Help getting premium channels back after new box

[Hick]

hey guys,

Had a new samsung box today, replacing a Pace box for the broadband upgrades. Trouble is after several times ringing up today, and several times being told our premium channels will be on in a couple of hours, we are left without them

I know its a bit late, but if anybody can help tonight or indeed sometime tomorrow then it'd be much appreciated

Thanks in advance

[Raistlin]

Probably best bet is to wait until tomorrow.

You'll probably find that it will kick in overnight.

If it still isn't working tomorrow morning then I would try rebooting the box and if that still doesn't work then your best (and probably only) bet is another call to CS, sorry.....

[nbubba]

Originally Posted by Hick

Had a new samsung box today, replacing a Pace box for the broadband upgrades. Trouble is after several times ringing up today, and several times being told our premium channels will be on in a couple of hours, we are left without them

So, how long before this was resolved? Or was it?

Only asking since I had my Pace upgraded to Samsung for the same reason on Friday.

12:15PM, nice and early for the afternoon slot. Good omen? Hahahaha! Foolish me!

5 minute job. Take about an hour, said the nice man. 3PM we called CS (explained details) to be told it was 50% through something. Be done by 4PM. Called again at 7:30PM (got through at 7:55, explained details again) to be told switch off box for 10 mins and the signal would be re-sent. A coincidence surely that the call centre is only open until 8PM?

Saturday morning called again (explained again) to be told by Sarah that some ticket was open and would be closed soon. Saturday afternoon spoke to Dave (explained again) who repeated the same thing. In among these calls we had been transferred from CS to Faults and back again a couple of times but I forget who did what.

Monday evening; called at 5:30PM and spoke to someone (explained again) who said they'd get Anthony to phone us back in 10 minutes. 30 minutes later - no phonecall received naturally - phoned CS again and spoke to Katy (explained again). Katy told us to hold on a minute at which point we were put first on hold and then, without warning, shunted back into the 20-minute queue. Annoying but not too bad until ... wrong queue in wrong area of the country apparently. Explained again anyway. John from Faults replied that there was no fault and we'd have to call CS first but that he couldn't help us and couldn't transfer us. Futile shouting ensued. Called CS (about 6:30PM by this time) and waited on hold until getting through and, yes, explaining again the problem. Wayne kept us on proper hold while he checked things out. I refused the option of a call-back; once bitten and all that rot. Eventually the reply came back that in the 3-stage process of upgrading we were apparently stuck in stage 3 and this had now been reported to the IT department. Estimated time of sorting 24/48 hours.

Summary:

Time without any channels (outside 1-4) on second STB, and, naturally, no broadband whatsoever currently: close to 94 hours (with possible resolution expected (I kill myself with my blind optimism sometimes!) within next 36.)

Number of phonecalls: 7.
Different people spoken to (and explained the problem to): 8.
Estimated time spent on phone: 135 minutes.
Different excuses given: 4.
Guesstimated weight put on through stress eating: 3 kg.

Thank God work has ADSL or I'd currently be engaging in a jolly little shooting spree. On the plus side it's creating lots of material for the next article on my website.

[mparker42]

I am also in the same boat. Box installed Saturday and finally got it going this afternoon. All channels working ok. However my STB froze so I re-booted and have lost all channels except 1-5. At least I have BB working but I am wondering why I give NTL £100 a month for such a poor service.

[Nemesis]

Can all of you please check your PM's

[Hick]

Sorry for not filling everyone in. The channels were still off until the next night. My mum phoned up as my dad had gone on holiday. She was told that they could do nothing without my dad being there as they cannot authorise changes to other people's accounts as the CS rep insisted that we had never had any premium channels and had been paying the base pack amount since we got digital.

Eventually they were convinced to pass us to another department, but wanted to put us back in to the CS queue to do so. We refused and got put straight through to the other department who fixed the issue in minutes with no fuss or hassle what so ever.

Why can't everything be that simple?

[nbubba]

The story so far ...

