Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Straight from the horse's mouth? :erm:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I suspect quite a few people feel like that about where they work. I used to work in my local hospital, and I know most of the staff there wouldn't go there voluntarily for treatment.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

As with any big company - lack of communication is a big problem and here is me thinking computers would solve everything (lol). If you called up one dept and they entered what they did on the notes for your account (do they do that?) then when you call another person - they can continue where they left off - but often is the case nothing is entered at all.

Cable Modem Support is again down to lack of training and communication - quite often they shrug there shoulders and cannot help - if your cable modem line is down (lights cycles) then of course they cannot connect to your modem and check it out - they say we send a person out to check it - seems a watse to me when if they had more info of what is going on - they could tell you there doing a UBR Upgrade and it will be back later.

I draw this conclusion from working and dealing with various compainies. FIrst off the cuff is Sky - they do enter (at least for me) what they said and did so my problem (payments) was sorted very quicly no matter who i called.

next was One2One - worked there and they have a live map with what is up and what is down (transmitters) so they can diagnose a fault quickly if your connection is dead (mobiles of course).

The trick is this in any business - keep the customer informed as to what is going on and the reason for there problem and they can live with the fact the Net is down for a day - this is where computers / database come into play so that no matter who i deal with - it can be sorted and the company would benifit as people would be happier knowing why they cannot connect today or there email is not coming through for example.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I've been a customer of NTL ever since it took over from Comtel,about 12 years I guess.When I've eventually obtained an actual human being to talk to,(on average this has taken 30 minutes!) the person has had very little ,if any, useful answers or suggestions to my many queries over the years. It's so bad that I no longer bother and accept the appalling customer services as part of NTLs desperate attempt at running a company that makes money for its shareholders.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

This forum has made me smile, and I feel warmed by the fact that there are other people out there who are going through the same NTL hell!!! To all you other lucky non-NTL subsribers, I'm green with envy or blue as the case may be.

The alarming fact is that broaderband will take over from broadband, and this, is fibre - are alarm bells ringing yet??

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Cannot see the point in a poll that let's you see what one another has voted, I voted hit and miss, but then you can see that :rolleyes:

My last experience of cs was when I called to alter my broadband package.
I told them I wanted to drop down from 1 meg to 600k due to the impending increase, but the feeling I got from the person I spoke to was that the increase would go ahead anyway, which was more or less their words to me.
Yet I read of other people's experiences where they have phoned NTL to do the same thing, and been offered discounts to keep their 1mb.
Something is very wrong in the above scenario, is there no benchmark at all at NTL? where all customers are treated the same?
They certainly know how to rub people up the wrong way through conflicting treatment of customers.
I am gradually cutting back on what I take from NTL, because to be honest I do not think that they are delivering with any consistency.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

That whole post looks like a quote - I'm assuming it isn't but since I can't see the original it's hard to tell. :confused:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I think Bex was answering a series of questions looking at the numbers before the sentences.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

yes - the bits between three and four are replies - to the comments made

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

PM me if you want to know how to make proper use of the 'quote' button ;) :D

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

May be I have been lucky but, I have had NTL Dial-up for a couple of years and then 150kb BB for another couple, during which I called Support twice and found them polite, patient and technically on the ball.
I have no connection with NTL, except as a cable customer, but having been a communications service engineer for 38 years, I appreciate the responses I received - especially the late Friday evening one! :tu:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

ntl customer services have been pretty good in my experience. fairly quick and extremely helpful.
my only gripe is that faults is closed on sundays and late evenings (when most problems occur!)
i would like customer services open until 10pm on weekdays and 8pm on saturday. and 9am-5pm on sunday, surely that can't be tooo difficult. (of course 24/7 would be better)
:D

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Yes, you would think that NTL could provide some cover 24/7 when they have that many customers. If there aren't enough calls to keep them busy during the night they could be busy answering emails, etc. They must lose revenue from disgruntled customers who cannot get faults rectified or booked for engineers. There must also be lots of customers who want to upgrade their DTV packs for something special but don't bother when they find out that they cannot do this until after the event.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I remember working until 2am in tech support at NTL and usually from about 1am onwards it was dead. AFAIK the night team certainly DID deal with email enquiries but of course the calls took priority.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Who's a lucky boy then? :birthday:

according to this year-old thread, support was reduced (from 24/7) to 8am to midnight then.
I certainly had good service from them very late one Friday night a few months ago. :waving:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showthread.php?t=150

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

If they can offer broadband support till midnight, they can surely run faults for TV services till the same times. :confused: If I have a TV fault inevitably it's when I'm watching it, and that, cos I work weekdays, means it's gonna be found out of CS hours.

I don't see why TV services should be inferior to anything else ntl offer. If you do phone CS out of hours with a total phone failure (no doubt not on your ntl phone :erm: :dozey: ), eventually you might be lucky enough to hear of another number that can be called 24 hours. That to me indicates that faults for everything could be run 24 hours as well after all the service is supposed to be 24/7, and if it's just a case of ntl's system needing a computerised kick up the backside (message sent to STB by CS) which is usually all that's needed, it would save a lot of customer anguish.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I have found service to be very good recently.

Yesterday I lost all channels on both STBs. A call to CS was answered within two minutes and a friendly young lady went through all the reboot and signal sending procedures without any joy.

