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DISCOUNT LANDLINE OPERATOR Yourtel has been fined €2,500 and ordered to pay €10,000 in legal costs for repeatedly billing a retired school teacher for a service it did not provide.
Dublin District Court heard that pensioner Briain Mac Diarmada, 74, was threatened with debt collectors and reported to a credit ratings agency when he took a stand against the phone company.
Following an investigation by industry watchdog Comreg, German telecom firm Yourtel went on trial on a charge under the Communications Act for charging Briain Mac Diarmada for a service or product that was requested but not supplied.
The offence can result in a fine of up to €5,000.
Judge John Brennan convicted the firm and accepted the offence would have caused Mac Diarmada to fret.
He imposed the €2,500 fine and agreed to make an order compelling the firm to pay Comreg’s costs.
The company, which has claimed to operate the lowest-priced landline calls in the country, entered the Irish market in 2013 and had pleaded not guilty to the charge.
“Out of the blue”
Mac Diarmada, from Newtownmountkennedy, Co. Wicklow, told Judge Brennan that in 2013 he switched from Eircom to Yourtel for calls.
He said that after being cold-called “out of the blue”, he entered into a new contract with Yourtel in October 2014 but in January 2016 he noticed that he had been being billed by both Yourtel and Eircom for calls.
He was supposed to be billed by Eircom for line rental only and by Yourtel for calls, the court heard.
After realising he was paying twice he contacted Yourtel and learned it was not providing the service.
He told the court he decided “I would take a stand” and not pay the latest €23.95 bill. He said that at the end of January he received a correspondence from Yourtel demanding payment of the bill as well as late payment fee.
He agreed with prosecution counsel Ronan Kennedy that he received further correspondence from Yourtel on 9 March last year.
He said this informed him his account was being deactivated and that “I have sent your data to a debt collection agency” and the letter went on to say his data had been filed with a credit agency. The letter ended with “Yours Sincerely, Yourtel Legal Department,” the court heard.
Mr Mac Diarmada said he was “deeply unimpressed”, he did not like his data being passed to a credit agency and he had never been threatened before.
He wrote to Yourtel explaining that he had wanted to be connected.
He agreed with Kennedy that he was charged for a product which had not been provided and he then contacted Comreg and gave them documentation to support his case. He said he did not receive the service from September 2014 until January 2016.
He said that as far as he was concerned he had a contract with Yourtel and it was broken by the company. He agreed with defence counsel Oisin Clarke that in April last year his account was terminated and the bill was waived.
Eircom’s head of Operations Support Systems told the court that during the period in question all calls on the line were provided by Eircom not by Yourtel.
The court heard the onus was on the telecom company gaining a new customer to organise a seamless transfer of calls from the previous provider.
Refused a refund
Miriam Kilraine, Regulatory Operations Manager at Comreg, said Yourtel had refused to refund the customer.
Clarke, defending, said that in August last year Yourtel apologised to the pensioner and had informed him that an employee had been disciplined. She disagreed that it was unfair that summons were issued while Yourtel were attempting to resolve Mac Diarmada complaint.
The court heard that Yourtel does not have premises in Ireland but use a distribution service with an address at Kill Avenue, Dun Laoghaire, Co. Dublin to forward post to their address in Germany.
Last year in prosecution brought by the office of the Data Protection Commissioner, Yourtel was fined €5,000 for unwanted marketing calls targeting Eir customers.
The company had also been spared a court conviction in 2015 by paying €2,500 to charity after it was prosecuted by Comreg for other communications offences.
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The sentence should be the maximum you can receive if do not participate in these courses. What they are telling us is that they do not want to be cured if they refuse to do these courses . This guy gets early release for not doing the courses what lesson does this teach him .The judges are to lenient on these crimes.
@Donal Carey: Well said.
@Donal Carey: Well he didn’t get early release. He served every day of his sentence minus the remission which is automatically given to every prisoner. But sex offenders do not qualify for early release. Early release is separate to remission. Also you cant have prisoners taking part in sex offender treatment against their will for two reasons. Firstly it will adversely affect the participant’s who are genuinely trying to correct their behaviour if they have a disruptive individual in the group. It’s pretty much all group work. Secondly they have to talk about their offence etc so if someone is claiming that they’re innocent they obviously can’t do that. Personally I think there should be some sort of extra monitoring or something done when they are released if they haven’t taken part.
@Donal Carey: I see your point but it is probably also better that the people doing the course are the ones who genuinely want to be cured. Having the participation diluted by people faking it wouldn’t be good. It would waste a lot of professionals time. If there is a group element with others who actually want to be better than it would be unfair to them too.
I’m not saying I’m happy with unrepentant peadophiles getting the same sentence as repentant ones but it’s not straight forward
@Donal Carey: reopen spike island, dont renovate just reopen with armed guards
@Donal Carey: There is no evidence that paedophilia can be “cured” in fact most therapy sessions are based on getting them to refrain from there actions .I have heard the view its would be akin to asking to cure people of Heterosexuality
Give them the snip
@Oisin Curry: or snip them everyday with a hedge shears..where it hurts most..
@Oisin Curry: give them the rope, dont deserve anything less
@Oisin Curry: A rusty secateurs for pruning should keep things under control.
A team of psychologists and 60 therapy sessions how many children could do with them services no wonder the waiting list is so long for child services in this country being wasted on this sh@t.
