Well I'm glad my thread has proved to be so popular and that people are calling to try to get similar deals to new customers. Seems orangebird is getting kinda annoyed too which is always a bonus.
No one is forcing NTL to offer these deals to people - NTL are a business and people are entitled to negotiate better terms if they aren't happy about constant prices rises and poor products/service.
Back in the early days of Cable and Wireless there was no need to phone up and negotiate better deals - they were such good value for many things that you'd probably have been laughed at for even considering it. In fact I even remeber when NTL gave me free dial up for a year or so and free digital TV - that was such good value that I would have been insane to go elsewhere or even to hint at such a thing.
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The fact is that if NTL didn't keep giving me the occasional discount I'd have left several years ago. I cancelled the base pack a year or two ago and only kept the thing whilst NTL offered it free of charge or for next to nothing - it simply wasn't worth playing more than a couple of quid a month for to me. Freeview is far better value and gets better by the day.
NTL still don't offer caller ID here (or to many others) and it feels as if I need it more than ever right now. On top of that they've put the line rental up and capped broadband and even started using annoying Indian call centers who makes the UK ones actually look quite decent. Therefore I mention such problems every 12 months or so and rather than fixing these problems like most normal companies would do they prefer to offer discounts instead.
If NTL want more money they should offer the services people actually want. I'd happily give them more cash if they offered fully featured services and wouldn't have to threaten to go elsewhere if they didn't threaten NTL's low end broadband customers with stingy caps.
I DO agree that special deals should be subject to a 12 month contract, but if NTL are too stupid to insit on this then who cares. NTL's customer service is still fairly poor, the products still aren't quite up to standard and in many areas they are becoming poor value for money compared to the competition - eg E4 is now on Freeview, ridiculously cheap phones calls are at 1899.com (despite NTL' best efforts), skype.com etc
NTL have little choice than to offer discounts IMO