Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Right perhaps they are annoyed at me for cancelling my TV and Phone services from them but this is stupid!!

I rang up CS to check on 10MB availability and got through actually with out much problem. Firstly, the guy on the end of the phone told me there was no such package. I told him I knew there was and explained where the information had come from. He asked me to hold for a sec and came back within 30seconds and said that there was a 10MB service.

I asked him if I could be put onto that service and he told me it wasn't live. I asked him when it would be live and he said he didnt know. So I asked him how long the trial was for and he again replied he didn't know. I told him that I had heard NTL are rolling out 3MB service upgrades to 10MB service in December automatically. I asked him if I could get a modem replacement as I had a Terrayon which wouldn't be any good for 10MB.
This is when the fun started. He just snapped. I couldn't believe it.
For a start I was ringing on my mobile as our Phone and TV service has been cancelled, and I was being abused by Customer Services.

"No you can't have 10MB, you can't have a new modem, please get off the phone so I can actually help somebody with a proper question"
I tried to ask him to be put through to somebody else who might be able to help and explained I was on my mobile. He just repeated what he said before but more agressively. "You can't have 10MB or a new modem, and with a Terrayon you will never get 10MB" and he laughed.

Now I understand that these guys must get lots of stupid questions but I was sure that mine wasn't that bad. I was just trying to get some information.

I asked him one more time to be put through to somebody else or perhaps a super/manager. His reply: "enough, why not bitch to TS instead" and then he laughed. I ignored him and simply hung up. I tried ringing CS again but i didnt get an CS rep straight away so I hung up (mobile phone bill).

Within 10minutes my modem resets and I'm getting stupidly slow speeds. It was almost as if I was back on my old 1.5MB service the speeds were awful.
about 23:00 last night the modem reset itself again 3 times in sucession and my normal speed returned.

There were no faults and it was in my mind, definately a service change by the annoying b***ard on the phone!!!

I used to have the number for a regional manager somebody Murphy as I've had problems with them before but not like this.

Wish I had got the guy's name now...I was boiling yesterday.

Now is it me or is this just bang out of order....I'm looking for the complaints page.

The worst bit is that the modem hasn't been the same since. Cuts out every now and then without an issue before this!! I spoke to TS and they said everything was fine and refused to send out an engineer. So I'm screwed.


Basically, for ringing CS and asking a question I've lost a stable connection and have gained absolutely nothing!!! - I'm livid

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

If you want to report this person to ntl, PM me your full name, address and account number and I'll ensure that the PA of one of ntl's directors is informed of what happened to you.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Thanks Russ - Does it matter I don't know who this was?

All I want is bloody 10MB - it's not like I asked him to break any sort of law. Perhaps he was having a bad day, but up until that point, I wasn't thank you very much

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

There might be a record of the call, you never know. Either way, senior management of ntl will be informed of this.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Will anything be done though? I have encountered the same problem when I tried to move house. It all went tits up and I had to get this Murphy girl to sort me out. Took 6 weeks mind.

It's just not on

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Russ - will you keep me up to date as to what has happened as I fear this will simply vanish and/or get lost in translation

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

I'll email this through to our contact tomorrow and in all of our previous dealings, she has responded within about 24 - 48 hours.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Good luck Wiggz!

You are in good hands with Russ D

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Ditto.

This should cost someones job if they talked to you like that in all honesty. Good luck and keep us posted.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

That is awful and I hope that this NTL employee is dealt with.
Its a shame there are people like that as often there are many NTL employee's who are actually very committed to the job and are helpful.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

agreed - however i'd rather get what i was enquiring about rather than the idiot lose his job. I'd rather benefit from it than gain revenge.

