Over the weekend, I’ve been having some problems with my Cable service – Saturday morning I discovered my channel pack had been downgraded to nothing more than Freeview.
Needless to say, I called NTL Home (my Cable provider) and was told my account was with their credit control dept and I was being disconneced for non-payment of my bill.
I pointed out that I pay by direct debit, and they at least managed to stop anything else being disconnected (like the phone and broadband) and the problem would be investigated on Monday. Yes. Monday – apparently the accounts people don’t have anyone in on the weekend, I ask them to call back at a particular time.
So anyway, Monday comes, they call far too early…
By this time I’ve checked with my bank, and I know that the payment was processed normally, as it is every month. NTL then tell me that it’ll take between 24 hours and 14 DAYS to reconnect my TV service.
It actually only took 24 hours fortunately – but even so, treating a customer who’se been paying regularly for 7+ years by direct debit this way is unacceptable. I cannot beleive that their reaction to a “non payment” flag on a direct debit account is to intiate disconnection – what’s wrong with a letter or phone call to make contact and ask if there’s a problem?
Do Sky still do that “refer a friend” bonus scheme? They look far better value for money now, and after this episode, I don’t want to stay with NTL for TV.
I’ll have to stay with them for Phone and Broadband for now – but another screw-up will lead me to leave them for those too…
Edit:That “another screw-up” didn’t take long to happen either…
Tom
I have come to the conclusion that NTL are useless. When moving into a new house at the start of the year we wanted to transfer the account from the old house the other side of the road to the new one. The new house had been already hooked up with the cables, boxes and all the other required eqquipment.
Apparently the switch would still require an engineer to come out and we had to wait over a month before the internet got working since there were so many other house in the area going through the same. With much complaining no actual enggineer came out but a fiddle with the system at their end meant our internet was working. Why they couldn’t have done so a month early I do not know.
The missus had issues with NTL as well. Apprently, it took them several months to connect everything up, and she was billed during this time.
When she moved out, NTL promised a rebate for the remainder of the month. It only amounted to about £10, but 2 years later she is waiting for the cheque. Although it was a small amount of money, a promise is a promise, particularly from a large company like NTL.
Having said that, BT and I are having fun right now at work. A junction box which controls the line into one the stores was playing up. A quick call to BT who said they will send an engineer out within 4 hours to check the fault. I thought this was prety good service, but decided not to hold my breath! 8 hours later the engineer arrived, and after some fiddling, said that the box needs “serious work done to it”, and the standard policy from BT is “6 months to 3 years”.
Whilst NTL are useless, don’t expect anything better from other companies. >:(
It turned out they didn’t do it right yesterday either – they didn’t restore my full channel pack…
My plans are to switch the TV service only at the moment – I’m not sure my BT exchange here is ADSL enabled – so I’ll keep the phone and broadband with NTL initially – but having looked at Sky in a shop, a few things jump out immediately:
* Interactive stuff Works.
* Teletext Works.
* “MultiFeed” (like Wimbledon, or Sky News) works.
(seeing the theme yet – all the things that don’t work on Cable – or are so slow as to be unusable – seem fine on Sky)
* The picture seems better than I’m used to – although I won’t be able to make a proper comparison until I see it on my TV!
* With a small extra gadget, I’ll be able to get 100% accurate channel changes with TiVo.
* More channels (and therefore more rubbish) to watch for the same money.
To be honest, I’m not expecting the customer service to be any better, but the move is as much a protest at NTL cutting me off with no warning, no contact and no hesitation, despite me having paid, than it is a search for something better.
Well, I found the Sky “refer a friend” deal
(it’s about 2/3rds the way down this page)
and a colleague at work will recommend me – then remembered that my car insurance is due this month – so I’ll hold off on the Sky install for a bit, and give NTL another month to muck something else up…
Update – Yesterday they did it again. I’m absolutely FURIOUS with NTL for another monumental screw-up – this one resulting in the total disconnection of both my television and broadband internet service following my payment of the same bill that they disconnected me for paying earlier in the month.
If you’re considering subscribing to NTL, do yourself a favour and forget the company ever existed.