She then booked me an engineer visit for 4pm the same afternoon.

About half hour later I received a phone call from an engineer to say the fault had been traced to a power failure in a street cabinet and that he was on his way to deal with it.

Service was restored at about 1230 pm and a couple of hours later the same engineer rang to check that all was working OK.

I cannot fault this level of service and am quite happy with NTL generally.

BJ

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

i have had no problems with c/services you need to no how to handle them

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Re NTL Customer Service
I have had cable for about 10years from nynex to cwc to NTL I moved from Nelson to Burnley and c/s dealt with move which went smoothly. Later went onto digital when it became available this went ok. Asked for the dialup package for the computer, just did not recieve it. Now Broadband was available in North East Lancashire so went onto 512kb service, had endless problems with this , but the service at dealing with these problems was good and in the end it settled down and came right, the initial phone contact could do with speeding up

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Rang them about a minor problem with not being able to view updates to my website. Their attempt to fix it left me without the ability to update my website (kept getting permission denied). They fixed the problem (not of my making) 16 days later.

Their technology works very well, however, their support is questionable. Seems to vary with who you get. May be it is their training or lack it of their personnel. Who knows?

On the plus side they are a bit better at answering the phone - The waits are now shorter.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Hi everybody,

I have nothing to do with NTL apart from being a customer for six years with cable, phone & dial-up/broadband. I've always found NTL customer service people to be friendly and helpful whatever I'm ringing up about, I've never called them about broadband as I've never had a problem with it. Yes, early on, it was hard to get hold of people but this has improved massively over the years.

There was this awful Welsh dude once who decided to be a belligerent jobsworth at £1 per minute, though to date, this is the only problem I've had with CS. One time, while ringing up about a different matter, the call centre person noticed we'd been overcharged for a few months under some arcane offer. She alerted us and quickly put it right, which was a good job because I'd probably never have noticed. They were especially good when I had broadband installed, I actually felt they cared about my experience with them.

Also, There are one or two saucy lads working at NTL who've been good for a laugh or two when dealing with me which is pretty good going considering the abuse they're sometimes subjected too.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I have only had 2 occasions to contact them, the first was a problem with dial-up that they were unable to sort. The modem worked perfectly with AOL but would not work with ntl!

OK, I bought a new modem and gave them the benefit of the doubt.

Recent Problems.

I had a letter from Wescot about a missed direct debit 14 months previously, I got cut off three times by customer services. The first time I was put on hold and then taken off hold to hear someone in the background say "Just terminate the call" that was it I was back to the menu!

After being just cut off in mid sentence on another 2 occassions I had to resort to asking an ntl employee for help, I never received any communication from ntl about the debt and its funny how they took another 13 consecutive direct debits without any trouble. I had no argument about the owed amount I just couldn't get any sense out of them to pay it.

When I eventually got a call from someone they credited my account, apologised and would not accept any payment from me.

The end result was OK, but all the hassle could of been saved if they had just let me authorise payment for the outstanding amount, I know this type of story is very common place recently and its all down to the terrible state that ntl is in. Unfortunately ntl is a company that seems to go from bad to worse as the good people leave and the rotten apples take their place.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Customer service itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s a pretty good description so itââ‚ ¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢s a pity than some people working in that department do not understand the meaning, also that without customers like you and me they do not have a job. Most times they are very helpful and resolve any issue very quickly and you feel like a customer. Then thereââ‚ƚ¬Ã¢â€žÂ¢s that small minority who donââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t seem to be playing for the same team.

One thing I think is a must with the logging system, if a customer phones in and they access the account it should be time and date stamped and who viewed your account details. Two years ago I was told a new system was coming on line with regards to data protection. With two recent contacts with NTL it would seem they still are unable to tell who has logged into my account unless that person adds some notes. With the recent fiasco at AOL I would think NTL would want to protect themselves as a company.

That being said I can watch my TV (the interactive service needs a re-think) make and receive phone calls, view the WWW and send emails all for about £65.00 per month. My telephone bill with BT was more than that per month six plus years ago. I always put things on a set of imaginary of scales and if the good outweighs the bad it canââ‚Âà ‚¬ÃƒÂ¢Ã¢â‚¬Å¾Ã‚¢t be that bad. One thing to remember NTL is run by people and like all human being we make mistakes, have you heard of the old saying †œIts better the devil you knowââ‚ ¬Ã‚ÂÂÂ�

NTL 7/10 COULD DO BETTER ;)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I've had a number of experiences with NTL over the years and non of them have left me with a whole heap of confidence in them.


Firstly about 3 years ago myself and my flatmate moved from House A to House B. We contacted NTL and asked to have our TV and Telephone moved. The TV was moved immediately but we were told we'd have to wait up to 4 weeks for the phone. After waiting a couple of weeks without hearing anything we contacted them to chase up and were told that because we wanted to keep our existing number we would have to wait. When we pointed out that we hadn't requested that we kept our exisiting number we were told 'Oh in that case we can do it anytime you want'. Bad experience Number 1

Secondly once we had sorted out that we could get the phone 'anytime you want' we arranged an instal date. NTL were a no show. We rearranged and NTL were a no show. We rearranged again and after waiting in all morning my flatmate called NTL to be told that they had installed the phone. When he pointed out that he'd been in all morning and no-one had called round the NTL CS Rep checked that account and confirmed that they had installed the phone but unfortunately they'd connected upto the house we'd just left and not our new house. Bad experience Number 2

Thirdly we had a problem with the TV picture freezing. We were repeatedly told to reboot the box etc. Eventually we got an engineer out who found that someone had put a T-Piece on our feed in the roadside cabinet and hence our signal strength was too low. Bad experience Number 3

Next after having not had NTL for a year and having tried to get Sky (can't because we've got No Line of Sight due to trees at the back of our property), I finally had to deal with NTL again.