Approximate time without TV channels and Broadband: 140 Hours
Phonecalls: 9
Estimated time on phone or waiting for call-backs: 225 Minutes

Last night, Wednesday, 5:45PM Call 8. Spoke to Alex (who apparently visits this site sometimes). Explained situation again. Explained that NTL had allegedly shown an interest in resolving this by contacting me via Nemesis (thanks). Full of optimism. Few holds, few chats with the "Team Leader". Wow! Could something be happening?! Let's see ... Alex told me he was going to contact the IT department personally, it would take about 20 minutes he reckoned, and I'd get a call back. Apparently there was "a bit of a backlog". Indeed there must have been since this was the same excuse I had been given on Saturday morning. 5-day backlog. Ouch.

Now, all this led me to believe that Alex was going to contact the IT department personally, it would take about 20 minutes, and I'd get a call back. I don't know where I got this idea from.

I'm reasonable. I knew 20 minutes would be unlikely. More like 30. And I could allow 40 for unforeseen issues.

(sound of crickets ... distant, echoing cough ... Earth rotated 1/24th of its circumference on the long voyage around the Sun ...)

7:05PM, Call 9. Spoke to Interrupting-Julie. Interrupting-Julie likes the phrase "I can't do anything about that Sir". At least 7 times I counted. Probably many more. Interrupting-Julie made me start to grit my teeth with frustration and annoyance at being interrupted every time I tried to complain further. I pointed out that I was upset that I had no idea what was going on and that I considered the situation atrocious. I also stated - after being told that I-J would email the appropriate people - that I was finding it very difficult to believe anything I was being told. Interrupting-Julie threw me a curveball and accused me of not treating her like a human. I was flustered and could only blurt out "What?" a few times. I-J, for the record: I use sarcasm on humans, I patronise humans, I talk down to humans who are fobbing me off with yet another (or the same) excuse; these are not acts I use on inanimate objects, such as house-bricks. You were being treated like a human. You may not have liked it but that's irrelevant. It would have been nice to have been treated like a customer with a problem rather than someone with whom to end the call as quickly as possible in return.

I actually hung-up on Interrupting-Julie through a lack of getting anywhere although I was able to determine that Wayne (call 7) had apparently emailed the wrong department and they'd emailed back stating it was the wrong department. Alex (call 8) had now emailed the right department and I could expect (hahahaha!) things to be sorted in 24 hours.

Here's what's wrong with these little nuggets: firstly, Alex was supposed to be calling the department and then calling me but he ended up emailing the department. Okay, maybe he couldn't get through - these things happen - but I was supposed to be informed of what was happening. A 10-second call to state that they'd been informed is all it would have taken. Does nobody at NTL have a clue as to how annoying this is? Secondly, I work for a computer company. Occasionally an email turns up to me that should have gone to, say, Sales. I forward it to them. If my company employed the NTL-method it would work like this: customer emails me by mistake with a sales enquiry, I forward it to Support and consider my job done, Support email me back pointing out it should have gone to Sales and consider their job done. Result: we consider our jobs done and lose the sale because Sales never actually get the email. This is no way to run a business in the service industry; this isn't rocket-science, it's common sense.

So, a second evening this week with 1.5 hours wasted either on the phone or waiting for phantom call-backs. 1.5 hours may not seem like much but when I get in from work at gone 5PM that equates to almost a quarter of my evening well-and-truly wasted. Again. Frustration, anger, time-wasting, planned viewing and taping blown out of the water, typical online activities destroyed. What a great week. The 6+ days compensation for lack of service I will probably have to call multiple times to have actually credited is really going to be worth all this, isn't it?

[handyman]

You may find that as they have removed your previous box from your account they did not note down which channels you had, When thay have added the next stb they only added it as a base pack, although if you've not got chanel 5 then its probably never been hit yet anyway. What needs to happen is you need to speak to someone in faults and try find out 1st if the channels are currently on your account and 2nd why the hit has not gone through to the box. Ask them to remove the box from your acount and re-add it as that always used to help as it will resend all the required hits to set up the box in one go. Failing that request a tech to swap the stb for one that is correct on the system and will accept hits.