Still nice to see some people still value customer service

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

The email has been sent and it is with people at a very high level.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

That type of person gives the rest of NTL peeps a bad name, hope he gets whats coming to him! :td:

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Funny you should say that, my speed dropped to 512k for about an hour last night, so i rang CS, [i thought just my luck, saturday night] he did a check, i unplugged my router, reset everything, and he could see no reason why it wasnt the 3meg it should be. He could see i was on the list for upto10meg when available, and mentioned a LOT of work going on and around the network.
I thanked him and sure enough later on, it went back to normal. ;)
Either way even if the guy you spoke to is totally fed up [and i'm sure lots are] of people asking about 10meg, its not his job to abuse you.
Thats what wives are for.
In the years i have been with NTL i have had puzzlement, astonishment, and sometimes language difficulties, but never had any rudeness.
Lets hope its a one off. ;)

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

I agree - it's been a one off in my experience too.

Still, I'd still like to get my modem swapped out at some point and 10mb in the future without having to endure abuse :(

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Well - had a phonecall from the relevant people today and all is sorted.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

You're welcome. ;)

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Really :erm: I bet its a hoot in your office.

If you had any idea of the abuse csr's get from customers, I'm not surprised one of them decided to 'give a little back'

I'm not surprised at all by this esp as they will not have had full authority to upgrade people.

If I had been that member of staff's team leader we'd have had a quick chat over a coffee and nothing further than that. Would not even have brought it up on his record.

If only I had a pound for the amount of times a customer has ranted a member of staff (usually female) to tears.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

ok - but have you ever heard the rules?

1) Customer is always right.
2) if the customer is wrong refer to rule 1

;)

I know this isn't the case but it is to a large degree the mission statement that most good customer services centres (and some ****e ones) should adhere to

Thanks to all involved especially Russ :)

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

That's what we're here for.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

From my recent experience of NTL is that they seem to ignore problems you're having with their broadband service. I had an intermittent problem with my broadband were it would cut out two or three times a day for five minutes (sometimes a LOT longer) and when I requested help from TS they told me it was affecting everyone... fair enough so I waited but it still didn't get any better so they tried again and told me there was nothing wrong and to call back when it happened again. The problem is it's intermittent and it only last 5 minutes and takes 10 minutes to get through to NTL :dozey:

Finally they (at my threat of leaving the service altogther) swapped the STB for a modem and the disconnection problems have disappeared completely... the only problem being that I had to diagnose, request to leave and finally pay £50 for NTL to respond in any postive manner.

From my limited experience NTL don't seem to have responded positively to my request for TS. And their CS isn't all that hot either! But I guess that's my opinion.

Tim

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

it's not an opinion - it's a scientific fact in all honesty.

Their CS and TS services are much improved when compared to those same services when I joined NTL approx 4 years ago.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

I only joined 18 months ago and had thought that CS and TS were ok (but I'd never used them!) that was until I had a problem when they seemed to become very defensive and at times quite rude (although that might be a problem with the language [Indian call centres])

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Sorry, but that's an appalling attitude. Are you seriously saying that abuse from some ignorant customers is reason for abuse being given to a totally reasonable and unconnected customer? You may think it's human nature, but it's so unnacceptable it's beyond belief.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Totally un-acceptable. I sit on the other end of the phone, and i know people can get frustrated. It happens. Thats no way to speak to a customer, no matter what they say to you.

:td:

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

I would have demanded compensation especially as he tampered with your service. This is utterly disgusting, and if I had been spoken to in that manner, I would have taken NTL to court.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Maybe he was compensated, we don't know.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Can you prove that the service was 'tampered with'? I doubt it and, to be honest, I bet Wiggz couldn't prove it either. More to the point, whereas I don't agree with this particular employees customer handling techniques, what exactly would you hope to get from taking ntl to court?

Anyway, as Russ says, we don't know whether there was any compensation or not.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Well since you asked (indirectly :) )

I had the relevant people ring me and tedll me my service had now been switched to 10MB and that an engineer would be arriving shortly (came within 2 hours ) to swap out the modem (from Terayon to ntl250).

Now that's customer service.

