NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience

[the devil]

I do work for Ntl, I used to have Ntl dtv & telco. There was never any problems........then I moved. I don't have services now ( not supplied in my area )but have friends who do have, there have been quite a few times I've had to call for my friends ( they think I have some hidden power here!!) sometimes it gets sorted straight away other times I end up going to different depts when at work to resolve. I can understand why people get sick of us but being fair other companies are just as bad( ever tried having a sensible conversation with Orange?!)

[Frank]

Originally Posted by the devil

ever tried having a sensible conversation with Orange?!

Yes, they used to be great but then they changed and are now abysmal. I see that they are no longer top in the JD Power Customer Satisfaction survey that they used to plaster all over their bills every month.

[Macready]

Im getting a BT phone line installed 1st of March, I cant wait, im finally making the break from NTL theres an excellent Offer of 2 MEG for 37 quid on Bulldog ADSL and as far as I can see theres absolutely no limits on the downloads or uploads of data.

Ive been a customer now for some four years, and I just feel that they have had enough of my loyalty, because the service isnt worth paying for anymore.

Ive had too many faults in the time ive been a customer and too many gripes, I absolutely hate ringing up to report a problem, then having to ring up again as soon as I hang up the phone, because I know the person the other end didnt get the jist of what I was reporting, This type of problem was usually in relation to my UBR being over subscribed and the people I spoke to having no concept of online gaming largely.

Theres a few things though that continually ground away at me.

Email = Spammed to sh*t regularly, even stuff gets past mailwasher. Virus Scanning of Email on the server would be nice too.

Broadband = 2 Meg, theres a whole tier their just failing to compete on there. The Cap = Made NTL a complete joke in my opinion, offering a "super fast service" then crippling it by making demands on how you wished or dared to surf the net.

Tech Support = Poor on the whole the first line on the phones from my experiences, its a real shame that the people that post here to help others both working for and not with NTL and did so on the .com dont seem to answer the phones or have any real say with issues in that company as I imagine websites like this wouldnt exist then.
No one likes waiting 40 minutes to speak to anyone on the phone either.

As regards my score with NTL ive had numerous faults in the four years ive been with them.

Was made to take the full TV / Phone / Broadband package originally for the opening year at £85+ a month.

Digital TV = Original STB crashed on making eye contact with the box, or doing anything that it seemed NTL didnt want you to do on it, like change channels , Engineer appeared out of the blue to change it, replacement worked no better. Third box came, worked OK, decided then that the TV was too expensive so I got rid of it.

Telephone = Died four times in the time I had it, calls aint cheap either at 5p connection, they soon mount up. Was expensive when combined with the rest of the services I was having.

Broadband = Worked fine for about a year originally, then the UBR became over subscribed, was resegged, over subscribed again, was resegged, oversubscribed, when I then checked into it further, I was told I was on the 1st downstream channel on the UBR and this was the one that was constantly overloaded by new customers. Was told I couldnt be moved to one of the empty ones. Cable modem died, engineer tried to palm me off with a "dodgy" cable modem, that wouldnt work at all, before travelling the minor distance back to the NTL Office to get a properly working one. Could really go on here all night with the numerous problems ive had over the years, but as youve guessed by my upping and leaving enough is enough.

Thanks to absolutely anyone here thats taken the time to help me with my problems and any time ive had trouble both on here and the .com website (I know its none of you that are responsible for the company being the way it is.

[dirtydog]

Okay I voted very hit and miss, 50/50. In my experience speaking to ntl customer services reps, most of the time they've been friendly and helpful - or at least it's seemed that way at the time. Sadly half the time, either what they tell me is wrong, or they don't do what they say they are going to do.

I've been with ntl for three years this month, and have moved home twice in that time.. each time was a major pain, with setting up new direct debits, being wrongly billed, having to phone multiple times to sort everything out etc.

A few weeks ago I gave a month's notice to cancel my phone and TV services, and instead have ntl broadband installed (I was previously using ntl dial-up @ £10pm). When I phoned I was told to cancel both my ntl direct debits, and that I would be sent a new direct debit mandate form to complete and return.

Some time later, no direct debit form having been received, I phoned again to request one, which turned up a few days later. This is my experience with ntl time and time again: you have to ask several times for something to be done.

Anyway, of course the direct debit form was not filled in - why don't they send a pre-filled-in one, for you to just fill in your bank details, sign and return? So I phoned ntl to ask what my broadband account number was. I was told I couldn't be told this over the phone, so he would post it to me that day, 1st class. Several days later, having not received it, I phoned again, and another chap told me he would send it out. I received it this morning, postdated yesterday, which means that the first one was presumably not sent?

Well, guess what.. my broadband account number is... the same as my telephone account number. Which means I didn't need to cancel one of the direct debits, which ntl told me I should cancel

Three unnecessary phone calls, and wasted time.. this has always been my experience with ntl.

Oh, I forgot.. after cancelling the direct debits as I was told to do, I then received a bill for line rental (£18) + £2 non direct debit handling fee! Happily the billing department were happy to credit me with the £2 (I paid the £18 over the phone with my debit card), and said that the excess line rental would be applied to my broadband account. But why is everything such hard work??

[shocked]

Originally Posted by Undisputedtruth

At the moment I'm current going through a bad situation caused by NTL of course. The imbecilles at retentions have managed to disconnect my phoneline without my consent. Being the liars they are, they accused me of giving them my consent but the CS from telephone billings says otherwise.

liars?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by shocked

liars?

