Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

Ill be honest here, I always thought BT were the Bad guys in life but my sister has proven me so wrong tbh - let me explain. Broadband stops working Nov 2005 - They have sent her (FREE of Charge) a total now of 4 Modems/Routers, to see if that would sort the problem - at no point have they asked for any back (not that she wants 4 mind you). They came out, replaced the line to the house, tested everything everywhere and finally came to the conclusion the line from Point A to Point B was at fault but due to no t enough people in her area, it would not be Financial to sort this. They Cancelled her Broadband (12 months contract remember) and supplied her with Dial up for half the price plus Half price Second line.

At no point was any charges whatsoever mentioned, the engineer came on the day he said he would and called before hand saying he was on his way. This is a World apart from NTL - maybe BT are bad or where worse but they seem to be getting there act together tbh.

I never paid anything for my BT line install as I already had a Box to the Wall and cabling from Pole when I moved into the house.

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

thats girls for ya dude.. lol

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

Pre Chapter 11 the figures were being massaged in a big way, as well as the problem for ex-customers breaking free from the company it was probably not common knowledge amongst the people at the sharp end, but it was being discussed amongst management at a higher level. There was also tens of thousands of homes passed figures and customers claimed by the company by using figures from old networks that had been closed down many years ago. These customer figures were added to the database and passed off as new build figures to meet the Oftel figures in the earlier days, so massaging was common practice as well as giving free service to keep a customer as an RGU.

We all know BT are not exactly perfect in many ways, I agree with your comments about staff training entirely. BT had the advantage of years of experience amongst many of their engineers and at least some career development in the company. The ntl attitude was to take almost anyone off the street and give them a bit of training to make them an instant overnight expert. I admit its a big problem with a start-up company finding staff on that scale, and I have had the opinion for many years that finding suitable employees would be the biggest issue if I was ever considering running my own company.

I think the bottom line is that BT due to staff reductions have ended up with many experienced engineers that will be retiring around the same time, I found on the other hand in the region that I worked in, ntl gained some good ex-BT people who had decided to take the money and run from BT. These guys are advancing in age and ntl will also be in a similar situation in the future. ntl have no career development for its employees end of story, so standards and efficiency can only fall.

I agree with your comment that the way to go would be set up special teams, but the problems could not be sorted over night. The ntl tradition is to cause huge internal disruption and efficiency problems by moving callcentres or responsibility of tasks between departments, and then just as things are progressing up the learning curve change them again!
I think many of the problems are down to it being such an unmanagable company with too many empire building managers focusing on building their empire and trying to take over other areas instead of getting on with the job. The standard joke when it was redundancy time was "The managers are so confused they are going around stabbing one another in the front"

I am not aiming at anyone in particular here, but there used to be a fair number of ntl callcentre employees on this and the .com forum who would defend the company. I have noticed many have gone quiet, done a large U turn or simply dissapeared after being made redundant. I would never verbally attack or criticise an individual ntl employee here, but as a collective organisation they are a very poor show for efficiency and competence.

The ones I knew and considered to be good employees who were always willing to go the extra mile who I know and are still at ntl, have been dragged down and dont really give a toss these days. That poor staff morale is the biggest hurdle the company faces, and I see no way of getting over it. It's possible to open a callcenter somewhere else and staff it with a new keen workforce even if they are not upto speed, but changing all the technicians out in the field for freshly brainwashed ones who think the company is good, is not such an easy task.

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

This is my yesterday Sunday experience with NTL in Swansea South Wales.
Broadband went down at 1820.
Phoned CS got the Broadband CS unavailable until 9 AM Monday.
Tried again at 0830 this morning Monday Broadband still down.
Tried again now at 1400 and wonders never cease its on again, only a 18 hour outage this time.
Im paying NTL £600 a year for this rubbish service and cant believe how Ive put up with it for over 5 years. 5 years of of get your computer fixed etc etc because its never NTL at fault etc etc.

John S.

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

I live in swansea, and I have never had a problem with my broadband other than some speed issues on the 10Mb service but then that is affecting everyone!

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

I understand your point: good tech supports dont grow on trees....but this is no longer a 'start-up' company.

We have had a cable service provided by: Cable & Wireless, Nynex and now NTL for around 10 years. I have twice previously been a customer of the other manifestations of the company, and never been very satisfied-hence keep moving away...but it has never been quite THIS BAD before!

Another commenter suggested I would be made tempting offers to prevent me disconnecting. Absolutely correct! I recorded over 20 minutes of exemplary customer relations, offering me the moon on a plate (almost!) ... new modems, periods of free line, half price for many months, giva away tv etc.... Very nice, but if I had received even a fraction of this level of service originally - I probably wouldnt be moving now!!!