Dont accept no bull find out from them exactly whats causing the problems and post it here. there are several superb faults techs that post here and i'm sure one of them would be able to help.

hm (no longer ntl fault tech)

EDIT - which area are you in ?

[Nemesis]

This is being dealt with by ntl .... I hope to have some feedback on this soon

[nbubba]

Originally Posted by handyman

... although if you've not got chanel 5 then its probably never been hit yet anyway ...

Dont accept no bull find out from them exactly whats causing the problems and post it here. there are several superb faults techs that post here and i'm sure one of them would be able to help.

EDIT - which area are you in ?

Only channels 1 to 4 available - engineer told me that Channel 5 appearing was the thing to look out for - after a reboot or using the page up/page down/blue remote control code to view the event log it simply shows the "Never been paired" message.

The general consensus of messages from "customer" "support" seems to be that the old order wasn't closed (?), a ticket of some sort is open (?), and it's stuck in stage 2 or 3 (can't remember) of a 3-stage process (?), which is something that someone in some IT department somewhere should be able to sort out but there's a bit of a backlog. We've had this message relayed in various forms since first thing on Saturday morning but it always seems to be something that someone else in some other department has to deal with. There seems to be no mechanism in-place or inclination to follow-up and see whether anything has actually happened though. Things not working is a fact of life; I can accept that (grudgingly) - hell, I'm a software developer and it's part of my daily work. It's the lack of knowledge, the lack of common courtesy in calling back when promising, the lack of organisation and tracking, and the necessity to make call after call after call after call explaing the same thing over and over again when the fault is at NTL's end and it's them who should be sorting this out proactively which is my main gripe.

Area: Portsmouth.

As Nemesis said he's been relaying messages back and forth between NTL and myself. As of this morning someone called Stuart has phoned my other half (as the account is in her name) at work and asked to have the situation explained again and promised to investigate and get back with information later, good or otherwise. I'll post again if/when I hear what it is so long as I'm either still at work or there's a fix in place to allow me internet access by the time I get home.

[handyman]

Whats happened is in order to prevent people from removing smart cards from stb's and putting them in others, ntl's billing system requires the stb to be paired to a smart card. If this pairing has not been done then no signal hits can be sent to the stb hence no channels. Not 100% on the procedure for this nowadays but they will need to contact IT to delete the pairing hit so that they can start again, this generally took some time to do before.

old order not closed = when the stb is installed the eng should either phone i or use his laptop to finish the job (close down the active work order on your account) once closed down this sends the right codes to your stb to enanble the channels package you wanted.

a ticket of some sort is open = a remedy (trouble ticket software) trouble ticket has been raised and will be allocated to a dept to sort out. open means not finished yet.

The are stages that stb go through , just a order of sending hits, they can track this. Not sure what the individual stages are though.


hth HM

[nbubba]

Okay, this appears to have been resolved now. I got home to discover numerous messages on the answer machine, including one from Alan Grant - who I'll phone back tomorrow - and the STB and BB appear to be working as expected. Fraction under 7 days.

[Nemesis]

[Ste Riley]

Ok I have generally the same problem here in the Oldham area.

I have had the Samsung box installed on Saturday afternoon and when the channels finally come on after an hour or so we only got the base pack when we are meant to be getting the family package.

The broadband is working but I am only getting 1Mb instead of the 2Mb package which I am now paying for.

So it appears I am getting the minimal package for both TV and broadband.

I've phoned NTL a few times yesterday and they kept saying they was sending the hits to fix this, but nothing happened. I assume they've lost my packages or something?

What's the quickest solution to getting this fixed?

[robbie77]

I have been an installer in both Scotland and England and my advice is to keep phoneing and complaning it could be a network problem or just a prob wi yours stb.