NTL House Moves gets previous

So I'm going to move house on the 18th.

So I contact NTL House Moves yesterday and tell them that I want to cancel my TV service as of that date and arrange to have my phones moved and get broadband through a SACM installed on the 19th.

So what happens?

I switch on my cable box this morning and find that my broadband is gone and I've only got the free TV channels!

So I contact Customer Services who say "sorry, because House Moves did this, we can't actually reactivate your service, you'll have to phone them up and get them to fix it, but they won't be back until Monday morning!"

So I'm doing this using a *painfully* slow 56k dial up line and I'm seriously irritated because these people didn't seem to *listen* to what I was saying or *look* at a bloody calendar!

Oh dear indeed Graham. Hope you get this sorted Monday morning. Keep us informed.

Originally Posted by Mick

Hope you get this sorted Monday morning. Keep us informed.

Well things *didn't* get sorted today!

Firstly I set my alarm for 9am to make sure I'd get on to House Moves without having to wait ages (I work late and don't normally wake up until 11am) only to find out when I phoned up that "our system is down, please call back later".

So I say, "look, these are the details, can you pass this on when your system is back up?", the guy thinks and says he'll get someone to call me back.

Two or three hours later, still no contact, so I phone up again "your call is in a queue, you may have to wait half an hour"! Sod that I think, I can't be bothered to waste half an hour hanging around.

I try customer services, but they say "we can only put you through and you'll still have to wait". I counter this with "why don't I give you the details and *you* sit on hold for half an hour??" (For some reason they didn't go for this!)

So I wait a bit and try again, this time getting through after only 10 minutes. I give HM the details and the Indian guy I spoke to agreed that it was their fault and that he'll pass on the details to the person who cut me off to get them to call me back and fix it.

That was about midday.

Since then, what have I heard?

Diddly!

I think your experience would be a good example for Mick & Nem to take to their meeting.

ok, a mistake was made, it shouldn't have, but mistakes do happen - what is appalling about it, is that having admitted culpability, NTL are unable to sort it out.

That, and failing to deliver a promised call back, is very poor customer service.

[etccarmageddon]

i think when i move house i might just cancel my service as I dont trust them to get the move process done correctly.

Originally Posted by homealone

ok, a mistake was made, it shouldn't have, but mistakes do happen - what is appalling about it, is that having admitted culpability, NTL are unable to sort it out.

That and the fact that one department can't fix another department's mistake and that other department doesn't work on the weekends and takes up to at least half an hour to answer the phone when they *are* at work...

[etccarmageddon]

it's all about team work Graham and the lack of it.

Well the good news is that I've *finally* got things fixed again!

I phoned up House Moves at 9am again (but it wasn't until about seven minutes past that they actually switched off the message saying "we're closed, we open a 9am!) and got a guy who was *much* more helpful.

He said he'd make sure that the information was posted on my account and that the BB should be back within half an hour and the TV by midday, also that he'd check it again about 10:30.

Actually the TV wasn't back until about 1pm and the BB didn't come back until I phoned up *again* at about 3pm and hassled them once more. House Moves put me through to CS who said it was fixed, well it sort of was, but I then got a login screen that wanted a PID and password (of course all that stuff was packed away!)

When I finally managed to log in it sat there for ages and eventually said "click here to add your computer" then sat there for ages more and then kicked me back to the login screen!

CS phoned up BB installations who then told me that to get the right advice I'd have to phone up BB tech support...! (0845 not 0800)

Finally BB said "it's ok, your computer is now 'provisioned' (whatever the hell that means!) "go to start/ run and type in cmd, then input ipconfig/ release and ipconfig/ renew" and that should fix it and, thank the gods, it did!

What a bloody palaver and I didn't even get to hassle someone about compensation, so I'll have to do that sometime!

[Gareth]

Graham, think yourself lucky, mate. I had problems with the Moving House and the Billing teams, ending up with them continuing in charging me for services at my previous and my new addresses concurrently ...despite their engineers visiting to reconnect us at the new address. My problems lasted about 9 months in total.

As you say, it's annoying that one team seems to know nothing about the other, and is unable to intervene when necessary to fix customers' issues. It felt at times that one team would be blaming the other, and then washing their hands of the issue. I tried saying that I didn't care how they sorted it, as long as they did sort it. My problem, as far as I was concerned, was with NTL, not with a particular department nor team within the company.

Anyway, glad it's sorted for you now. Keep an eye open for any gremlins after you've actually moved

Originally Posted by Gareth

Anyway, glad it's sorted for you now. Keep an eye open for any gremlins after you've actually moved

Well I *thought* it was all sorted, but that was because I'd only checked the news channels (mostly BBC News 24) and Sky One, however I then discovered that I don't have my full channel package and I'm missing a whole load!

Oh, and of course Customer Services closes at 8pm...

So I managed to get my cable TV channels and BB back and then what happens?

"Customers in the PO5 post code area may be experiencing degraded or complete loss of Broadband due to a local fault".

Guess which post code area I'm in...!!!

[iain_herts]

not been ur week has it m8 lol

Originally Posted by iain_herts

not been ur week has it m8 lol

No $$$t!

I've got BB back up and working again now after having to phone BB support again because my STB failed to re-register after yesterday's outage, I wonder how long it will stay on for this time...?

I don't know what it is about disconnections and NTL ...

In the process of my house move there were two occasions when I had a termination date on my account. On both occasions, someone cut my services off within a week of the date going on the account, regardless of the fact that service should have continued for anotehr two weeks. On the first occasion the phone went off but TV and BB remained on; the second time, all bar the phone went off.

On the first occasion I have Marge and other members of this forum to thank for getting things back on track, second time round a friend who was staying in my house until it was sold called NTL himself and spent an age arguing with a disinterested CSR who at first said he wouldn't reconnect the services as it would take a week to reconnect and 'it isn't worth it' for the time left, and eventually, grudgingly, said he'd see what he could do. Service was returned within a couple of hours.

There appears to be some kind of conspiracy among some within NTL to preserve an impression that switching CATV, BB and telco services on or off is a difficult, time consuming process. I can't think why they want us to think this when the path of least resistance is to say, 'sod NTL, I'm off to $ky.' I can't help wondering how many customers they have needlessly lost like this.