..still glad i'm going, eagerly awaiting my new BT broadband modem/wireless router..... :D

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

My post wasn't really making out ntl is a start up, but ntl is born out of the original CableTel company. The original CableTel company in the South Wales franchise ignored experienced engineers working for a small cable company who were earning peanuts, in favour of employing people with no previous experience at all. The company would have a better qualified workforce if they had implemented career development as a need, instead of treating employees as something that could be easily replaced when they get fed up and leave. My comments about a better qualified workforce are not a swile at individual emplloyees at ntl, but a criticism of the organisation as a whole. The company was fed off BT's cast off's, and that is not meant as a put down to any of them in any way. ntl was able to pick up extremely competent engineers in the later stages of their careers who took a good redundancy payout and early pension, these type of people form the technical backbone of ntl in the field customer facing level as well as many ex-Cable TV engineers with 15+ years experience. These people though will obviously not be around for that many years, some I knew have already taken early retirement because quite frankly when things become really s**t they dont need the money that badly, as they have a pension to fall back on.

ntl management are now very pressurised by the people who own the company to cut cost and show a false profit, I use the words false profit because the long term harm will come back and bite them in the bum. I started working in the Cable TV industry in the mid 80's, and I joined a company that was a shell of its former glory. The company had been run into the ground by management who wanted to maximise profit and pour nothing back into the business. The company once had extremely high standards, but they ended up with poor morale and networks falling apart due to lack of maintenance. The end result was networks so badly looked after and outdated it would be cheaper to build new than repair.

Perhaps very few agree with my views, but I honstly think unless ntl change they will end up in the same situation. The current major shareholders will of made their money by running things tight and will be long gone by that stage. Every change in ntl is about cost cutting and nothing to do with maintaining or inproving service levels, I thought it funny in a meeting at my place of work today as management discussed the very large contract we have just terminated after a fairly short period with a company who run our stores facilty, and gone to another company who are considerable more expensive but of a much higher quality.

ntl is all about cutting cost, and running with as few employees as possible.

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

Voted with my feet.

Started with Nynex, then C& W and finally NTL. Could have lived with the 10 Meg fiasco if NTL had the courtesy to admitted its mistakes and tell us what it was doing to correct them. Instead we got the NTL whitewash statement at the end of January. The £50 to upgrade my STB was the last straw, particularly when friends I introduced to NTL were being offered free upgrades and modems.

Telephoned NTL on Monday of last week to downgrade all my services in preparation for moving – 10 Meg (£35pm) to 1 Meg, Family Pack (£30pm) to Base Pack. Sensed CS were waiting for me to ask about special offers but I didn’t - it was never about the money and I'll probably end up paying BT £100 for the pleasure of leaving. All I wanted was the service that I was paying for - without the constant feeling of being ripped off.

Made some enquiries about Homechoice. Not perfect, but the people in my area that are using it seem more than happy. Spoke to HC today and ordered the “Big Pack” plus 8Mb Broadband. (£19.99 pm for the first 2 months, then £39.99p m). http://www.homechoice.co.uk/packages/big_pack.html

HC put me through to BT, where I ordered a new line (BT Together Option1 - £11pm). I may have to pay for installation (apparently its just under £100 now), but worth it as a one off fee to break with NTL. New line will be installed between 10:30am and 1:00pm on 16 March. HC will telephone me in the afternoon to arrange for their engineer to call and do his stuff – probably within about 5 days.

BT suggested that it would be quicker and easier not to take the NTL telephone number with me (not really worried about changing the number anyway), so I will contact NTL once everything is done and dusted and cancel the services that they supply. At least it will delay any NTL special offers.

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

I thought the grass was greener on the other side but, soon found out it wasn't!

I went to BT and to change broadband supplier I had to buy my own adsl card (£40) which stuffed around with my connection. I then bought a router to try rectify the connection problems (another £40) which so far cost £80.

People I rang said I always sounded like I was talking inside a goldfish bowl :confused:

I paid a bill late so was charged £10 (maybe £5) then after I'd lost my patience with the frequent disconnections I then gave 30 days notice to be told I would be charged £18 - I'd been with BT 7 months and was outside my minimum contract of 3 months. They waived the charge!!!

By the time you've finished your bill is doubled by charges :Yikes:

Goto any adsl forum and you'll be confronted with customer horror stories :shocked:

Your choice but, I'd do some homework on adsl first.

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

Adsl has a long way to go to catch up with the length of time NTL took to fix BB outages for me, must be getting close two two years since leaving after being with NTL before it was NTL in my area, had the NTL half meg as soon as could be aswell. The first motorola surfboard died within 30 minutes after giving a very spasmodic connection. It took NTL 6 weeks to change it. Had a few other outages between 2-4 weeks all being outside of the home issues.

Since adsl my line drops occasionally I click reconnect and voila its done. I have had a 24 hour period + maybe of suffering an adsl authentication issue which was isp side and resolved very qucikly considering it began on a saturday. My ethernet adsl modem cost me 35 and 50 to sign up, I have saved 10 per month on the BB alone. I do not have any cap. Ijust had to get a couple of new filters today and these happened to be included in an adsl usb modem which was knocked down as an open box cost 15. Currently I think I am quids in, have had far less issues with the service and a lot less issues with the billing. Also my router never freezes when the lease is renewed.
The only good people in ntl are the engineers and some of the customer services people themselves, unfortunatly they are dogged by a bunch of idiots running the show and running of with the moolah.

And I still appear to be on the NTL books as a customer, good job I never did a DD with them. ;)

Re: Do NTL set out to lose customers?
 

Too true! I reached breaking point a few weeks ago and after having had the reply, "No." to my request, "Are you going to send out an engineer tomorrow.", I said "Right, put me through to the department that can cancel everything.", I got someone on the phone a minute later discussing when the engineer would turn up. With a decent company (are there any?) you shouldn't have reached this stage, but it does seem to be the only language that ntl understands. Sad but true.