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Originally Posted by Nemesis
Guarantees are subjective ... it's all down to the small print.
A Guarantee entitles the user/purchaser to receive a replacement product, or have the faulty goods fixed. That's basically it.
BT offer no better a guarantee that NTL, when applied to the service, as BT cannot offer a "fault free service".
How each company deals with a fault/problem is extremely diverse. To compare BT with NTL on this point is unfair.
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Actually, I think that a guarantee, when applied to a service with no actual physical product (such as a phone service) implies certain levels of service.
True, BT cannot guarantee a fault free service, nobody can. You can have the most advanced and best maintained phone network in the world, but all it takes is for someone to dig through one of the cables and you get a fault. I don't think anyone expects NTL to offer this.
It's also true that how each company reacts to a fault is different. This is where I think NTL could improve. Looking through their site, BT do NOT guarantee a fault free service. They do, however, state that in the event of a fault, they will offer free call diversion (don't know if NTL do this), and offer compensation.
So, Nemy, I do not understand how you can say BT and NTL cannot be compared in this way. Both TelCos do suffer faults. Both do (in my experience) fix them quickly, but, if BT fail the customer in any way, they compensate (according to the website, in most cases it is automatic). NTL don't do this without asking. IMO. if NTL want to compete with BT (and they do need to), they should do this.
One final point: When I was first upgraded to 1Mb, I had major problems with the STB dropping the connection (actually, at one point I was without any broadband connection for nearly two weeks). It took several phonecalls and about 4 or 5 engineer visits to convince NTL that there was a fault with the STB, and that the problem wasn't with my own hardware (which, being a technician, I could have told them over the phone). I did feel at the time that I should have been offered some sort of compensation for this. I shouldn't have had to ask.
Edit: Having said all that, I am with both BT and NTL, and I can honestly say that I have had very few problems that either company have not sorted out quickly, so I have no real complaints about either company.