Having used their website to order 600k BB, TV and Tel I received a call from NTL to confirm my order and was told that I couldn't have Broadband because it wasn't available in my area (Blackheath). I was absolutely fed up and stomped round the house all evening feeling sorry for myself. Eventually my fiancee said that we might as well get the TV and Tel anyway and keep the BB via our exsiting ADSL supplier (fairADSL). I contacted NTL the next day to resurrect the order only to be told that Braodband was available in my area. Bad experience Number 4.

Once we'd established that I could get what I wanted we booked a date and NTL turned up, installed all the kit and it all worked. Good Experience Number 1.

Finally upon receiving my first full bill I found an £18 call to a premium rate number which was made when no-one was in the house (except the cat). I queried this with NTL CS and was told I'd probably been the victim of a premium rate dialler scam and I should contact ICSTIS to report it. Although I pointed out that my PC was not, is not and never will be connected to my NTL telephone line the CS Rep still insisted that there was only one explanation and that was the Premium Rate dialler one. So far I've made 2 complaints about this and have yet to get it resolved although I have had a very helpful letter telling me all about Virus Checkers and Firewalls both of which I've had for considerable longer than I've had NTL. Bad Experience Number 5.

So in summary as far is I'm concerned it's Bad NTL:mad: 5 Good NTL:) 1.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Did you get the name of this person you spoke to re 'diallers' ?

:welcome: to the site btw. :)

[Edit]-Did yo get the names of any of the people who messed you around?

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Welcome to the site, :ghugs:, that's it, let it all out.

We're here to help, so stick around :D

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

yeh sick around :sick: :sick: :sick:

nice typo Nem ;)

:welcome:

{Nem} I've edited it now :D

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

The first 3 bad experiences were dealt with by my flatmate as the account was in his name so I'm afraid not.

The fourth one I didn't ask although to be fair I didn't think it was a bad experience until I found out the next day that I'd been mis-informed.

The fifth, I've not got the name of the person I initially spoke to, but following my complaint I did get a nice letter about Premium Rate Diallers and Virus Checkers and Firewalls from a member of the NTL Customer Liaison Team in Swansea. I replied to him immediately (15th June) and have not heard anything since.

I'm not sure if it's fair to mention his name on here just yet but if you egg me on I might do.;)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I think NTL's problems lie 'behind the scenes' in that things occassionally happen to cause incorrect bills to get sent, proxies to go down etc, but any time I've had a problem needing to call cs (2/3 times) it's all been fixed pronto by friendly people.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I had an NTL account for two trouble free years when they still had analogue cable services. This account was closed in 2001.

Last year, after moving in with a new flatmate, we decided to get digital TV, phone and BB through NTL as the package seemed a lot cheaper than getting everything seperate. We also took up a free installation offer. After eveything was installed, all seemed well. The TV was great, though the Interactive wa s abit clunky. We didn't install the BB straight away as my flatmate was waiting for a new laptop, so we decided to wait for that.

Here's the letter we sent to NTL following the first three months of our account:



Result?

A £50 refund. Good, but not really great for three months of misery.

Since then things have gone relatively well, until this week. The BB internet (through set top box) has gone twice in a week meaning more calls to NTL to 're-boot' the box, but now although we can connect, the BB service is very very slow and most pages 'time out' before they are opened.

NTL's response? Not our problem. If you can connect to the net, then the problem is with your PC, not NTL.

Charming.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

UDT has never had a problem with ntl: he is the problem. He stated sometime back that he had Sky and a BT line! So why have an ntl: package?

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I won't go into the long list of hassles over the years, but suffice to say that my experiences of NTL's customer service (and most things NTL) has been sheer hell (and this goes back to CableTel days too, nothing's changed really).

The only reason I'm still here is because eventually I got my broadband sorted (thanks to some helpful guys on the original nthellworld.com forum) and that changing to ADSL is a lot of hassle having to apply for a BT line, buying equipment, and the risk of being turned down for ADSL due to a potentially poor quality line (though ADSL prices are getting so attractive with £30 for uncapped 1Mbps with the likes of PlusNet).

I'm still p'ssed to this day that NTL cost me quite a few days off work which is a lot of money and all they could do after much complaining was to give me the run-around by just appologising but offering absolutely NOTHING in the form of compensation ("we don't compensate for time off work", yeah but you screwed up on 4 occasions and don't even turn up sometimes. That's a hell of a lot of money it cost me!! :mad: ... "so what" is effectively their answer :mad: ).

Sorry, but NTL CS get the worst mark from me. I don't even bother calling them now as it just makes my blood boil thinking about it :mad:


Broadband perhaps?

