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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.