Thousands of Eircom customers are to be hit with significantly higher bills after a payments blunder at the company.
The Telecoms giant failed to collect direct debits at the start of the year - with some subscribers now being charged for several months at a time - at a cost of up to 500 euro
This systems error at Eircom has left some 30-thousand customers facing backdated demands which are in some cases up to between 300 and 500 euro.
The phone and internet company is blaming the introduction of the Sepa payments system. It says it doesn't know exactly what went wrong but says it's now fixed the problem.
Although Eircom admits the mess is it's own fault - it will still be asking customers to pay for several months in one go.
Some of those customers are up to five months in arrears - with no payments taken since October.
The Chairman of the Consumers Association of Ireland Michael Kilcoyne told the Irish Independent it's "a bit rich of Eircom" to expect people to pay out large sums within the next month or so - he's called on them to credit half the amount owed to customers' bills.