Ahh, let me introduce you to UndisputedTruth.

He has a big grudge against NTL (not entirely without justification as he lives in a part of London that has been promised broadband for 4 years and still doesn't have it).

Apart from that, basically, he seems to like to moan and wind up NTL employees..

BTW, he has been banned from this site, so is unlikely to answer.

[explorer]

Sorry - I must have dozed off - customer service? what customer SERVICE?

I emailed a complaint about the appalling connection problems on dial up (ongoing for 3 months now - average of 5-7 times redial each time in order to even get a connection, which then is more often than not unusably slow, and Im not gaming, just ordinary web research - generally heavily text based).

No reply to the email. So this morning, after 12 straight attempts to get a connection I eventually gave up and tried on another ISP's service (got through first time). Got through to the NTL email complaints screen, typed in all the details of the original complaint, added an update and pressed send. I got the following message:

"ntl:home would like to apologise that you are unable to submit an additional complaint.

Should you have any further concerns, we will be happy to discuss these when addressing your open complaint under ref XXXXXX"

Not only is this incredibly bad customer relations, but the very fact that they are limiting us to one complaint presumably implies that they are inundated with complaints.

We're considering putting one of our other computers onto broadband - don't know who we'll go with yet, but one name as sure as hell is already crossed off the list.

[Stuartbe]

Originally Posted by explorer

Sorry - I must have dozed off - customer service? what customer SERVICE?

I emailed a complaint about the appalling connection problems on dial up (ongoing for 3 months now - average of 5-7 times redial each time in order to even get a connection, which then is more often than not unusably slow, and Im not gaming, just ordinary web research - generally heavily text based).

No reply to the email. So this morning, after 12 straight attempts to get a connection I eventually gave up and tried on another ISP's service (got through first time). Got through to the NTL email complaints screen, typed in all the details of the original complaint, added an update and pressed send. I got the following message:

"ntl:home would like to apologise that you are unable to submit an additional complaint.

Should you have any further concerns, we will be happy to discuss these when addressing your open complaint under ref XXXXXX"

Not only is this incredibly bad customer relations, but the very fact that they are limiting us to one complaint presumably implies that they are inundated with complaints.

We're considering putting one of our other computers onto broadband - don't know who we'll go with yet, but one name as sure as hell is already crossed off the list.

Hi explorer and to the site

Sadly you are not alone in your experience.

Have a look here for your regonal MD - http://www.ntli.info/index.php?page=index_v2&id=19&c=18

It may be worth sending them an email and CC'ing your local newspaper !

HTH

/bump

There appear to be a lot of new members around here lately ... it's nice to come across people posting for advice and seeing that it's only their first post at Cable Forum. So, I thought it might be an opportunity to bump this thread up a bit and encourage some of you to share your experiences. The poll is still open, so please don't forget to vote.

[carthage]

I would not have ntl in the house - used to work for them - used to do faults diags and saw all the fualts that went wrong with the stb - have sky and so much better

[Neil]

Originally Posted by carthage

I would not have ntl in the house - used to work for them - used to do faults diags and saw all the fualts that went wrong with the stb - have sky and so much better

Straight from the horse's mouth?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by Neil

Straight from the horse's mouth?

I suspect quite a few people feel like that about where they work. I used to work in my local hospital, and I know most of the staff there wouldn't go there voluntarily for treatment.

[Mauldor]

As with any big company - lack of communication is a big problem and here is me thinking computers would solve everything (lol). If you called up one dept and they entered what they did on the notes for your account (do they do that?) then when you call another person - they can continue where they left off - but often is the case nothing is entered at all.

Cable Modem Support is again down to lack of training and communication - quite often they shrug there shoulders and cannot help - if your cable modem line is down (lights cycles) then of course they cannot connect to your modem and check it out - they say we send a person out to check it - seems a watse to me when if they had more info of what is going on - they could tell you there doing a UBR Upgrade and it will be back later.

I draw this conclusion from working and dealing with various compainies. FIrst off the cuff is Sky - they do enter (at least for me) what they said and did so my problem (payments) was sorted very quicly no matter who i called.

next was One2One - worked there and they have a live map with what is up and what is down (transmitters) so they can diagnose a fault quickly if your connection is dead (mobiles of course).

The trick is this in any business - keep the customer informed as to what is going on and the reason for there problem and they can live with the fact the Net is down for a day - this is where computers / database come into play so that no matter who i deal with - it can be sorted and the company would benifit as people would be happier knowing why they cannot connect today or there email is not coming through for example.

[cyclone]

I've been a customer of NTL ever since it took over from Comtel,about 12 years I guess.When I've eventually obtained an actual human being to talk to,(on average this has taken 30 minutes!) the person has had very little ,if any, useful answers or suggestions to my many queries over the years. It's so bad that I no longer bother and accept the appalling customer services as part of NTLs desperate attempt at running a company that makes money for its shareholders.

[chelseabluekat]

This forum has made me smile, and I feel warmed by the fact that there are other people out there who are going through the same NTL hell!!! To all you other lucky non-NTL subsribers, I'm green with envy or blue as the case may be.

The alarming fact is that broaderband will take over from broadband, and this, is fibre - are alarm bells ringing yet??