Voted with my feet.
Started with Nynex, then C& W and finally NTL. Could have lived with the 10 Meg fiasco if NTL had the courtesy to admitted its mistakes and tell us what it was doing to correct them. Instead we got the NTL whitewash statement at the end of January. The £50 to upgrade my STB was the last straw, particularly when friends I introduced to NTL were being offered free upgrades and modems.
Telephoned NTL on Monday of last week to downgrade all my services in preparation for moving – 10 Meg (£35pm) to 1 Meg, Family Pack (£30pm) to Base Pack. Sensed CS were waiting for me to ask about special offers but I didn’t - it was never about the money and I'll probably end up paying BT £100 for the pleasure of leaving. All I wanted was the service that I was paying for - without the constant feeling of being ripped off.
Made some enquiries about Homechoice. Not perfect, but the people in my area that are using it seem more than happy. Spoke to HC today and ordered the “Big Pack” plus 8Mb Broadband. (£19.99 pm for the first 2 months, then £39.99p m).
http://www.homechoice.co.uk/packages/big_pack.html
HC put me through to BT, where I ordered a new line (BT Together Option1 - £11pm). I may have to pay for installation (apparently its just under £100 now), but worth it as a one off fee to break with NTL. New line will be installed between 10:30am and 1:00pm on 16 March. HC will telephone me in the afternoon to arrange for their engineer to call and do his stuff – probably within about 5 days.
BT suggested that it would be quicker and easier not to take the NTL telephone number with me (not really worried about changing the number anyway), so I will contact NTL once everything is done and dusted and cancel the services that they supply. At least it will delay any NTL special offers.