NTL cancelling my direct debit then cutting me off without notice!!

[craigcroarkin]

hi all

just thought i would share my thoughts about what has happened to me last coupel of days and to see if anybody else has had this problem

yesterday morning i was using my 10mb broadband when suddenly i was disconnected,thinking it was just a fault i contacted tech support.....they asked me what lights was on my modem [rdy wasnt on so i wasnt getting a signal) then told me my account had been suspended due to non payment (alarm bells started to ring for me here when i figured i had a direct debit setup with ntl for automatic payment,plus the fact that i should of recieved notice by phone,letter,email if payment was due which i hadnt) the women then put me straigfht through to customer services (remember what happened here for later on....)

when put through to customer services i got a women who told me that i owed ntl £106 for my broadband as no payment had been made since december and then demanded me to tell her why I had cancelled my direct debit,at this point i said i hadnt as i would have to go to the bank and do it in writing and i dont hardly check for bills going out as i do a lot of buying and selling on ebay as well as being a uni student)

i paid the £106 with my debit card and reset the direct debit and was told i would be reconnected straight away,i waited an hour still no broadband so i ran customer services back,we have recieved no payment from you.........at this point im fuming as i had checked my online banking to see the money had been taking,some credit for the young man though is that he calmed me down before telling me that the payment details had been took but no the previous women had not put the payment through,all sorted then until this morning............

at 10am im woken up by an ntl engineer (you rang us up yesterday about a fault with your broadband,i tell him theres no fault and i did not require an engineer and i was not told an engineer would be coming out,for which he tells me im wasting there time etc)

so i ring back customer services to get the worst ypung man ever who tell sme the first women when asking me what lights on my modem where on actually booked an engineer,but before admitting this he deciedes to blame ME for this error,sorry but when did i ask for an engineer.........

at this point im sick and i go to ring cancellations as i had had enough of this (the fact that the 10mb service since ive had it ive had 3 new modems,4 engineers to fix it for 37.99 a month wasnt worth it) and i then get the one decent customer service guy operating in ntl who tells me that i should of recieved a letter in january when the first payment failed,the modem problem should of been sorted with the first modem and the payment problem last night should not of occured at all)

i then knew he was admitting to ntl's obvious mistakes with his due to him offering me

my 10mb broadband at 17.50 a month for a year
my parents digital tv free for this month and £15 cheaper each month (so i get my set top box in my room free)

and his sincere apologies for all the inconvience caused,now why does it takes all these people to sort out a couple of issues,the direct debit issue which should of never occured (the bank admitting it was ntl who had *******ed it up)

[Pinkypants]

Hi there!

Sorry to hear you had such bad service and I'm glad it's now all been sorted out fully. I'll just give you a brief explanation of what I think happened there.

In terms of the direct debit, I'm not sure why you weren't informed. In most cases NTL sends out an initial letter, reminder notice and final reminder if payments are not being made on the account.

In terms of being downgrades, downgrade orders are automatically generated and until a restore order has been put through, you will have no service. It changes from billing system to billing system, but generally restore orders take around 24 hours to go through, similarly it takes around 24 hours - 96 hours for payment to register on the account.

Accounts get scanned on a regular basis and those found with high outstanding balances, or a single penny over the Credit Limit if you are a credit limit customer, will get automatically downgrades. (If it takes up to 96 hours for payment to clear on the account, there is still a chance the account can be downgraded again even after payment has bee made).

I'm glad that the service has been sorted out. If your service gets totally cut off in future, I'd advise always checking with customer services first if theres account issues to avoid this happening again.

Hope this helps