unlimited anytime local and national calls to landlines, unlimited calls to UK and defined international destination landlines and mobiles, unlimited anytime calls to Irish mobiles," according to the Eir website.
However, the couple found that their landline had been disconnected in the middle of their billing cycle.
Doherty said: "They were told that they had exceeded the fair usage caps in the small print of the contract. Eir then refused to reconnect the couple’s landline without first receiving payment in the amount of hundreds of Euro. This is grossly unfair, deceitful and is deliberately misleading and dangerous."
"These providers are offering so-called 'unlimited' calls to customers as part of their packages. The reality is very different, and these packages are in fact limited and subject to fair-usage caps in the small print of the contract.
"The couple, who are pensioners, had chosen this package to make sure they could stay in touch with family and friends before the crisis. As the crisis developed, they relied on their landline as their link to the outside world," Doherty said.
Caps for international calls to landlines stand at 1500 minutes, with a daily usage cap of 200.
The cap for calls to international mobile is 1000. The UK is included in those caps.
In a statement to JOE, eir said: "This customer’s issue was resolved over a week ago."
Doherty has called on Eir and other service providers to "cut the nonsense and be clear with customers. Service providers need to stop hiding behind the small print and misleading people."
"The package is either unlimited or it is not," he said.
