NO SUCH THING as bad press?
How about being mixed up with Irish Water right now?
Well, that can’t be great, can it? One small business has been finding out…
Edwin McGreal of the Mayo News has been reporting on Coláiste Uisce’s woes over the past week.
The Irish language adventure college, known simply as Uisce, has become the “unwitting victim” of the Irish Water controversy, he says.
Staff have had to become adept at dealing with complaints, after they received 40 calls from angry Irish Water customers.
“People start giving out to us and then we do our best to calm them down … we’ve even developed a system, we let them give out to us and vent their frustrations, then we agree with them and explain that we are, in fact, an Irish college based in Belmullet,” education manager Daithí Ó Gallachóir told the local newspaper.
However, not one to miss a trick, the Mayo man says they then try to plug a summer course.
“Unfortunately we haven’t made any sales out of it yet!” he laughs.
However, they have had one 54-year-old man sign up to a Leaving Cert exam-focused course by accident. He thought he was registering with the utility.
In the customers’ defence, the school uses the website www.uisce.ie – not a far cry from www.water.ie which Irish Water/Uisce Eireann uses.
There has also been some confusion over their logo, an issue that came up at their stand at the National Ploughing Championships.
“The second they saw the ‘Uisce’ logo they were enraged. We did actually get a few bookings out of those people though, there are some great Gaelgóirí among the feirmeóirí in the country,” continued Ó Gallachóir.
So, they’ve decided to keep trying to make the most out of the mix-up. They’ve even made a video.
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