Should I switch to NTL?

[mikeybrass]

My service has been reasonable in Cambridge ever since I joined at the end of Sept 2005. We were moving into our own place. While BT insisted that we would have to wait four weeks after moving in before they could activate the line, NTL had it done the next day. I am also finding the service faster than ADSL.

Although I know others in Cambridge who have been disappointed, I am quite happy and recommend NTL.

It is easy to get a long adapter and to plug both the NTL modem and wireless into that adapter.

[MFKR78]

Same as quoted earlier on...

Mostly the broadband has worked fine up until recently, although I will point out that I very rarely see any indication of 2mb speeds despite being on this ever since they last upgraded us to this speed. Otherwise until recently it's been decent.

Since March and most certainly over the last 3 weeks or so the service however has been p**s-poor. The speed is shocking, some websites won't even open or half open without images. This is apparently due to attacks but good old NTL have no clue about stopping them or dealing with them considering they get fixed and a couple of days later (if that) it's happening again suddenly.

---------- Post added at 21:17 ---------- Previous post was at 21:16 ----------

Also I'll point out that aside from the long waiting times to speak to someone they now are charging to ring up technical support or customer service and should you need to talk with anyone about broadband faults they'll almost always talk to you as if you've never seen a computer before, nevermind know anything about them.

[Ehm]

Originally Posted by MFKR78

Also I'll point out that aside from the long waiting times to speak to someone they now are charging to ring up technical support or customer service and should you need to talk with anyone about broadband faults they'll almost always talk to you as if you've never seen a computer before, nevermind know anything about them.

And if they don't know the answer they lie to you.

[peanut]

The main thing is that I would recommend NTL over all, can anyone name an ISP etc that's without faults? The trouble if you ask that question here is that this is an NTL board (NT'Hell' for name sake), so this board will get a majority of people with negative responses.

I've also heard a lot of bad things about Sky and BT Broadband, all depends on how picky you are and what you would define a problem, 3 days bad DNS doesn't mean 3 years of hassle free should be tarnished.

[MFKR78]

Sure every ISP has it's problems. Hell every company has it's problems. But I'm not exaggerating when I say I've never seen anyone as incompetent as NTL despite the size of the company. And I also know that they lie about issues, I know this from the inside.

[SnoopZ]

Originally Posted by mikeybrass

My service has been reasonable in Cambridge ever since I joined at the end of Sept 2005. We were moving into our own place. While BT insisted that we would have to wait four weeks after moving in before they could activate the line, NTL had it done the next day. I am also finding the service faster than ADSL.

Although I know others in Cambridge who have been disappointed, I am quite happy and recommend NTL.

It is easy to get a long adapter and to plug both the NTL modem and wireless into that adapter.

I'm in the cambridge area too. Just outside in a village.

[peanut]

Originally Posted by MFKR78

Sure every ISP has it's problems. Hell every company has it's problems. But I'm not exaggerating when I say I've never seen anyone as incompetent as NTL despite the size of the company. And I also know that they lie about issues, I know this from the inside.

iSoft

[Nilrem]

As an NTL cable modem customer in the LU7 region practically since day one of it being available here I've got to admit they've ben pretty good.

Apart from the ocassional DNS and cache/proxy issues i've not had more than a few minutes of downtime in the past couple of years.

However my first 18 months were pretty hit and miss, I think due to a combination of a poor install (we've got 3 STB's and a SACM - the installers used a single line for them*) and the original 3com CMX modem (which eventually burned out), however since 3com exchanged it for a Tailfin** we've barely had a hiccup.

From what i've seen the difference in competence and CS between now and 3-5 years ago is amazing, at least in our area, yes there are still hiccups and the odd problem but they've improved massively.
Call waiting times are down (gone are the days I would spend 45 minutes in a queue to talk to tech support), the techs seem to know a bit more, the engineers seem to have improved and the price has stayed the same, but the speed has gone up massively

Both my brother-in-law, his sister and his brother also have NTL cable in my area and they've not any more problems than I in the past couple of years

*And we only recently found out that at somepoint an engineer had left a forward path attenuator in back to front (which explained why our STB's would lose interactive and burn out after a while).


**As the original modem was bought by us, we were told in 2002 when it died that NTL would charge us for the callout (user owned equipment at fault), so 3com swapped it and I just rang to get it registered (something I don't think you can do now).

simple answer NO


Read the horror stories that are on this board and look at the dates. You will notice there are more and more horror stories in this last 6 months then ever before. There network is stretched to the limit and will only get worse as they cram even more customers on to it.

[etccarmageddon]

and their technical support help line is CHARGED for and the staff on it are handling calls in a scandalous manner if you read some of the stories here.