I posted my saga a few days ago but it has been wiped off, or well hidden, not sure which. Someone called Russ B contacted me and said he could help but since then - silence! Since then things have got worse as my broadband connection has now disappeared - I am having to type this on a friend's computer.
My problem did not start very well but halfway through it got worse, through no fault of my own, and as I learnt more it became dafter and dafter as well. We moved house on 27th October, from one part of Radcliffe on Trent, Nottingham to another house about 800 yards away. Our old house had telephone and broadband facilities from NTL and the new house had telephone, broadband and television from them and we decided to also go with the television option and to ditch Sky. So moving house couldn't be simpler - wrong!
Our house move went very quickly, and all three parties, our purchaser, vendor and ourselves set an optimistic move date of 27th October, but it was going to be touch and go because of the limited time to complete the legal necessities. We had already had one sale collapse quite a way into the process and because of this and the uncertainty of the date I did not inform NTL of the move until the morning of the house move, in fact the move date had only been finally confirmed the afternoon before.
Anyway they said that they could not install telephone, broadband or television until 15th November but I could take my old phone number with me. I protested about the delay as they guaranteed to do it within 14 days, but this guarantee has since proved to be meaningless as they now admit that all it means is that if they can't do it within that time I am able to cancel my contract - big deal!
When we moved in the phone line was working, albeit with the old phone number, and so I connected my broadband modem, which is my own not NTLs, and that worked as well! We had no television as we didn't have a set top box as the former occupiers had taken it with them and as they had previously removed the aerial socket we now have no television in our lounge.
That was the Friday and on the following Monday I called them again as I realised we had not agreed a contract in terms of the services to be provided, tv channels etc. Whilst speaking to them I sought confirmation that my telephone number was being transferred with me, we have had the same one for twenty years. The young lady said "no that is not possible, the computer won't let me do it". Now this was ridiculous as we have only moved around the corner. When I protested she promised to ring me back. She never did.
I called again last Wednesday and a more helpful guy at first said I couldn't port my number and then admitted that was daft and promised to ring me back. He did ring me back with some good and some very bad news! Yes I could port my number but they had made an error when sorting out the details of my house move and to solve it, and port the number, they had cancelled my old account and created a new one. Fair enough except this automatically cancelled my appointment for 15th and now the earliest they could do it was a week later - 22nd November!!!
What was getting to me was that the phone and broadband were still working but they could not leave them connected because it would mess up their system! The guy at NTL said that the phone was about to go, it did on Thursday morning, and the broadband would follow soon afterwards. The broadband stayed connected until yesterday morning when Powergen came to change my meter and had to turn off the power temporarily. When the power came back the broadband had gone and I guess that is because I never power off my modem normally and so it had held on to the IP address but as soon as it lost it the NTL system would not provide another one. Had the guy at NTL told me that I would have postponed my meter change until after NTL had sorted my account.
So I am now without a landline phone and broadband and we have to watch television in the kitchen with a dodgy signal. We make a lot of use of the Internet for such as banking and home shopping and at the time of a house move you make more use of it than ever, not to mention the charity and voluntary work that I rely on the Internet for quite heavily. I am now having to make use of Internet facilities as libraries or at friends' houses which is massively inconvenient. Having no phone is also a major problem, not to mention the expense of using mobiles all the time.
NTL refuse to have any sympathy with me even though the extended delay from 15th to 22nd November was down to their own error. But the whole thing makes no sense anyway, if the house has a live broadband connection why could it not be left connected?
In addition I have also found out that NTL automatically overbook appointments for every day in the hope that some will be cancelled. So if they have to cancel one due to their own mistake in their records, as in my case, they can't hold on to the date when creating the correct data.
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