I have an NTL phone, NTL broadband but have Sky. Why?... because they p'ssed about for so long with Digital TV and broken promises (Remember the infamous "coming soon"? :rolleyes: ), I gave up and went for Sky Digital which had been out for years. It was definitely the right decision as it took them another year to get digital TV and even then it didn't support RGB or have widescreen and took them years to sort that out, and even now doesn't have all the channels I want. It's not a price issue though, both work out the same. I could possibly go to a BT line though just so I can try and get ADSL and then be rid of NTL once and for all if that succeeds. It's hassle though.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Problems -

1. 9/03 - After being assured that the balance of my phone bill was being paid out by Direct Debit, my phoneline is disconnected. Decide to use my work mobile and not pay the £50 reconnection fee. 6 days later someone sharing the same street cab as me ends up with a crossed line. I.E. phones ringing in 2 houses. 4 phone calls later and the line was still crossed
2. 6/04 - Move house, before I leave check the phone - still a crossed line
3. 6/04 - New house contact CS for a 150k BB line-

• 1st rep - IMS's me - give up after 20 mins.
• 2nd rep - no service in that area.
• 3rd rep - You could have BB but the area is oversubscribed. (Using the only tool consumers have against NTL - beligerence - keep trying)
• 4th and 5th say the same thing -
• 6th rep - "The system is saying the area is oversubscribed - hang on a second - I'll see what I can do"
• 2 minutes later "There you go Mr.******** --I found you a space" After asking how he did it, "Oh the system doesn't keep up to date with cancallations and disconnections - you just have to hunt around for a space" Much thanks and praise go to this chap - I'll add his name as I said I would when I can find it!:) :) :)

After reviewing this thread this does seem to be the story - generally ok (polite etc), but with the occasional bright spark. I vote 50/50

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

:Yikes: O.K..... I worked for NTL in the North East region, (Bellshill, Scotland) until March this year when I finally left and I am here to stick up for the CSA's who get nothing but abuse from morning til night from customers, who more often than not come on screaming right from the start and it is VERY difficult to get them to shut up for 2 minutes so you can find out what the problem is !! More often than not, the CSA can fix the so called 'problem' then and there and it is the customer who has been 'playing' around with the remote or their kids have and they have locked the system or have caused the stb to lose the channels altogether!! Granted there were times when it was NTL's fault, but I found from experience that all I had to do was contact the correct department and get it fixed. However, sometimes customers would call at ALL hours and expect all the depts to be working, ( We had to sleep sometime !!), then that would set them off again as we could do nothing to help until the following morning. The staff at ALL the call centres are always under pressure about the number of calls they take and length of time each call takes, also the amount of time you have customers on hold while you are sorting out a problem, so the pressure is intense and I want to stick up for them as I took this for 6 yrs and finally could take no more!!!!:Yikes: :Yikes: :disturbd: :disturbd:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Well we've been with NTL for about 7 years now, first with the C&W boxes and phonline, now with NTL box phoneline and 150k BB.

In all that time I'd say we've called about 5 times and each time the CSA is freindly and tells you what they are doing all the way through and of the most part fix the problem, often much faster than expected.
I phoned about a battery eating remote, the CSA was nice and I got the new fangdangled remote 2 days later.
I've just now got off the phone with a CSA who was also very freindly and has sent the problem on to anouther department.

So all in all I'd say those who have problems with the CSA's must provoke them through their attitude, and I can truthfully say I have no problems with the CS at all :)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Welcome to the forum Ankhsunamun :)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

It's now 5 weeks since my letter and still no reply, so I sent another letter off today.

I'll let you all know if this one 'Provokes a Response'.:mad:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

This is the bottom of another post so forgive me but I wanted people to read it. I have jsut had a great response from ntl - my bb & CTV went off yesterday (thurs) afternoon. called faults (afte being put through to both the CTV & BB faults dept ) was told and engineer would be out on sunday. at 5 pm (fri) I got a call asking if we were in as the engineer was in the area. He fixed the problem (it was a loose wire on the box on the side of the house).

I work in a call centre for a bank and callers forget that you are a person and you are trying to help them. Especaly if they are upset. Its hard work dealing with that type of call all day every day. Anyone who dosent agree - I will get them a job at my place.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Nice one nidave, always good to hear a CS Success!

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Strangely enough I was talking about this very point with a friend this afternoon, and frankly I think that whoever thought up that approach to customer service should taken to a very high cliff and pushed off. CS should not be about attempting to rattle through as many calls in a hour as possible, it should be about taking as much time as it takes to get the problem resolved. If a problem takes half an hour to resolve then that time should be spent resolving it, not trying to get the customer off the phone as quickly as possible.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Well said, I couldn't agree more. :tu:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I agree with you 100%, but IMO the targets that we have at work are perfectly attainable, personally on each shift i am 2-4 minutes under the target. I think the target is necessary to make sure that people work as hard as they can and don't just waste time on calls (making people reboot an unnecessary number of times or "i just need to pop you on hold" are classic ways i have heard of to do this).

I take the approach that a call takes me as long as it takes. if i get a complicated problem it might take an hour or more, if i get someone asking for their password it will take about a minute, so it all balances out.

