Is NTL any good?

[Dave2010]

I love being on NTL there afew TV channels i wish they would get, afew not many though. Also i think there phone is fantastic and there broadband is great, im glad i left Sky and BT to join NTL, BT are a total nightmare.

[Condoleezza]

NTL TV

It's rubbish. No PVR. No red button. No EPG. No HDTV. More expensive than SKy.

NTL phone

It's rubbish. No caller ID (most areas) or 1.50 for caller id. Expensive.

NTL Internet

Oversuscribed UBRs. Overloaded network. Crappy proxies.

NTL CS

You pay to report your faults. You report your problems to Bombay, India. You wait on line and pay.

NTL Retensions

Briliant. Toll free. These guys reduce your bills and give you freebies. They are polite and they speak English!


I cannot receive Sky, I am stuck with the NTL

[claret]

im with "NTL Customer"...i have finally sacked them after months of issues, from no Net for days, engineer no shows(cancelled on there own saying), communication - what a laugh!! I cancelled got a date then got told a month later that in fact the request was there but nothing had been done....

But when the internet is working it is miles better then what i get from Tiscali, but its getting it to keep working thats the prob, then when you ring it takes best part of an hour to gwet through.

Think before you possibly make one of your biggest mistakes in a while, as you will be stuck for 12 months

[Goss]

I have never had a problem with the telephone line rental, no problem with the digital TV which i think is great for what it is realy, but the broadband is a bit off at times and the billing can change each month.

[Furion]

i can't say it any better than Condoleezza so i'm not gonna try.

because of my current and previous bad experiences with ntl, i'd recommend that you try everyone else first, ntl are a greedy substandard company with the WORST cs in the world by far.

[bonzo1uk]

ntl are the best internet providers specially if you use the newsgroups/binaries groups none can touch them

[scrotnig]

Originally Posted by barton fink

I am currently using Bt Broadband and Sky and I am thinking of joining NTL for TV, 4 mb Internet and Telephone service and was wondering if anyone could tell me what the service is like. I am particularly interested in the internet service as i work from home alot and need a good consistent service. Also is the digitial tv any good?

I think overall, yes, they are pretty good.

TV: Technically it's inferior to Sky but it depends how many bells and whistles you want. Mine does the job. Video On Demand (VOD) is being rolled out too, a great feature. My TV service rarely goes wrong.

Phone: Generally ntl provide a good *basic* phone service. If you start wanting stuff like caller display though you can struggle depending on area. My telephone service has never gone down.

Broadband: I've had ntl broadband since 2000. It's generally completely brilliant. I realise, again, that some areas have more trouble than others depending on the network, but generally it is good. I had a couple of minor wobbles last month after the upgrade to 4mb but it has now stabilised again, and I have to say the amount of downtime I have had in nearly seven years has been miniscule.

For broadband I always have a gut instinct that if you have cable as an option it is invariably the better one.

[colin1234]

Hi
Honestly i would not touch them with a barge pole.
There cs is unbelivable.
After 9 years i`ve just left them,well i hope i have,its taken
3 months and over 12 calls to cs for them to accept that i was leaving,nobody would do what they said they would,every time i phoned i was told " ok that is now on the system and will take effect from so and so date" still the bills came and every time you phoned up all they would say was "sorry there is nothing on the system to say you want to leave".
To be fair the bb is very good and the phone is also ok,but please don`t do it,i`m with bt now and so far there cs is much better,there bb is just as good,as is there phone.
Ntl cs will drive you mad.

[ADd]

I think I'm lucky, or live in a 'good' NTL area. Been with them for 3 years, great digital service, great broadband, no mess-ups with billing (he says touching wood). Best thing for me about ntl tv, is the ability to move the channels around - you know GodTV or whatever gets sent to the bottom - followed swiftly by the Disney channel Just can't happen on sky - (unless they have changed it recently)

On demand for kids free this summer (some not all), keeps the place quiet. No nasty dish on the side of the house, so when it rains you get no telly, don't forget they told us digital was the future - bit like the indestructable cd hey?!?

Thing is you generally only hear the bad stories, and thats because people who are happy with a service don't worry about it. Still I do understand problems people have, and can only empathise. That's me signing off, in case I start a flame war

[COOPERMAN]

I think ntl is good. Yes, there are still areas for improvement in any company, even my own I work for London Underground (no booing now). Got excellent response from NTL after my upgrade error on 22.08.06. Engineer attended promptly and replaced the defective STB with brand new PACE box. Now got CR3 and I'm happy. Okay it's not up to Sky’s services provided at the moment, but NTL will get there. They will be even bigger now Telewest and Virgin are on board.

[Gareth]

My experiences:-

Broadband... can't fault it. Downtime has been virtually non-existant and speed has always been what I'm subscribed to (currently 10Mbit). It is more expensive than the competition, but (in my case) it's a case of you get what you pay for. Also, they scored a lot of brownie points with me when they did the upgrades not so long ago. 3 years ago I was paying £35 p/month for 3Mbit... now I'm paying the same amount for 10Mbit. I wouldn't be able to get 10Mbit via ADSL where I am.

