Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Another red herring from ntl.

As a long term customer (7 years) of ntl I've seen and heard it all.

ntl won't offer and give compensation and or goodwill gestures for love nor money as they know they can't live up to their own promises - it's all hype as usual.

I've had many goodwill gestures in my 7 years but, I have had to suffer (and I mean suffer) nthell and back to get it.

If they did do the above I guarantee ntl would make potential claims go through CS front line (what horrors wait their is anyones guess), have masses of t&c's attatched and then their interpretation of things will be a whole lot different and theirs will be right no matter what you the customer knows and then it'd take weeks/months/years to get a pathetic tenner for weeks/months of hell trying to get at it!

Not worth the paper it's written on!

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Is this big 5 thing still going? If so the "draft" which has been made available needs to be updated.
Such a misleading document should not be left on the system without a big "draft" or better still "only kidding" watermark on every page. I cannot see any mention of it on the ntl site.

So by their own figures, over a fifth of customers who trouble to call them waited over 3 minutes in the period covered.

In my experience very believable. 8 minutes plus today just to find out what my direct debit payment was going to be because I hadn't received my monthly bill, which may I suppose just have gone missing in the post.

I am not sure what the 94 seconds is. Maybe the wording needs changing the same as for the tech support calls - but anyway not all calls to a call centre take exactly the same time to either be answered or have exactly the same duration whichever the time is supposed to be.

The really digusting bit is where it says on page 9 that "We provide a free customer service helpline" when they have just sent out information that the free helpline is going on to a "local rate" 0845 number.

It is unbeleivable that they say "We keep waiting times to a minimum ... " and "We have a thorough and rigorous recruitment policy as we only want to employ the best talent .... Customer Service representatives receive special training ...."

I don't really care what the person on the other end of the phone looks like as long as they are honest, knowledgeable, helpful, recognise that I am probably calling because the organisation they represent has already failed to deliver its promise in some way, preferably understand English and speak it intelligably, and are not rude and do not imply that I am lying when I merely tell them the facts as I perceive them, but I do agree with Ramrod that the lady in headset on page 7 and 18 looks very nice. In fact page 7 about disconnecting is probably the best part of the brochure.

If the totally inflexible and timewasting responsetek procedure annoys you as much as it does me there is a email address on the big5 draft brochure for feedback on the charter. I don't know yet if it works, but it is TheBig5@ntl.com

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

I work in Tech Support for another company and there is a team of ten of us serving the entire world. 1 and a half minutes is considered an EXTREMELY long time for our customers to wait before the phone is answered. Also, 2 minutes? I have never had the phone answered by NTL in less than TWENTY minutes...

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

What is the business you are in? What is you customer base? It sounds like you do not get very busy then, if it takes 1 out of 10 of you to answer the phone in <1 1/5 minutes, is something along the lines of

YOU...hello XXXX company how can I help
CUST...my radio is playing up can you help
YOU...I will just transfer you to someone that can help please hold
YOU...hello XXXX company how etc etc etc etc

I write this in jest but for what you write (and as you have made comparison to ntl which has a multi-million cust base) must be wrong.

Re: ntl Customer Charter
 

Not wrong and a worldwide customer base, worldwide selling Software company (serif), maybe not as many staff as NTL, but not half as many problems either. We just work our A*ses off. Even if we have X times less customers than NTL, I bet they have a higher ratio of staff per customer and we STILL get the phone answered quicker on average.