Bulldog For Sale.... One useless Owner

[m419]

What a strange set set up!

• They've closed their tele-sales helpline and now only take online orders.
• They've re-introduced the installation charge for a new line.
• They do not send paper bills and you can only pay by credit/debit card or by direct debit.

Do they not want customers or something?

[Paul K]

Originally Posted by m419

Do they not want customers or something?

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/sh...ad.php?t=49426
Nope.

[m419]

I don't think Cable and Wireless should do that.

Cable and Wireless/Bulldog should launch deals that will over take TalkTalk's poor service and offer more flexibility to customers.

Cable and Wireless has a history of selling its businesses that are going through a rough patch but doesn't necessarily solves the problem. They sold one of the UK's most successful mobile company ''one2one' back in 1999 which was a stupid thing to do. They also sold their residential business to NTL whilst Cable and Wireless had the opportunity to keep its residential business and also buy Telewest Communications at the same time. Back in the mid-1990's they sold their payphone business which traded as Mercury payphones to IPM Communications(an italian payphone group) and the payphones were fully refurbished and traded as Interphone. Cable and Wireless also got rid of the UK's successful paging company and now trades as Page One.

Bulldog should simply improve its services and offer good deals which will increase its number of customers to 1 million.

[Paul K]

Bulldog won't do that and C&W won't do it as it costs money and currently they aren't making much profit from Bulldog. They know that it will cost a lot of money to put right what they have messed up so far and by then they would have lost a lot of customers anyway.

[m419]

Originally Posted by Paul

Bulldog won't do that and C&W won't do it as it costs money and currently they aren't making much profit from Bulldog. They know that it will cost a lot of money to put right what they have messed up so far and by then they would have lost a lot of customers anyway.

All they have to do is improve their sales and customer services/technical support and make the service seem reasonable, by manipulating consumers. If they offered free 16Meg broadband for those who choose the Top phone package,Bulldog lounge and calling features pack and also add 6p connection charge for all calls not included in an allowance bundle such as mobile calls. I'm sure they will be able to make some money to pay for the improvements and advertising.

Remember, TalkTalk's free broadband is terrible as it is a 'Free service', there have also been many complaints about Carphone Warehouse services which include:

Fresh Mobile: Carphone warehouse removed caps which were set by parents of children who use a pay monthly phone without any notice and bills came in at £250! Also a case of unfair contract policies too.

TalkTalk: Many complaints about problems with getting online, users are not garunteed a connection at busy periods or if they live far away from the exchange. How useful that is!

Customer Services: Customers have been unable to get through to customer services because lines are constantly engaged and its an 0845 number and they have customers on hold for ages.

Billing: Corrupt billing system where direct debit payments are being debited from wrong accounts!

So Carphone warehouse is not as successful as you might think and another thing, they aren't as big as Cable and Wireless and do not have as much money as Cable and Wireless or any other large telecoms group and could easily be knocked down at anytime especially when customers are experiencing a poor service.

This is also the case for SKY, the free broadband offer does not garuntee a good service. Whatsmore, SKY customers end up shedding out an extra £11.50 for BT line rental where as Telewest/NTL customers have it inclusive of the TV package.

Telewest's essential package is £21.50 with a telephone line, the equivalent package on SKY costs the same but not with a telephone line and instead customers pay out an extra £11.50 totalling £33. Then the so called free internet kicks in. The same package costs the same on NTL-Telewest and is commonly known as the '3 for £30' offer, however it costs £30 when you pay by direct debit.

So really, if you compare all the packages and call charges, they all roughly work out the same!

The most expensive option was Orange. Customers using the free orange internet offer when they spend £30 or more on pay monthly mobile services will spend at £20 more than what a NTL-Telewest customer would pay.

So when customers work this out, Bulldog,NTL,Telewest and AOL will be the companies left standing to take the custom, so it might not be worth Cable and Wireless selling up just yet! I think they should leave it for a year or two as I can a big disaster happening at Carphone Warehouse and BT's service is just extortionate for what you get!

AOL is also thinking of selling its UK customer base.

So I don't think any companies will be interested in taking over Bulldog anyway.

A sneaky way of Bulldog getting out of the bad part is for them to do a total rebrand which is not going to cost to much money. A simple and cost effective way is for them to rebrand into 'Cable and Wireless Residential' or even dig out old names and brands such as Mercury. Then they could buy out AOL UK,then they could launch a virtual mobile network service raking in the cash, once they make money, they could offer ADSL TV services similar to homechoice and Cable and Wireless would be offering a quad service!

They could even purchase Homechoice as I believe thats up for sale and don't think a merge will happen with Tiscali since they have experienced financial problems for years!

