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Chronicles of a house move...GONE WRONG
Here is the story:
At the beginning of April this year, I moved into a new property. Having already had several successful years with NTL (TV, telephone, internet), I had no reservations about requesting the installation of the same services in my new address.
NTL were provided with several weeks of notice regarding the house move and the afternoon of Saturday the 3rd of April was arranged for the installation to take place.
I phoned on three occasions prior to this date to check that all was proceeding correctly and I was assured that the installation was still scheduled for this date. I made my mobile phone number available to customer services, knowing that it would be the only means of contact in the event of problems.
Saturday the 3rd of April arrived, but the engineers did not - and no phone calls were received to explain the situation. Customer services were closed until Monday morning. This, being the day of moving house proved to be a major inconvenience to myself and my partner, as can be imagined.
When I was finally able to speak with customer services, my perception was that they were not entirely able to communicate effectively with the department responsible for the installations. One customer services representative even resorted to having to email the installations department. The only information presented back to myself suggested initially that "road-works were preventing installation" and later that "further construction was required before proceeding with the installation". Incidentally, there were no visible road-works anywhere near my property.
I was assured by a customer services representative that I would be contacted as soon as the "road-works" were completed and that this was the responsibility of a company other than NTL. The expected completion date was given as Wednesday April 7th. I was advised that when the "road-works" were complete, an arrangement would then be made for a new installation date. I did request the creation of a provisional booking date after this Wednesday but I was advised that no arrangement could be made until the road-works were complete.
No call was received and it was only later in the week when I phoned that I was informed that the road-works had, as scheduled, been completed on the Wednesday. No one had called to notify me of this fact.
Arrangements were then made for a new installation date and the soonest available proved to be the afternoon of Friday the 16th of April - almost two whole weeks since the original date of installation.
The installation took place on this day which, I am happy to say, was successful. However, I had been left completely without services (Telephone, Internet, Television) for 2 weeks which proved extremely inconvenient - particularly for my small business and the fact that I had moved house.
The physical side of this installation is now complete - but I am still concerned with several aspects of this episode:
1) Why, despite several weeks of notice were the installation engineers unaware of factors inhibiting the installation, until the actual day?
2) Why, despite my mobile phone number being made available to customer services was I not notified on the day to suggest that no installation could take place?
3) Why did customer services not phone me back to inform me of the completion of the "road-works", as they said they would?
4) Why was I not allowed to make a provisional booking for the installation before the completion of the "road-works"? Had this have been the case then I suspect that I might have been able to benefit from an earlier installation.
5) Why does a communications company such as NTL not seem to communicate effectively with customers and even other departments within the same company?
My perception of NTL is no longer what it was. I received absolutely no letter of explanation or apology from NTL. This morning, I phoned Customer Services to push my case and was offered a tokenistic "£1 0 compensation" for the complete two-week loss of service we suffered - this is rather embarrassing and almost comical. I hasten to add that the individual concerned also seemed rather embarrassed to have to offer this amount in compensation for the incompetence of his colleagues, suggesting that he was "not authorised" to offer anything else.
I am in the process of writing to the customer services manager, for whom I now have the name and address.
Anyone else have any opinions?
Brett.
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