[Malsiluk]

This looks like a good thread for me to add my own latest NTL nightmare. I have 2 x analogue boxes in the house. One has been suffering an intermittant fault for a few weeks. I rang NTL a number of times and they were of little help. After the box had been off for over 3 hours one Sunday, I rang on the Monday and insisted they do something.

Out comes an engineer on Tuesday 12th october. There was a lot of talk, because being an intermittant fault, it was not doing it while he was there. I had told them that it was bad most mornings up until around 9.30, so they should come early. They gave me an appointment between 8 & 12 and the guy turns up at just before 1pm.

Anyway, he thinks the best thing to do is to swap the box for a new one, which he does. he warned me that they have to activate it remotely and it could take up to 72 hours to do this. (great!)

Anyway, after 72 hours, still not working. you ring faults, wait the regulation 1/2 hour (why are they always having heavy call volumes, whenever you ring. Everyplace has peaks in call volume, but NTLs seems continuous!) You get told they will sort it out and ring you back to check it's now OK. Nothing happens and nobody rings! (repeat last sentence 3 more times!)

I am now told that there is some fault in NTLs systems that means they can't activate certain analogue boxes until it's been sorted out. They have known about this problem for about 3 weeks. (apart from most of the staff on the faults team, who seemed unaware of it!!) If they have a known problem, why swap a box that works most of the time. Why not expalin this to the customer and offer to come back and swap it when they get the problem sorted? is that a bit too much thought for an NTL employee?

So now, i still don't have the cable stations working, the 3 kids are killing each other over who watches the one remaining cable telly and i am seriously considering getting Sky in!