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Telewest New Account: Frustration And Bonuses
Hi all, I recently registered with Telewest Broadband Online, and I just wanted to share my experiences, and ask a question following on from this.
I apologise if this seems like a rant, but hopefully a little bit of ranting will help anyone else who orders the same way I did understand what might end up happening to them.
Firstly, I have to say that Telewest Customer Support has been, so far, unbelievably shoddy. I ordered the 512kb basic Broadband with a telephone package, and had to call the engineer's out twice to solve a hardware problem with the telephone before they traced the fault to a network card of some kind in the street which was cutting out the outgoing sound... the first engineer blamed my own telephone and suggested buying a new one instead, which I did, only to have to call the engineer for the second time when it wasn't this.
Then when I got my first combination bill, it made no sense. At the time of ordering the package online, I called up to talk through the various available options: I am occasionally on a very tight budget, and I've just moved too, so I wanted to make sure I got all the prices over the next 12 months sorted out. I was told by one member of staff over at 150 etc that ordering online wouldn't have a month in advance on the first bill, but if I ordered the 512Kb package online at £9.99 I wouldn't get the forthcoming speed upgrades, but would remain capped at the same limit. If I ordered offline however, at £14.99, I would get upgraded.
The first bill however appeared to have a month in advance on it. However, when I called up to query this, I was told that this was actually correct and I'd been misadvised originally (It is actually in the accompanying gumpf that this applies to ALL packages).
But... on top of this, my package was actually being charged at £14.99 and that the bill was two months at this price, minus £10 for the online ordering discount. Eh? When I tried to explain this price was wrong, I then got passed to a second member of staff, who proceeded to patronise me for 30 minutes whilst I tried to explain that no, if he looked at his online order form, there was supposed to be a single £10 discount bonus off the online order, but that the actual price on next months bill, and for the entire 12 month contract for the Broadband, should still be £9.99, not £14.99. Eventually he gave up, assuming I was being dumb I guess, and passed me to a third person.
This person, finally understood what I was trying to explain (and actually looked at their own web page, which the person before hand would not do) and promised to call me back the next day. Eventually it turned out that someone had messed up and given me the £14.99 offline sign up rate, but applied the single Online discount to the first month, and the only way he could offer to sort it out was by leaving the price of the first bill as it was to give the Online sign up bonus, then giving me the 12 months of £5 discounts all in one lump sum off my combined bills, until I'd had the full £60 refunded, but that the service would continue to be £14.99 per month after that refund cleared.
Hnnnnnngh. Those of you signing up recently for the 512mb service combined with something else might wish to check what it is exactly you've been billed for, just in case someone has cocked your payment plan up too.
However... there may be a benefit to this. The fellow I finally spoke to said that because it was thus going to remain classed as the £14.99 package, I should be eligible for the upgrade to 2Mb download speeds. So onto my question; I know you can run bandwidth tests online, but is there any easy way to check what my account is actually flagged as being? In other words, what's the easiest way to check when my connection is actually increased, other than just running tests to see what figures get reported back? Telewest Customer Support scares me now!
Telewest Broadband however I do still appreciate: I was on it for about 2 years before moving, and they were never down for an unreasonable time, and they have a decent ethos of upgrading services to keep their older packages competitive and desirable. I just wish their customer support didn't bite so much when I wanted to set up a new account at my new address!
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