[Charlie_Bubble]

Well, the reason I got NTL in the first place was the lease on my building doesn't allow people to put up external aerials etc., but this week I found out a neighbour in the same building has a sky dish, so I'm no longer concerned about this and have seriously thought about dumping NTL at the end of this month and getting SKY, BT and an ADSL isp.

It took me over a year to get NTL to reconnect my flat after I moved in. They had a completely different postcode for my flat and to them my flat didn't exist, despite the cable points in the living room. I had to directly contact a director of the company to get that mess sorted out and got 6 months free cable.

I used to have On Digital before I got cable and kept the On Digital box in my bedroom for about half a year after I got analogue cable. Strange how On Digital had a much better interactive service 4 years ago than NTL does today. The only thing keeping me with NTL at the moment is the broadband and this attraction will diminish if the cost of the TV or BB goes up. I am annoyed every time I visit my parents and see their red button working on their Sky system. All I get, over 3 years after getting "digital" cable is a box that either freezes upon pressing the red button, very poor interactive that looks like it was put together by a 5 year old as a lunchtime activity or a white screen telling me I should move to Sky.

When BB first came out in my area I signed up for it and got a letter telling me they would let me know when I could be installed. 7 or 8 months later I had ADSL put in as I got tired of waiting. Strangely enough, the day before my ADSL install date, NTL emailed me to ask if I would like a free cable trial. I replied that I had wanted it before and they had missed the boat as I was having ADSL installed the next day. Boy, you should have seen the number of messages on my answer machine from the NTL sales team trying to get me to cancel my ADSL install and get cable instead.

Last year I almost left again after having the most horrendous packet loss on my BB. after 3 "engineer" visits it hadn't gotten any better, so again I had to contact a director and finally the problem was fixed within a couple of days.

I'm afraid the main problem with NTL is that they do have 'technology tamed', but it's several years after the competition have been there and done it, often much better. They are good at trying to put into action their customer service when they realise they might lose your custom, but overall they are an organisation which doesn't inform their customers about anything they are doing and takes years to achieve the slightest visible change in services to customers. For all I know there are millions of NTL bods trying to get interactive tv working, caller display on the phones, solve the email and news server crappiness, re-arrange the channels into a coherent order etc, but as a customer I don't hear jack about it. As a company working in the communications business, their own communication with their lifeblood, the customer, leaves a great deal to be desired!