[andygrif]

Originally Posted by m419

I enquired about getting a new line into a property on someone elses behalf and the sales rep told me it's £99.99! !!

Well it's 75 quid now

Originally Posted by m419

BT's customer service and sales are a disgrace. When you are transfered, you are placed in a queue for about 25 minutes and then when you do become connected to an advisor, they pass you onto different departments which includes more queueing!!!

Which was exactly the situation that I described above, only it was ntl and it was TWO HOURS to finally get through to the correct person. One call, five people, two hours.

Originally Posted by m419

BT's caller display is only free when you register with BT privacy,

That's free too, and IMHO a good service (it's the same as registering with the TPS, which I am anyway).

Originally Posted by m419

Anonymous caller rejection is £4 per month on BT! £4 per month just to have a recorded message saying 'please call again without witholding your number'.

Why do you keep grinding this axe? It's one of the things where BT is more expensive. As I said before, there will always be some things where BT is cheaper and some things where cable are cheaper. That's the way it is.

Originally Posted by m419

Oh and BT don't charge for their itemised bills because they never send them out on time and make loads of mistakes on them!

I don't really see the point in trying to have sensible discussion with you when you come out with thing like that.

Originally Posted by m419

I also noticed that it's mostly customers in particular areas that are affected by NTL customer service. Ever tried contacting them by email?

Yes I have, or rather via their website. I waited for one month for a reply. I followed up, stamped my feet a bit and another three weeks after that I got a reply that had nothing to do with the original enquiry.

Originally Posted by m419

Oh and did I mention, BT Yahoo customer service and the £1 per minute techinical support is in india.

No you didn't. No it isn't. And just becuase a call centre is in India doesn't make it bad. NTL still have theirs and are poor. Powergen's take the biscuit as being the most blood-pressure raising and Dell's is rather good - all in my personal experience of course.

Originally Posted by gazzae

Any chance of you doing some research before you rant?

Amen to that. I don't wish to sound rude about the O/P but this entire thread is based on outdated, misinformed or just plain made-up information.

I know dealings with customer service people from all companies is going to vary from person to person and each individual has different levels of standards that they expect. Personally mine are very high - I don't suffer fools glady, and when I enounter them on the end of a phone line I tend to lose the will to live. I'm not saying that Sky is better than NTL, I'm not saying BT is better than Wight Cable or whoever.

I am saying that the standards offered by ntl are consistently below par, and have been for the nine years that I've been with them. They have improved in some areas, they have got worse in others - but they consistently disapoint.

Now it's all very well having the debate on good and bad levels of service, but using a tiny element of the pricing policies of each is fairly pointless. Comparing any company with Wight Cable is fairly pointless for all but the 57,000 houses there (24.9 million less than the rest of the UK) and predicting the end of the largest digital TV platform with no insight or basis whatsoever is also rather silly IMHO.

In fact just doing the quick sums here now...Sky's churn is about 10% right now. They're very unhappy about that and are about to do some drastic things to stop it. But assume they didn't. Assume also that their 10% churn carries on for the next 10 years, and also assume that in that 10 years not one single new subscriber comes online. At the end of 10 years with 10% churn and no new subs....Sky would still have more customers than ntl do now. Makes you think doesn't it?

Nighty night.