Phone service... was fine. Worked 100% of the time. Again, was not as cheap as BT - line rental is comparable but add-ons such as CLID, calling abroad packages (which we use a lot due to my missus being French) are slightly more expensive, but not massively.

DTV - had a few problems with this. Red button never worked ever. Strange problem with channels changing automatically and STB resetting itself everymorning at 1am when the EPG gets updated (why they didn't do this at a more convenient time is beyond me!). Also, our cabinet would be down for a few hours whenever we had a thunder storm... also the door to the cabinet has been left open for years, despite informing NTL of it. Even the engineers who visited said it needed repairing, but they didn't have the materials to do a proper job so it would never get done. Base package was very basic (although I believe this has improved since I left).

CS - sadly this was the pits. The CS was the real reason I left NTL for BT & Sky (except for broadband) 18 months ago. If they set everything up correctly initially and you don't need to change anything then you might be OK. But if you upgrade/downgrade, or if you move house, then you're asking for trouble. Like someone else mentioned, they don't always seem to record stuff correctly so vital details often go missing... like the fact I'd moved house a year ago (despite their excellent engineers having visited to disconnect and reconnect me) but was still having to explain to them that I didn't want to pay for 3 services at 2 different addresses.

Technically, NTL was good for me (and still is for my broadband) but they let themselves down by poor processes and "people-problems".

On the other hand, Sky have treated me very well (they messed up once by subscribing me to the film & sports packages when I had said I only wanted the family pack, but to their credit I phoned them and they rectified the problem the same day, crediting my bank account for the amount they had taken immediately (NTL only ever wanted to credit my account for the next month's billing cycle, but they kept on screwing up so I never got to benefit from the refund ). As a gesture of goodwill, Sky also allowed me to keep the movies and sports channels for free for 3 months... it wasn't much but it was appreciated after not having received anything from NTL for the problems I had encountered.

Oh, and I keep on hearing stories about Sky being poor quality during bad weather... not had this problem personally, and the quality is as good - if not better - than it was with NTL's DTV.

Having now tried Sky, I don't think I'll ever go back to NTL for DTV.

As for BT... not had to call them about anything yet, so can't really comment on them. Service has been 100%, price is OK-ish. No problems with 'em ...yet

One last thing... although it is more convenient dealing with one supplier for 3 products, I always used to get 3 separate bills - with 3 times the amount of the same publicity material each month. Not sure if this has changed since, but it used to annoy me as it made it more complicated to keep track of everything than it should have been. One bill per month on one sheet of paper for all 3 services would have been much more helpful.

Overall, I was severly disappointed with NTL. I love their broadband products, and the DTV & phone were OK for my needs (I don't watch much TV to be honest), but I felt I was constantly being p*ssed on from a great height by their incompetent customer service representatives.

If you do decide to go with NTL, make sure they get everything right the 1st time round. Good luck with whoever you decide to go with

I think asking about any provider will get you the same reaction as you got here.Some will love it some will hate it...

Frankly you will either be one of the luvvies or you will be one of the slaggers depending on,

a)you go with ntl.
b)What your own actual experience with ntl turns out to be.

Why not REALLY look around and see if you can't get a better deal elsewhere?

Try http://www.net4now.com/ for some pretty nuetral advice(and not so nuetral if you check the forums) on all the differing ISP's BB offers.

[SnoopZ]

I currently have a great 10mb internet service so no complaints about that, however the billing has been messed up before.

When i had digital tv the pace box broke twice but the engineers have always come when they said they would.

[fudge]

I have been with ntl for 15 months now , The first two weeks i wished i hadent bothered , as i had no end of problems. But since then i have had to call them out a couple of time and they have turned up at the time they stated. I was with sky for tv , bt for phone and tiscali for internet , then went on to ntl 3for £30 deal, much less then i was paying. The ntl internet service compaired to tiscali in my oppinion is brilliant.

[JoshGrey]

My quick 3 pennies worth....I've been with ntl for 6 1/2 years and...IMHO

Telephone - basic service only (but from my experience) faultless. If you want extras the costs soon oes up IF you can even receive the features - caller id anyone?

DTV - not bad. Not as extensive, innovative or sophisticated as Sky in many areas (think red button, usable interactive services, usuable EPG, no universal HD offering or PVR) but making an effort (think VoD)

BB - overall I'm quite happy with this. I've had the occasional STB modem failure but for the most part it's good. Currently there are no caps on the BB that I have. I believe that is consistent for all ntl BB offerings

Customer Service - incredibly hit and miss. Sometimes it's okay...others it's appalling.

One other very serious consideration what you can get depends on where you are. ntl may like to say that it's a single company but it's not nowhere near! The offerrings are patchy and currently ntl appears to concentrating on harmonising pricing where it can without too much embarrassment or controversy and then going for universal offerings...

Overall, if I had a choice and the inclination I would probably keep the BB but switch my phone and DTV to an alternative phone or VoIP service and Sky.

BTW I've never had a mixed up bill but ntl don't do a great deal to tell existing customers anything about anything.

Hope that helps.