MB

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

At the risk of accidentally inflating your ego, I would say that in this forum you have demonstrated that you are far from a typical NTL employee.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Hi,
My experience with NTL customer services has been very bad.
I only have One NTL phone line with only Remider call no other features.
Three months ago my phone bill arrived and it had Reminder call entered Three times for the same billing dates at £1.50 totaling £4.50, I contacted CS and explained the problem and they said they did not know what had happened but they would arrange for £3.00 refund which happened ok.
The next month Reminder call was again there three times, so contacted CS and go through the whole saga again and once again they said they would refund £3.00 but that did not happen, on the next bill it had Reminder Call three times yet agiain!!:mad:

Why can't CS get the billing correct!:mad:

It is NTL's Customer Services where they shoot them selves in the foot!:dunce:

Walter

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

i phoned them once when my cable wouldnt connect and they had me on the line for a long time doing tests and stuff,then they say your box is broken we will send an engerner to fix it, I was well it was working fine when I went to bed, they were no its broken, ok, I wait

So I go to town, and I get a call on my mobile saying they were doing work in Leicester, where I live I was ok, I had a felling it wasnt my box, he said it was fixed then, so when I go hiome I try and cnnect, nothing I phone up and they are saying on the msg it was a routine thing and they knew about it days before, nice the support didnt know about there routine stuff :monkey:

BUT

I phoned up about my network, and they said we dont support networks, and Iwas like its not workign on a single pc, he said reinstall my O/S and if it dont work, to call him personal and he would help me with my network as well

so some of them are helpfull some are not informed of stuff

:erm: :monkey:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

In general, not had any problems with NTL customer service until recently.
We cancelled everything - broadband, TV, phone.
Why we cancelled was because I was fed up of the internet going down and me having to then go all the way downstairs to unplug the box and then all the way back upstairs again to wait for the internet to come back again. This is not good, as both myself and my wife suffer from arthritis. Add to that since the e-mail "upgrade" I gpt fed up of slow e-mail servers for 30% of the time I am online.
Then the TV went off. No channels, nothing. Problem being this happened on Saturday, and apparently there are no engineers available to fix anything at weekends, which is diabolical service!!!!
So, we phoned, and I got a bloke who, as soon as I informed him we wanted to cancel everything became barely civil to me, his voice on the edge of dripping with contempt. Not the way to talk anyone into staying with a company!
So, they came yesterday to remove our set-top box, but the phone box and socket were left. And people who have accidently used our old ntl e-mail address say that it's not bouncing - and people who have accidently used our old ntl phone number say it's still ringing (although we don't hear it because we have unplugged the phone).
And our bill.... It was for the period up to mid October - the full amount!!!! We phoned billing and they say it will be altered on our next bill. I have a bad feeling, though that we are stil going to be charged for line rental and e-mail....
If that happens we're not only willing to take this to trading standards, court, Parliament or wherever, but we will certainly NOT be reccomending NTL to anyone!

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Got a problem at the moment with our phone ,it dont work ,it hasent worked for over a week,it went off on saturday 28th august ,over the weekend and bank holiday tryed to get customer support ,no luck ,got intouch with them on tuesday 31st august ,the person was booked to come out on thursday 2nd september between 12-00pm and 6-00pm ,had the day off work ,no one turned up ,spoke to some one thursday 7-00 pm (long wait on the phone) ,said sorry about this, problems with the call centers,re booked in for sunday 5th september between 8-00 am and 12-00 pm got up early,still no one came ,so to sum it all up have been with out phone for over a week ,had a day off work (waisted),mounting mobile phone bills trying to get to speak to (top A++) customer services
I am in the Northampton area if this is any help ,i mean dont call there customer support they will take the message but they wont pass the booking to the service people
:dunce:

The thing is how long will this episode go on till its sorted ,how much more will it cost me not to use the phone
sorry im getting more angry thinking about this ,
nice service guys keep it up

also i want to thank cable forum for helping me vent
thanks
:Yikes:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

did you call repairs not cs? :confused: :disturbd: :Yikes:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Yeah called CS that was right wasnt it

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Well phoned them today at 5.00pm took 1 hr to get through to some who inturn told us it would take a week to get some one out to look at the phone line , we explained that we have been with out the phone for over a week already and this is not ok ,we asked to speak to a supervisor,we got one after about 5 mins and explained the situation ,he took our mobile number and said he would phone us back that was 20 Mins ago still no one has phoned back
Yes nice service u got there NTL ,BIG THUMBS UP TO YA or should i say Middle finger to ya

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I'd allow it a bit more than 20 minutes unless you were specifially told 20 minutes. This time of night can be very busy in callcentres.

Personally I'd only kick up a stink if I'd heard nothing by about 9 tonight.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

from experience i usually ring up during the day and have little trouble with getting thru to them :)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

If it was BT you'd have rights to get compensation if it's out for a day, not weeks. They'd also fix it within a day or two.


P.S. Tried to call technical support the other day...

"technical support are having technical difficulties" :LOL:

Followed by them saying they probably can't help you and there may be a long wait on the phone :rolleyes:

Was on the phone for quite a while listening to endless options and messages for dummies, only to then be cut off when I picked the option to speak to someone.

Nothing's changed in over a year

Email them with their support contact form which asks you to fill in as much detail as possible on the problem...

... and they email back saying "phone us"

:banghead:

If you do get through it takes a lot of effort to convince them your problems are their problems, and then you get cut off or you have to call back for some reason, and you have to explain all over again. Then if you eventually get an engineer you have to explain it all to him again, and it turns out he's not got the right equipment, so another engineer is sent who hasn't a clue about the first engineer and also doesn't have the right equipment, so another has to be sent... (this happened to me 4 times on one issue).

