ntl last & TW 1st in JD Power ISP Chart

Originally Posted by DaggaDagga

Anyone for a game of "spot the NTL staff" ? It's not difficult, reading this thread.

Anyone for a game of "spot the NTL Knocker" ? It's not difficult, reading this thread.

[Chrysalis]

Can discredit this survey all you like people but their has been a few done now and ntl perform poorly in every single one and I doubt they are surveying the same people every time.

[Sherlock614]

Telewest has topped a list of the... Fair enough

AOL UK in second place....
Wanadoo came a close third....
followed by Tiscali....
BT came fifth....

And NTL last....


Out of those listed, the middle four would be the VERY last ISP's i would go for... funnily enough, in that order

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Can discredit this survey all you like people but their has been a few done now and ntl perform poorly in every single one and I doubt they are surveying the same people every time.

Well said.

Ah, good old lies, damn lies and statistics

Surveys (esp small ones) can be used to prove pretty much anything. You could ask another 935 people and get a totally different result. Makes for good news though.

[DaggaDagga]

So is it a good thing to come bottom of a survey, even if it may be flawed?

JD Power are very well respected. Even if their survey is a load of guff then the fact is that people will probably trust it.

So there may possibly be x% error, owing to a small sample group or whatever. Is it still good to be rated the worst?

The arrogance of the NTL-pushers is incredible - we know we're brilliant, don't care what any else says (or publishes). Hang on - where have all our stupid customers gone?

A product doesn't necessarily have to BE bad. If people are saying that it is bad then that means that the supplier needs to think about whether their product or publicity needs to change.

Originally Posted by Dagga Dagga

The arrogance of the NTL-pushers is incredible - we know we're brilliant, don't care what any else says (or publishes). Hang on - where have all our stupid customers gone?

Now who's being arrogant ?

I for one have never said NTL are perfect in fact if you look at my Services you will see i am dumping my TV because i need a PVR and NTL don't provide one. However as far as the broadband goes my service is nigh on perfect and therefor i will back them completely. however i can also understand that this is not the same for others and i can respect there outlook on the service instead of just having a dig at someone because they dont happen to agree with your outlook on the subject. Or is my or others outlook not allowed in your eye's ,because

1. Until the end of this month i work for them and my views are not to be taken seriously.
2. Because they like the service they have they are somehow brainwashed to say NTL is fantastic ?


So do the words wind up in your services extend to winding people up as well ?


BTW

This is a discusion forum. Not a we have to agree with DaggaDagga forum.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by DaggaDagga

Anyone for a game of "spot the NTL staff" ? It's not difficult, reading this thread.

NTL came bottom. A reasonable number of people were asked.

For anyone who cares passionately about NTL, surely the effort should go into understanding why they came bottom, rather than just rubbishing anything or anyone that criticises the holy company.

Large companies usually collapse when they become complacent and take their customers for granted. Then the more nimble upstarts will attract all these customers. Usually the large companies are too slow and arrogant to accept that there's a problem, never mind do something about it.

Nope, I am not, never have been and never will be an NTL staff member. I just know how statistics work. And no, 900 odd people out of the several million that are customers of the 6 ISPs is NOT an adequate size sample.

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Nope, I am not, never have been and never will be an NTL staff member. I just know how statistics work. And no, 900 odd people out of the several million that are customers of the 6 ISPs is NOT an adequate size sample.

I too am not an NTL worker.I do however know how statistics work and this is not that large enough sample at all.Not that I can't believe the results, just that it is dependent on the size of the sample and the demographics of the group chosen and I would suggest that 900 is not large enough in comparison to the numbers involved in the whole industry.

I would rather trust the combined opinions of the members of Net4Nowt site http://www.net4now.com/ which does survey it's members about the ISP they use.

[ian@huth]

The problem with satisfaction surveys is that the one that comes out top can have worse customer services, higher prices, slower speeds and more service problems than the one that comes out bottom.

J D Power only use survey respondents who have the services of the company that they comment upon unlike others where anyone can comment on any company whether they have their services or not. They tend to judge their service by what is happening now compared to what it used to be like.

There is a fair chance that most survey respondents are very light users of the internet. They may not recognise many faults that more experienced users may find and think that how their broadband connection works is the same as everyone else's experience. They could be very satisfied with a service that some experienced users would find abominable.

You can ask someone on say Wanadoo what their satisfaction rating for their service is out of 10 and they may give it 9 because their service is better than that of friends who are on Tiscali and BT. They may have had many problems in the past but few of late which would tend to generate a higher satisfaction rating.

Most people will say that the ISP they use is the best and give it a high satisfaction rating because not doing so is an admission that they are using the wrong ISP. The only reason they lower the rating is because other ISP's offer faster, cheaper or services with less usage restrictions in other areas but not in the area they are in. They are presuming that the services they are unable to receive are better than what they have got without any proof that they actually are. They may therefore give a much lower satisfaction rating than should be the case.

What is happening with the different ISP's at the time that the survey is carried out also has a bearing on the results. If an ISP has just introduced some form of capping then customers may suddenly change from being very satisfied to extremely unsatisfied even though their service hasn't changed in any other way and their usage is within the cap levels that have been announced. You only have to look at some of the comments made on here when free speed increases have been announced to see that some customers are eager to find fault and complain about them.

[DaggaDagga]

I should say that I have NTL broadband, and have done for years. Besides a few hiccups when moving house, the service has been excellent. I previously used BT Broadband, and their service was appalling. I have no "anti-NTL" axe to grind.

I just think that if someone (no matter how unqualified to comment) criticises a company's service then a company should consider the points made.

If a really dodgy survey of 100 people said that Tesco was the worst supermarket then I would guess that they would scrutinise the findings, and issue some kind of comment or criticism. Not just disregard it.

[slug]

Originally Posted by DaggaDagga

If a really dodgy survey of 100 people said that Tesco was the worst supermarket then I would guess that they would scrutinise the findings, and issue some kind of comment or criticism. Not just disregard it.

Unless there was some truth to it.

[Chrysalis]

Yes but add up the number of people from all the survey's put together and they all rate ntl poorly, we are not seeing up and down results for ntl as people argue can happen with small sample's but instead consistent bottom or near bottom ratings for ntl. The small sample argument goes for all the isp's involved. The isp's I have used for broadband are in this order freeserve, nildram and ntl and out of the 3 for me ntl is the worst and nildram the best.

[andygrif]

Originally Posted by Wicked_and_Crazy

only 6 companies!! hardly wide ranging

I think what they were trying to do was a survey of the six biggest companies, rather than just a survey of six random ISPs. Bear in mind that these six are the first ones that the vast majority of people will contact first when wanting to order broadband.

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Make what you want of that but if price is the only attractive factor it says to me we want new customers and once you a customer we dont value you.

As I said before it appears triple play is ntl's saving grace along with the agressive pricing.

Personally (and as an ex-customer) I would say that the whole of the broadband product is ntl's saving grace.

Their technical support is appaling, but given that the system was on the whole pretty stable most of the time then the need to call them doesn't arise for semi-technically minded people like myself very often.

Originally Posted by Toto

Or quadruple play if the Virgin thingy goes through

Didn't they already offer a "quadruple play" with Orange a while back? That didn't exactly set the world alight IIRC.

[patrickp]

Incidentally, for anyone who thinks Telewest is marvellous and squeaky clean, check out blueyonder.com. I came upon this by chance when a friend accidentally sent an email meant for a blueyonder.co.uk address to the blueyonder.com one, and I thought I'd check out where it had actually gone...