ALL Virgin / NTL merger discussion

[2||Para]

Quality quote from the NTL Chairman "We believe Virgin are a great company and offer excellent customer Service"

Well at least 1 of the 2 companies does

[HDFootyMan]

Originally Posted by rogermevans

ROFL

Best laugh today ty

Think of us poor Coventry City F.C fans - we have a 'NTL Stand' at our new ground. I'm guessing it will be called 'The Virgin Stand' from next season.

[paul11974]

Originally Posted by Chris Howell

Think of us poor Coventry City F.C fans - we have a 'NTL Stand' at our new ground. I'm guessing it will be called 'The Virgin Stand' from next season.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by ian@huth

Most NTL broadband customers will not notice any problem with their service so why spend a large sum of money upgrading when they could use it to fund buying Virgin. Rebranding NTL as Virgin could attract many new customers which would mean more cash to invest.

I can see a time coming when it would be foolish for NTL to invest in upgrading the present infrastructure. The restrictions that are there at present will probably mean a different means of broadband delivery.

Oh ok, most of our customers are too dumb to know their is overselling going on and those in analogue only areas can stay on analogue knowing that buying a mobile phone company will make the tv broadband and phone service so much better.

It will have to pay 0.25% royalties on its revenue for three decades - with a minimum annual payment of £8.5m - to Virgin Enterprises for the use of the brand name created by Sir Richard.

I see the virgin shareholders laughing all the way to the bank with this deal.

I have been researching broadband regulation, and if ntl were under the jurustiction that eu isps are under they may have already been in trouble for the performance of their 10meg, the telewest merger would also likely have been blocked. The uk regulation is a bit of a joke.

If it is foolish to upgrade an infrastructure to handle a product they sell then why sell the product? At some point ntl are either going to have to do major investment or do an embarassing pull out of some areas.

---------- Post added at 22:23 ---------- Previous post was at 22:21 ----------

Originally Posted by etccarmageddon

a pointless merger in my opinion. linking up with a mobile company to offer 4 play. erm pun not intended! I like my NTL cable modem, sky for tv and orange for phone. nothing would take me into having a virgin mobile from ntl.

Also questionable how it is not monopolistic, drawing customers into one company for 4 different market sectors, similiar to how people complain about tesco and co selling films, music and clothes.

[Neil]

Amen....

Originally Posted by El Reg

Staff at Virgin Mobile are to spruce up NTL's lack lustre customer service following the merger of the companies.

Much of the chit-chat surrounding NTL's £962m take-over of Virgin mobile today has been about "quad-play" services and rebranding.

But one of the consequences of the merger is the decision to export Virgin's "keep punters happy" approach into the larger company.

At the analysts' briefing this afternoon, it was revealed that there would be "significant participation from the Virgin Group and Virgin Management to secure Virgin culture and ideals throughout the organisation", which would lead to "significant operational improvements with increase in broadband sales and improvement in customer care".

Click Me

Originally Posted by Neil

Amen....



Click Me

We can but hope ... however for the moment at least, that quote is just a line of cliches. Corporate bull**** in the truest sense. The litmus test will be whether anything has actually changed 18 months from now.

Somehow I suspect the massive changes that will be brought about by the purchase of Virgin and Telewest will make things worse for some time to come. It's the nature of the beast.

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Chris T

We can but hope ... however for the moment at least, that quote is just a line of cliches. Corporate bull**** in the truest sense. The litmus test will be whether anything has actually changed 18 months from now.

Somehow I suspect the massive changes that will be brought about by the purchase of Virgin and Telewest will make things worse for some time to come. It's the nature of the beast.

I totally agree with you, but there's no way that Sir Richard Branson would allow customer service like ntl's to taint the Virgin brand's reputation for superb customer care.

We've had all the "it will improve" promises from ntl for the last I don't know how many years, maybe now that someone who knows how to look after his staff & customers is involved it really will improve.

Here's hoping....

Originally Posted by Neil

I totally agree with you, but there's no way that Sir Richard Branson would allow customer service like ntl's to taint the Virgin brand's reputation for superb customer care.

We've had all the "it will improve" promises from ntl for the last I don't know how many years, maybe now that someone who knows how to look after his staff & customers is involved it really will improve.

Here's hoping....

Indeed. The one thing that gives me hope is the way he somehow managed to prevent the west coast inter-city rail service from destroying his brand, despite running a largely **** service with aged rolling stock and a crumbling network for most of the last 10 years. Branson and his brand reputation seem to be teflon coated. Good luck to him.

[Chrysalis]

Poor customer service is one thing but some issues have never been mentioned on watchdog like the poor network performance and lack of universal digital rollout, the question is because these issues havent made the news is mr branson interested in fixing them or just the bad publicity stuff?

[paul11974]

i wonder if the new look virgin logo will be red because it might well be the only red thing that works on ntl


unless they sort the red button before they use the red logo

[sollp]

I really hope that this will be the turning point for NTL, as it definitely needs it. I have said before that NTL has been soley focused on these mergers for the past few years. Everything else has been left to one side to a certain degree.

Hope they will now start to treat the Employees a damn site better which will in turn mean that the customer will benefit.

[paul11974]

ok please moderators do not move this thread to the virgin merger as it will get lost with all the others and this is a uniqe question about what will happento the ntl / telewest logos on our remote controls and set top boxes will they be replaced by richard or will they do a itv digital and send us nice little shiny virgin tv stickers to place on our set top boxes and remote controls ?

[Derek]

Doubtful.

They'll probably just leave things as they are for now. I think there are still some cable and wireless branded kit kicking about.

[paul11974]

Originally Posted by dezzo

Doubtful.

They'll probably just leave things as they are for now. I think there are still some cable and wireless branded kit kicking about.

but thats just all wrong

[Chris W]

i don't see this being a major issue that needs to be seperated from the other thread to be honest- as dezzo has said there are still some cable and wireless branded boxes out there.

Also as it is a DTV question i'm moving it to the DTV forums