They also gave me a month's free net access effectively.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

There are procedures in place to deal with abuse at work, your employer is liable aswell.

Because NTL products are in general fault prone a lot of people are going to get upset, the thing is if you are paying for a product you want it to work.
When that product does not work then somebody is going to get an ear bashing, the degree of that ear bashing will depend on the anger threshold of the customer, where one customer will not use foul language another in the same position will.
How do you change this? I am affraid you cannot, plain and simple.
It is human nature, the ear bashings that NTL staff get are no different to what they would be exposed to in a normal job as a shop worker or doctor/nurse, who sorry to say, have to put up with a lot more abuse than NTL staff.
That does not mean it is justified, and so this is where NTL upper management have to walk in, if they can be found.
The abusive customer needs to be warned about their attitude, and if this does not wash suspend their account, it is so easy, it wont change the world overnight, but it may just make people think carefully about what they say on the phone, particularly if this campaign is backed up by letting every customer know the policy.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

I don't know why I always react to this kind of post...as it usually ends up with a posse of ntl employees ganging up on me...but here we go...

I have worked with customers...face to face, over the phone, email, etc etc etc. My customers were important people in some of the world's largest companies. I would never dream of 'giving a little back', despite sometimes wanting to. I've been verbally abused face to face, over the phone and via email...and you have to take it on the chin and rise above it to solve the root cause of the problem.

If these people stopped for two seconds to consider why the customer was so irate they might actually figure out that it was something that they could solve. Any customer service expert (irrespective of the company they work for) knows that a customer with a problem is a potential sale. Customers know that mistakes happen and if the majority of CS staff that I have spoken to at ntl actually gave a damn and solved it rather than making it worse, they would end up with a very happy customer that ends up spening more money.

If any of my staff ever 'gave a little back' they would be removed from all contact with customers until I was happy that such an event would never happen again, via triaining and coaching. If they continued to cause problems they would removed full stop.

And here lies the problem. The managers at ntl are so ineffective that they have no acceptable recruitment procedures to select people who do give a damn, they are poor at staff motivation and poor at satisfaction and policy monitoring. Until that level is removed and replaced with decent managers then the front-line staff will continue to be largely useless.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

I think the main point that people are missing is this:

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

Good news that it all got sorted in the end.Had a similar experience with CS when a guy called "Graham" Indian accent,strange name...anyway i was having major issues with staying connected to the net,i would lose all lights and net connection every 5 to 10 minutes then modem would reboot.

"Grahams" answer was "well dont use a firewall if you want to stay connected" and hung up!

Eventually got sorted but "Graham" was never found and strangely CS had no records of the 45 minute phonecall.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

nobody heard the conversation, 2 sides to every story and all that.

and if you worked in customer service actually providing customer service on the front line (not dictating/managing what to do, reading from the customer service skills for dummies handbook) you might realise every now and again, when people ask u a question, and u answer it, and then they tell you you are wrong, and ask it again, and so u answer it again, times this by about 8 or 9 and u start to get annoyed. Eventually saying "No you will not get 10mb or a new modem" and maybe raising his voice to put the point across better after a few times of saying it is perfectly fine. OK if he messed with your connection then thats stepping over the line, if he did it...

its not the advisors fault that NTL dont tell them **** all as far as he knew he was right.

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

I couldn't agree more with your post. It must be a management decision that means that if NTL staff can't diagnose a problem at the time the customer rings the customer must be in the wrong! :)

Re: Not a Happy Bunny!!
 

My best friend from Liverpool spoke to CS yesterday and said that HE was recording the call too because he had previously had a lot of hassle from them. He spoke to the same person that gave him the grief last time (he was lucky to get the same person) and he didnt get any arguments or anything. They were straight to the point.

Now he tells me to say you are recording the phonecall (even if you're not) and CS will treat you with a little more respect.

Seems logical really because they wouldn't want to lose their job over some argument.

Still, if you treat CS with respect, they will give you respect back :)