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by m419

All they have to do is improve their sales and customer services/technical support and make the service seem reasonable, by manipulating consumers. If they offered free 16Meg broadband for those who choose the Top phone package,Bulldog lounge and calling features pack and also add 6p connection charge for all calls not included in an allowance bundle such as mobile calls. I'm sure they will be able to make some money to pay for the improvements and advertising.

The problem is that Bulldog suddenly became massively successful, and the systems they had in place couldn't cope. They spent a couple of years trying to improve, but in the meantime, companies like Talk Talk came along and introduced incredibly cheap or free broadband. Wholesale and equipment prices haven't fallen as quickly as the price to the end consumer, so we end up with a situation that all Residential ISPs are making little or no profit.

Remember, TalkTalk's free broadband is terrible as it is a 'Free service', there have also been many complaints about Carphone Warehouse services which include:



So when customers work this out, Bulldog,NTL,Telewest and AOL will be the companies left standing to take the custom, so it might not be worth Cable and Wireless selling up just yet! I think they should leave it for a year or two as I can a big disaster happening at Carphone Warehouse and BT's service is just extortionate for what you get!

AOL is also thinking of selling its UK customer base.

Sadly, the Great British Public does not bother reading further than the word "Free". They do not bother to work things out.

So I don't think any companies will be interested in taking over Bulldog anyway.

AFAIK, Bulldog isn't for sale. The reason C&W have effectively pulled out of residential broadband (and the reason they pulled out of it before) is that it is not very profitable. It is far more profitable for them to sell their LLU lines wholesale to other ISPs (which is what they are doing), who can than take the loss thanks to tons of Venture capital.

Make no mistake, the market is collapsing, and I suspect you'll see a lot more residential ISPs pulling out of the market or closing before the market is restored to health again.

A sneaky way of Bulldog getting out of the bad part is for them to do a total rebrand which is not going to cost to much money. A simple and cost effective way is for them to rebrand into 'Cable and Wireless Residential' or even dig out old names and brands such as Mercury. Then they could buy out AOL UK,then they could launch a virtual mobile network service raking in the cash, once they make money, they could offer ADSL TV services similar to homechoice and Cable and Wireless would be offering a quad service!

They could even purchase Homechoice as I believe thats up for sale and don't think a merge will happen with Tiscali since they have experienced financial problems for years!

A rebrand won't cure their customer services problems. They need serious investment to do that.


One thing you forgot to mention. About 24months or so ago, Cable and Wireless were in massive financial trouble. They have only survived thanks to a massive cost-cutting exercise ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/02/cable_results/ ). It is likely they are still trying to keep costs down, so there will be little investment in services like Bulldog (which, as I said above, needs to spend an awful lot of money to improve it's customer services, whatever brand they use).

[Neil]

Originally Posted by m419

This is also the case for SKY, the free broadband offer does not garuntee a good service. Whatsmore, SKY customers end up shedding out an extra £11.50 for BT line rental where as Telewest/NTL customers have it inclusive of the TV package.

No they don't.

ntl have always hidden the fact that the price they quote for DTV is not quite the real price as hidden away down the bottom is the small print is the fact that you always had to take a phone line & that was an additional cost.

I don't think there is actually difference between the Sky & ntl TV packages cost-wise.

[m419]

Thats interesting.

NTL thinks that if they rebrand into Virgin, it will improve everything. But clearly its not and understand what you are saying. Rebranding to Virgin is not going upgrade 30% of NTL's cable network by 2008!

NTL has two large franchises once owned by BT and it is in tatters, NTL cannot afford to upgrade these two franchises which are located in Westminster and Milton Keynes, they don't even have a telephone network and customers have to use a BT line! Whats more, there are parts of other NTL franchises and streets which are still not digital and they were aiming to get the whole network upgraded by 2008, 2009 at the latest. Telewest said that it would upgrade its network to digital by 2006, and so they have. However, they also said that they would turn off analogue services by 2006, there are still loads of customers using analogue services, this shows that NTL cannot afford to upgrade its network to digital and means it could be heading for more financial trouble.

And another thing, how comes Cable and Wireless is not regulated by Ofcom as much as BT, BT and Cable and Wireless were both nationalised companies before Margaret Thatcher came on the scene. In fact C&W launched in the 1850's and was a private company until the second world war and was re-nationalised until 1982 and it was privatised again. BT was formed by the goverment sometime around when Cable and Wireless was nationalised and was taken over by the goverment's post office and was then known as 'GPO or post office telephones/telegraphs' until 1982 when it de-merged away from the post office and then privatised in 1984.