@Faixa Roxa: Go away you nut case! Ffs you need help, find it elsewhere, or tell your story!
@GerryCummins: Look “Gerry” your fake Twitter account literally has no info on who you really are. Another troll & another spineless twit.
@Faixa Roxa: fine glass house you’re in there
@stephen bracken: really a ridiculous comment
He has done his time , leave him alone, he will be watched, if he re offends then he is —- whatever, . We have to stop being paranoid about prisoners being released.
@Eugene Comaskey: people need proper justice not this soft BS from a weak government
@Eugene Comaskey: Would you be happy if he was living near you and you had children ?
@Eugene Comaskey: the problem is if he reoffends it’s too late, another innocent child is destroyed. When he didn’t engage with services in prison he should have served his full sentence, which was light anyway. That needs to be built into sentences.
@Eugene Comaskey: ah yeah, we’re far too paranoid about sex offenders who refuse to engage in rehabilitation.
@Eugene Comaskey: you really are an idiot
@Eugene Comaskey: will he be watched if he emigrates to Spain? And then returns to UK or back to Ireland?
@Alan Scott: the chances are if Humpheries and his ilk are living in a neighbourhood and a child gets sexually assaulted, it will be by someone known to the child (& not to the community) who will have offended. We have to stop thinking if we punish known offenders and isolate them.. we are making things safer for our children… we aren’t…
I’d much prefer having a known offender as a neighbour than one who hasn’t been convicted (the latter being a much greater number).
@Eugene Comaskey: yeah all those stories of serial offenders and repeat offenders. And then this lad is clearly completely in denial about his crime. But yeah. You’re right. We’re paranoid for nothing.
Target practice, at best!
@Willie Murphy: What Humphreys is he is a evil B who at best should be still in behind bars the fact that he did cooperate in any of the courses and I bet he would go after children the minute he got the chance .
@Alan Scott: he will come to notice again
@Alan Scott: That’s why he & “they” should be deleted. Too much money d “rehabilitation” wasted on these vermin.
Why was this joker released early , he refused to participate in any sex offender courses whilst in prison, he is as much a danger now as he was before he was jailed. Sentences by out of touch judges are destroying people’s faith in the justice system.
@Gus Sheridan: why was his sentence only 22 months in the first place. Disgraceful
There should be a sex offenders register which is made public. Every parent has the right to know what type of individual is living in their area.
@Dwayne Jordan: most sex offenders never get justice. 9 out of 10 sex crimes are never reported
There should be some kind of a system like in the US where you’re notified if there’s anyone on the sex offender register moving into or living in your area. Whether that’s true or not I don’t know but I was told you can find out if they’re living near you
@Alex Nevin: What happens if the wrong person is targeted.
Oooohhhhh….look at me, I’m outraged.
As much as I hate to say this but in the eyes of the law he was punished and served his sentence and has a right to be left alone
Great article, well done Michelle, much needed. We must never loose our capacity to have empathy for each other. The victim should always come first its true but until we are prepared to consider the abuser as a human being, things can only get worse. Imagine for a moment, you are the abuser or one of your children has abused. Think about that for a moment. Of course what abusers do is heinous but that is the point. The damage they cause through their actions destroys lives and we have to be open to trying anything to prevent that happening and if we are so full of hatred and rage nothing will change. Things will get worse and we wont be able to break this awful cycle of abuse thats destroying our lives.
@June Kelly: life behind bars in an adult only prison would be just as effective. I don’t feel any empathy for a man that groomed and raped a child.
@June Kelly: I disagree I think it a ridiculous article. Sex offenders come out if prison every day. Tom Humphreys is no different to the sex offender released yesterday or the one tomorrow. He was sentenced in the basis of the information provided to the sitting judge.
His risk of re-offending is very low. These crimes happened 2010/11 he has spent a large portion of that time before he went to prison in a mental hospital. He has suffered enough. Why do people want to keep punishing him.
So much crap in this Article and I know from personal experience.
HOPE I BUMP INTO THIS FILTH
@STOIC SAVAGE: and what will you do?
@Paul O’Sullivan: that’s none of your concern Paul.
@STOIC SAVAGE: you are worse than him
@Paul O’Sullivan: hahaha cop yourself on pal…. You seem extremely sympathetic to paedos… Sicko yourself by the sounds of it
That programme sounds incredibly light handed, it isn’t like they were caught with a bit of hash, these are sick predators! Sorry, I don’t support this programme at all. If you’re wondering why it’s easy to get money for prisons it’s because these paedophiles should never get the opportunity to offend again, and this isn’t unique to any one party, across the board none of us want to see Tom Humphries or people like him to be free again.
Choose a life as a sex offender!! Out before 70% of other offenders! Don’t be stupid, choose SEX OFFENDER
A person becomes homeless…can’t find a place to live, it’s a hard life!!!… Another one defiles a child and on release is given accomodation???? Really!
Best way to cure these sick f_€ks is to burn them slowly
Paedophiles find minors sexually attractive in the same way I find mature women attractive and gays find their own gender attractive. We have the issue with it, not the paedophile. In the past, people made homosexuality illegal and tried curing it; we now know it doesn’t work and accept same sex couples as normal. If we can’t accept paedophilia as normal, we should at least accept it can’t be cured. For the record, it is possible for an adult to legally have sex with a minor in this country; a person is a minor until age 18, the age of consent is 17; try figuring that anomaly out.
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