Telewest have permanently disabled my mailbox! @$#%

[dm2ooo]

I am writing here partly to see if anyone can help me and partly for a cathartic rant.

I am full of rage at the moment having discovered that Telewest have disabled my mail account and have no way of reactivating it!

I am in the progress of moving house and so had my service transferred a couple of weeks ago (had to do it early as it was more convenient for decorating etc).

Came round today as I needed to pick up some mails relating to my new washing machine delivery. I couldn't log on and following THREE calls to "technical support" was told that my old account had been disabled when I moved house but I had a new account name and could reuse my old e-mail address. However, I could not retrieve any of the mails in my old folders and any mails sent in the last week would have been rejected. Tech Support couldn't help anymore and gave me the old "someone should have told when you requested the move" line. They refered me to Customer Services.

So at this point I've lost access to certain records of purchases, e-mail addresses, personal letters and photos, some edits of manuscripts etc etc.

Customer Services tried to refer me back to Tech Support and then told me it was only theoretically possible if service was reactivated at my old address with the same phone line (not sure what telephone lines have to do with BB but never mind). As I am still living at my old address as well, I said "ok - I'm so desperate to get back my mails I'll get it reactivated and take my PC round there". "Ah no" says the CSR "it's only theoretically possible, we wouldn't actually do it and besides you'd get charged". I say: "Only if you charge me but even then I'd pay to retrieve those mails even though it's Telewest that has messed up". "No" he says "we can't do anything". So after some clarification of the difference between the theoretical and the actual, I asked cancel my service. But, and this is the killer, you can buy buy buy at 6pm on a Saturday but you can't cancel - they have a whole different team and a Customer Service Rep. isn't trained for the same tasks as a Customer Relations Rep. I work for ntl so I do have some understanding of the call centre and retentions system but the guy didn't even offer to get them to phone me!

They also said they didn't log complaints if there was nothing they could do!!! Great way to keep those complaint numbers low!

I am outraged that I pay them £25 a month to provide a BB service with a mailbox for them to disable access to my personal information without even letting me know. I can access my blueyonder mailbox from any computer so it doesn't even make sense that a house move requires a new user name and for the old account to be disabled. And if it really does (and apparently this problem has arisen before) surely they should warn their customers without fail of the consequences of moving address!

So help please - does anyone know of anyway that TWC can retrieve the mailbox or do I have to settle for an "oops sorry" and the hassle of getting a new phone and TV service installed?

In either case, it won't end there - once I've had a glass of wine I'll work out which of my contacts at TWC I should complain to first!

And by the way Telewest - there is no point apologising when it isn't sincere and you have no intention of sorting it out!

Angry in London

D.
XXX

Originally Posted by dm2ooo

So help please - does anyone know of anyway that TWC can retrieve the mailbox or do I have to settle for an "oops sorry" and the hassle of getting a new phone and TV service installed?

TBH, it sounds like you are not going to get this stuff back, at least not unless you can find some way to escalate it, and assuming it hasn't been physically deleted. The answer for the future is not to use an e-mail account tied to your isp, instead, use a totally independant one.

[Florence]

to these forums most find these forums when they need somewhere to vent anger and I can saee the reason you need to do this..

I am not sure why Telewest have caused such a problem I changed after many years from STB to SACM which gave me a new account. I still have access to my old email address and old webspace besides the new account they set up when they changed over.

[dm2ooo]

Thanks for the replies Paul and Kits.

I don't understand it either and will not be trusting them with my mails again (which is a real pain as I have loads of places where I have the e-mail address listed). I actually think someone may have messed up and they shouldn't have given me a new username - I don't see anything that can tie it to a home address and all your other details (such as Front Row password) are transfered.

Probably best in the long run as Telewest is rubbish for spam for as well.

It's a real shame in terms of customer service as I thought they had radically improved from 5 years ago (when they reduced a heavily pregnant me to a weeping wreck over connecting service during my last house move).

I have firmly re-adjusted my expectations again!

D.
XXX

[Florence]

Would you like a gmail email address I have some invites left you have 1gig of webstorage for emails....

[ntl customer]

Ah, that's if you want to have your email scanned for keywords for use in on screen advertising ...

I have a gmail account and the ads are very discreet.In fact I don't always have any ads at all because the subject matter has no relevance that the search engine can match.Anyway I frankly don't care about that.I'm happy enough to have 1000 MB of free space to store pretty much what I like.To get that sort of space for free usually involves ads anyway and ones that are extremely intrusive instead of the discreet little links to one side that I can easily ignore at Gmail.


Incog.