Another sneaky little increase

[hansi]

Voicemail increased to £1.50 last month, and to £1.75 from this month with nothing from ntl to say about the increase. Bit sneaky that!

We covered this increase in the news on 27th July here.

There should of been some notification on your bill or a letter at least.

[Flubflow]

It's the same with the Call Divert feature too.

IMO Call Divert should be free. NTL make pots more money on calls when people have call divert because you pay for the diverted call and so you'd have more calls on your bill than you would normally do (and many people divert the home phone to their mobile when you go out which is very pricey).

[orangebird]

Originally Posted by Flubflow

It's the same with the Call Divert feature too.

IMO Call Divert should be free. NTL make pots more money on calls when people have call divert because you pay for the diverted call and so you'd have more calls on your bill than you would normally do (and many people divert the home phone to their mobile when you go out which is very pricey).

Yes, ntl do make money from it... they're not a registered charity, so why shouldn't they?

[themelon]

BT recently did the same...........also with NO notification.

They even ported my parents onto option 1 from the satndard plan (costing £1 extra a month) without asking them.

BT now even charge extra for pressing 3 on 1471

[hansi]

Originally Posted by Mick

We covered this increase in the news on 27th July here.

There should of been some notification on your bill or a letter at least.

no, I have had nothing from therm at all!

[Flubflow]

Originally Posted by orangebird

Yes, ntl do make money from it... they're not a registered charity, so why shouldn't they?

I just think that charging people £1.75 per month for an automated system to throw a switch is a bit rich really. Especially when you are paying for the diverted call anyway.
Taking your "not a registered charity" argument further, why are't we paying for email forwarding since you could say that we are using extra bandwidth and putting more workload on the email servers.

[bob_builder]

Originally Posted by themelon

They even ported my parents onto option 1 from the satndard plan (costing £1 extra a month) without asking them.

That is because the standard plan was withdrawn so eveybody got moved so there was no point asking.

[bob_builder]

Originally Posted by hansi

no, I have had nothing from therm at all!

It was mentioned at the bottom of a letter informing me about the speed increases on broadband. I do not have broadband so I would have missed it were it not reported on this site previously.

[Tricky]

I don't even pay for voice mail - I rang CS and said "I'm not paying for that" they said Ok and removed the £1 charge!

[scrotnig]

Originally Posted by Tricky

I don't even pay for voice mail - I rang CS and said "I'm not paying for that" they said Ok and removed the £1 charge!

You'll be on the free voicemail then, it's a cut down version.

[scrotnig]

Now threads like this do start to annoy me after a while.

I get exactly the same thing at work.

"Why don't ntl put in huge red letters on the bill that the price is going up?"

"Why, when I sign up for ntl, am I not advised of exactly what to do when I want to cancel?"

"Why do ntl not run a late night service for people wanting to cancel?"

"Why do ntl not print the cancellation phone number and opening hours in large letters on the front of the bill?"

"Why did nobody write to me to tell me my minimum 12 month contract had finished, and asking me if I want to cancel?"

"I rang ntl last week with a billing query and nobody mentioned that the cancellations department wasn't open in the evenings"

Ok here's the gen.

NO company spends a fortune advertising to customers how to cancel and use a competitors service.

NO company shouts from the rooftops about price rises.

NO company routinely advises every caller of the cancellation department's number just in case they need it.

NO company spends their marketing budget writing to customers to check if they want to cancel their service.

When I rang British Gas last week, they didn't give me the number to ring if I wanted to use Powergen in future.

Now, we can argue til we're blue in the face about whether ntl should do this sort of thing, however, they are a commercial company out to make a profit, and they simply are not going to. End of story. Neither are BT, Sky, Vodafone, Orange, British Gas, or a whole host of other private companies.

I'm the first to admit ntl is not perfect. However, I do rather tire of seeing the company constantly portrayed as being worse than its rivals, for doing exactly the same thing as those rivals do.

Now, some people really do need to get realistic here. Bill inserts WERE sent out explaining the price changes. If, as many people do, you threw them in the bin without reading them, then that is NOT ntl's fault. No, they didn't print it in huge red letters on the bill. No, they didn't write a dedicated letter to every customer. No, they didn't employ an outbound team to ring every customer and inform them (yes, people do claim ntl cannot increase their package prices unless they are phoned and informed first!).

These are economic facts of life I'm afraid. I personally feel that phone features are now a bit costly, however, these prices are now in line with what BT charge, and THEY didn't print it on the bill in big red letters either.

Rant over. This post is not aimed at anyone in particular. By all means criticise ntl for increasing prices, but don't call the company crap for not serving you a with sworn affidavit explaining the changes!

Price increases are a fact of life, the price increases do not bother me but I think its generally good practice for any company to ensure all customers are notified, in advance by a seperate letter.

Yes ntl are there to make a profit but keeping the customer satisfied should be the number one priority, customer being satisfied means they keep the customer, keeping the customer means they get the profit and ntl are not going to do this by springing nasty surprises when customers open up their bill and find they are being charged more without any prior warning or notice which is what has happened in hansi's case.

This happened to me a few years ago - I opened up the bill and there were these sudden price changes, I was not bothered about paying that little bit more. I was more bothered that I had not been informed of the price increases and when I rang ntl they claimed to have sent a letter out to customers, but I never received it and I sure as hell know I would not miss a thing such as price increases notification.