Make a complaint and they just get a nice pleasing sounding woman to basically say nicely that they're really sorry, even admitting they make mistakes, and basically it's a situation of "tough, we can't do anything about it" (other than a token gesture of a months refund for cable modem when it's been down for a lot longer, and what you really want is compensation for days wasted off work waiting in for engineers who never turn up at the right time, or at all).

(sorry, getting into a bit of a rant here, but it really bugs me sometimes).

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Dont apolagies i understand the ranting ,they still havent called back ,i called them again on my mobile ,waited for one and a half hours ,gave the man my details ,post code etc ,he puts me through some where else where i get the message this department is closed , nice nice nice service NTL

:monkey: LOTS OF EM

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Please please tell us what number!

When I found my cable modem not working last friday I couldn't even get to the hold music until after 9 am on Saturday! It took more than 45 mins on hold before I actually got to speak to someone, and after being transferred back and forwards with waits between customer services tech support, local support hald a dozen times it was 11 am.

At least the line is now fixed, after being accepted as a network fault the eve before a planned wasted engineer visit.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Well they asked for it ,just signed up to BT ,we payed every month on time never late for 11 months ,yes not long ,but we payed it always on time and what do NTL BELL ENDS do, treat us like POO
WELL WE ARE OUT OF HERE

for a better service






I hope !!!

;)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

They're by and large appalling :(

and that pretty much sums up NTL corporate attitude to customers, we're a thick (Bill Goodlands infamous cap quote) lot who want nothing more than to rip NTL off at every available opportunity according to them ,as seen by the "No speed increase for leechers" comment (paraphrased) that someone (Aizan Hussein?) made a while ago, thereby ensuring that NTL remain one of the (the?) slowest speed cable internet providers at one of (the?) highest prices. The problem isn't with CS, it goes much higher than that, and until NTL start to VALUE their customers, nothing will change.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

My set-top box crashed with an Err3; called CS and the engineer arrived 8 days later with the replacement. CS told us to call them back afrter the problem had been fixed and they could give us a refund. So we called them and got the refund (to be confirmed when get get the bill - but lets give ntl the benefit of the doubt) but had to wait 58 minutes before we got though. Is this a record (doubt it) or has anyone else been on-hold for longer?

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

You won't have to look far on here to find people who have had to wait longer than that. :( My worst NTL CS experience was well past the hour. To be fair to them, though, I have also been answered in under 10 minutes ;)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I frequently had the phone picked up at around 50 mins then was cut off and had to wait another 50 odd mins....

But I voted with my feet after this had happened a few times.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

There was one time a while back where I tried for 4 days in a row continually ringing every few hours whenever I could, and each time it was practically bang on 40 minutes and then get cut off.

People have said it's changed, but it's no different today.

I've put up with it far too long and should do the same really :(.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Yup - unfortuately not eveyone can do that :(

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

NTL were on local radio (Fox FM) here (Oxford) today, in a comparison of call waiting times.

NTL averaged 50 Minutes !!!!
the next closest were British Gas with 5 minutes.

LOL, if I were NTL i'd be SERIOUSLY concerned, they're a laughing stock.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Ah, but there IS a reason for the cut-offs when you're waiting for them to answer - their phone system is a limited one, so if too many people call to complain (or whatever) it can't handle them all..... And these are the people who (more often than not) are supplying your phone service....

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

With regards to call waits it is not exactly rocket science but merely simple call vectoring.

No doubt like many call centres NTL use CMS (Call Monitoring Software) which will provide them stats for their peak calling periods.

Any such switch can be modified at a moments notice to change the way calls route.

It can be configured instantly to for example if calls waiting are equal or greater than 20 then give engaged signal.

If a major service outage occurs then it will play an instant announcement of the fault and then continue into the vectoring system of if persistent call are greater than say 20 then disconnect calls.

The variations are steps and can pre defined manually by usually the controller are the there are endless configurations of these.

One old classic example from NTL would be in the days of Tech Support in Newport when they abandoned the night shift and moved it to the Swansea Call Centre - what would happen at 12 midnight is any calls waiting would be dropped while they routed the calls to Swansea.

The vector for this would be to allow say for example unlimited call to get into the queue but come 12 midnight the vector would be to drop all current calls and then reroute all new calls to Swansea.

So at 11.59pm there could be 50 callers waiting for however amount of time but come 12 midnight they would be disconnected and when they redialled they would be routed to Swansea etc.

Totally unacceptable from the customers point but that is how it used to happen and no doubt with clever configuration still does.

:D

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Quite simply, cutting a customer off is about the worst (and rudest) thing customer support can do, even if it's automated. Instant anger and frustration leading to the potential for them to take their business elsewhere.

Makes a mockery of the whole "your call is valuable to us" business ;) (though that's always been a joke in my opinion).

I'd even be happy to be routed to India than be cut off. At least I get to speak to someone even if neither of us can understand one another.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I don`t think that 10 minutes is an acceptable wait either, no other company that I have had to deal with on the phone has made me wait that long. When I`ve had to contact Thames Water or Southern Electric their interpretation of the message telling me they have a high call volume and there will be a wait means a wait of around 5 minutes, not the NTL standard of several days.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Advert for NTL jobs in the Manchester Metro (free newspaper):

Yeah, right...... I burst out laughing when I read the last part.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

As far as I'm concerned, the most ridiculous part of calling customer services was when they were pushing the Broadband Medic. Like I need a program that tells me that when the internet goes down I need to go and unplug the box and then plug it back in again, and does so only after ten minutes of tests!

As for the broadband speed itself, I was on 256kps - same as at work. Using a newsgroup reader at home to download stuff I was getting a maximum of 30kps no matter what time of the day or night it was. At work, using the same reader, I get a maximum of 61.3kps with 12 of 20 computers in our office actively connected to the internet... NTL said it was due to heavy demand at times I was on....

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

:rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl: :rofl:

I have never seen such rubbish in all my life-ntl will never stop BS-ing, it's in their blood.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Hey All,

Just to post about a positive experience: I just called faults because we were having problems with the volume on our STB being really low. For some reason the call got cut off just after I had given the CSR our account number and my name. A few minutes later we got a call back from the CSR asking what the fault was...

Hats off to Rob in Manchester (I presume). Customer Service should involve ntl servicing the customers - which is exactly what happened.

Phil.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

There are two key things with training - that the right people are sent on the right courses, and that they have post-training time to try out their newly acquired knowledge and skills. IME, and from talking to various friends and family, neither of those ever happens. Without them, training is pointless and ineffective. The training courses I've attended have involved the "trainer" handing out a manual and leaving us to work through it. This is something that can be done in the workplace, so why send people to a hotel to do it? For me, training should ensure that every individual goes away with a baseline compentency in whatever they were trained in, but more often than not people (if they're lucky) go away with a manual and have to learn on the job, which if nothing else has implications for standards of customer service. I don't understand why training is so bad - surely companies see they're wasting money? It seems to be a tick-box process - i.e. ensuring that you can claim that team x have all being trained in y.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Phil u could have asked Rob about my phone line while he rang u back

Big thanks


Ahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa a

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Hey Larnyboy,

I'm really sorry to hear you're having troubles - have you tried asking people on this board for help?

Phil.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Why on Earth do we get such a discrepancy between the good and the bad at NTL? I had to call them last night with a problem about billing, which the guy on the line (Matt) dealt with really quickly and efficiently, and even called me back because I couldn`t get through to NTL on my landline and was having to call from my mobile.

Which brings me to the bad, I cannot call customer services at the moment from my landline either on the 150 or the 0800 number, I just get a continuous tone. I phone up this morning to report it as a fault. The stupid idiot at the other end of the line could not seem to get it through her head that because I can call in on a completely different line while at the office that doesn`t mean that there isn`t a problem with my home line, she refused to actually pay attention to what I was saying (I mean, as far as I could tell she had a big list of faults and was picking them at random by rolling a die, the only relation they had to the fault I was reporting whenever she opened her mouth was that they were phone related and I suspect that was just luck on her part) and just kept insisting that there couldn`t possible be a fault, of course without actually checking. When I finally managed to persuade her to check with someone she came back with the excuse that the 150 number isn`t running in my area, but apparently that isn`t a fault if the CS number is offline. Needless to say she got a mouthful about actually listening to customers and not attempting to make a technical diagnosis that she clearly isn`t competent to make. It's just as well I`m in the office as that forces me to moderate my temper, but her arrogant attitude that is only propped up by her ignorance makes my blood boil.

You see threads on here moaning about the way some customers treat CS staff, but if you experienced the way I was treated by this young woman, who I`m pretty certain should get her house checked for a carbon monoxide leak, you'd understand why.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

So, if ntl cs really is that crap, why does the poll suggest that the majority of the time it's generally OK? :shrug:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

About 80% of people who responded have had at least 'occasional hassle'. 48% of people who responded said that their experience was at least 'very hit and miss'. Only 20% have never had any problem with them. To me, those figures are far too high for comfort. If I was working in NTL CS, I'd be worried - professional pride wouldn't allow me to try to pretend they were acceptable. It wouldn't matter to me if every other call centre in the UK was as bad (or worse), I would want to aim for complete customer satisfaction.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

No Chris, they didn't vote at least 'occasional hassle' - they voted 'generally OK, occasional hassle. Come on, I always thought better of you than to pick and choose words to suit yourself.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I'm not picking my words - the poll is at the top of the page for all to see.(and I wrote it in the first place ;) ) And in any case, didn't you conveniently miss 'occasional hassle' when you suggested that the poll says the majority of people find the service to be 'generally ok'? :p:

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

At the time of writing this reply. 29.09% of people have responded to the effect that NTL CS is always or almost always useless, with another 20.73% voting 50/50. Splitting that very crudely, for those people that would mean that around 10% of the time NTL is useless and screws up. Taken as a whole that means we're looking at about 40% of votes effectively being cast to damn NTL.

So, you are technically correct when you say that a majority of people find it generally ok, but you'd also be technically correct if 51% said they were ok and 49% said they were useless. In this context a simple majority has very little real meaning. You need to take a look at the figures involved, and if 40% of votes are expressing dissatisfaction then I think that any attempt to make arguments about a majority vote is specious reasoning at best.

If you think that the poll indicates that customer services are generally OK then you really need to look at the results again. In a CS context 40% dissatisfaction should be viewed as an outstanding failure on the part of NTL.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

My inkling from the outside looking in is that NTL is a bit of a monolithic system that works the way it does for historical reasons - mergers, new technologies like broadband, etc.

I.e. if you were 'building' NTL from scratch you wouldn't do it the way it is know, but the fact is, to quote RUN DMC: It's like that, and that's the way it is.

With organisations like this - and I work for one - the issue when you call CS is: do you have a problem that the system works well to fix, or not? Sometimes it can be seemingly simple and trivial things that there just isn't a button to click that'll give you the answer or perform the action, so if you call with one of those problems you'll get frustrated.

CS people in any organisation want to fix your problem. They don't want you shouting at them, they don't want a long argument 2 mins before their shift finishes. It's a nice feeling to be able to sort someone's problem out. So you'll get those calls back when promised if the system co-operates, and you won't if it doesn't.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I am having a nightmare with them.. I cannot get through to CS as it cuts me off after telling me how long I might have to wait.. I emailed them, took a week to get a reply, which refered me to then call them, which I can't..

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Hi,:welcome: why not share your experiences/problems with us, perhaps someone may be able to help.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Exactly the same happened with me recently. I'm now off to BT instead (though due to a lot more than just this, but this was pretty much the final straw).

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Outstanding failure ? - Only 40% on a site that's basically dedicated to people who are having problems seems a pretty good figure to me. I would have expected it to be much higher. :)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I managed to get in touch with them after getting my Mum to call them.. a CS agent called me, then put me through to their credit agency, Great, I thought I'm finally getting somewhere. No, it was a saturday, that department was closed. It cut me off, and I haven't heard anything since. They can just whistle for their bill.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Withholding payment (if that's what you mean by whistle for their bill) is NOT the way to do it. It only affect your credit status.. What's your issue?

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I'm trying to contact them to pay my bill. This is the problem. If anybody has any way to get in touch with them, please let me know!

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Have had to phone a few time in the past 3 years and the service has been excellent - I must phone at the right time as I don't wait any longer than 20 mins. The person I spoke to the last time - even sent me an email suggesting more advice, if I ever have the same problem.

I also got a 3 day refund for my Internet connection - when it was down for 3 days - which was 2 years ago

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

My BB was down for a week last week - do I get a discount??? How??? I reported it on the Wednesday, after holding for 50 mins... eng called the following Monday after another phone call - son told me it was down for 2 days before he told me... I reported the problem then (Cable modem was the culprit...)

Can I claim a discount?

Cheers,

Tony

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

well, if you are on 300k you are looking at £4.50, 750k £6.34 and 1.5mb about £9.79 for a weeks loss :)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I can't believe all this whinging about NTL Customer Services. Just try telling British Gas you want to stop using them for your electricity account. We recently moved house and I had to stop the account for the old address. Well, the nice lady at British Gas took my details, blah,blah, then on the news we were not going to use them at our next address for electricity then proceeded to ask, presumably from some pro forma sheet why this? who is the new provider? at our expense of course, solving that, then proceeded to flog British Gas care sheme, again at our expense. At least NTL Customer Service agents don't try to sell insurance or jabber on on seemingly unrelated issues.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Absolutely. That's because you can't get through to them anyway ;)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

NTL Customer Services are not bad at all, there is too much whinging and exaggeration. Funny this, we have never had a problem calling NTL Customer Services, ok you go through your options and 9 times out of ten no waiting, even then it's not long. We've always found NTL staff helpful. I suspect there are those customers that call who are bad tempered or rude and don't get the attention they expect.


:)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Yes some customers will not and there are still some customers not receiving a standard of customer service they should expect.

No there is not too much whinging at all.

You are bound to say that when you have not experienced bad customer service. You have to understand that some people do receive bad customer service. Just because you do not, doesn't mean no-one else does and everything is all rosey in life.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

No mick I'm not claiming what you say. I'm sure there are genuine complaints but overall NTL Customer Services are no worse than others. I had to call a fair number of various customer service agents for different UK companies recently and in comparison NTL seemed ok to me.


:)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

Its all a bit of a roulette table really I reckon. You may get through to someone who is on their first live day of calls or you may get through to an experienced rep who does not care etc. I was once such an operator and when a customer came through about 7.58pm in the evening looking like he was going to cause aggro and have me work 20 minutes over my shift with a supervisor using my headphones - I simply looked round the callcentre and simply hung up on the bloke in cold blood. That's what ntl is all about.

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

:nono:

remember that there are staff that don't fit into either of these categories! there are new staff who don't care, and there are experienced staff who do care.

ntl is not about hanging up and dead on the time your shift finshes- which is why we can claim back time if we have to work over the end of a shift to finish a call.

I remember ringing debsy42 at 8:25 in the evening when her call centre closes at 8:00.... so there are exceptions to you rules ;)

Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
 

I don't deny that there are caring staff. But I am gone from there now so do not care. Curiosly i was quite concientious about it all until we had a sort of inverted pyramid of managers drafted in from the streets who we had to train ourselves

e'g - you had a cmr call in . You had to sell them as much as possible while at the same time keeping the call as short as possible. They wanted it both ways. The only option for an operative was/is to put a cmr on hold while they type up all the log notes to keep the idle time short when the call is ended so the personal stats do not suffer. All this does is irritate the cmrs - but it's all down to spreadsheets and statistics - and that is the concrete fact