Quote:
Originally Posted by Chris T
OK, let's have a definitive answer to this thorny issue. What is your own personal experience of NTL customer services?
Tell us your story, and don't forget to vote. I'm going to try to set this up as a public poll so we can all see who voted what, as I am interested to explore the allegation that those who claim not to have trouble with CS are in the main NTL staff in disguise.
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Well, here's my experience of NTL...
On 25th February 2006 I called NTL and spoke with Graham in Customer Services and cancelled the cable TV box (because I bought a digibox and decided it was ridiculous paying all that money each month year in year out to hire a piece of equipment from a service provider that could be replaced by this digibox that I could get for a much cheaper one-off price).
Graham at NTL informed I had to give 28 days notice, so I agreed to this and Graham said they would need to arrange to come and collect the TV cable box. Graham discussed a collection time of Friday 31st March to collect the box and I explained I did not want to take the day off work just for them to collect the box and asked if they could collect it on a Saturday.
They explained they could not arrange a time to collect the box on a Saturday easily as they have a problem with calendars and that I would have to phone back and arrange collection later.
Finally after a conversation with Kyanush on 6th March 2006 if I remember correctly, it was agreed that they would collect the box on Saturday 18th March between 3 and 6pm and the TV cable box was removed from my property by them.
When I was doing my paperwork in late March I read the statement from NTL dated 28 February which showed they were going to charge me for the TV cable box for the period 11 March to 10th April. Obviously to me but not to them apparently that would mean that they were taking money out of my account for a service I no longer had.
On 23rd March, I phoned NTL customer service to point out that their statement showed that their accounts department had not picked up the fact that I no longer had a TV cable box and I spoke with somebody called Michelle. She said this is how they operate. She said the accounts department are not able to marry up this information immediately and so customers can over pay by a month or a smaller time difference, but the accounts department knew what they were doing and they would refund the difference and that refund would show up in the next statement.
I said to Michelle, who sounded so nice and helpful, that I also wanted to cancel the telephone account that came with the TV package. I explained that when I had phoned in February to cancel the TV cable package I had completely forgotton that I even have a telephone account with NTL because I never use it. I said there is no phone plugged into the NTL socket. Michelle though explained to me that there was no need for me to cancel the phone, even though I had been getting the rental of it as a free package because NTL at the time were offering customers a deal whereby if they had a NTL broadband account (such as I had with them) they could have a free telephone line rental. Michelle persuaded me to keep the telephone line which I had just tried to cancel, on the premis and understanding that I would not still not have to pay for the line. I had thought I might as well keep it then, if it is still free.
I looked at my bank statement after waiting the time stipulated by the customer advisor and noted that they had indeed stopped taking the money out in accordance with the explanation given by them.
In between April and August I still received statements from NTL as I still have a broadband internet account. Their accounting system is unnecessarily complicated and their statement are user-unfriendly and I got the impression from the satements that they were both crediting and debiting me £23.25 a month because in the brought forward box on their statement each month a value of £0 showed.
September 07 - I noticed when checking my previous few months bank statements that NTL had started taking monies out of my account again for a cable TV package I obviously no longer had! I had never given them permission to start up a fresh episode of them taking money from my account by direct debit. They are still taking my money for this! To add insult to injury they had put the price up of the product of theirs that I did not have to £24.25 a month! Yes, NTL were still making debits from my bank account of £24.25 each month to pay for a Cable TV package which I dont have because I cancelled the TV package account in February and
they collected the cable TV box in March!
Made a telephone call to Customer Services on Thursday 7th September 2006 and spoke with a Paul. I politely explained I was annoyed that they were still taking money from me and asked if I could have verification they would
1) correct the problem with their accounts department,
2) provide me with a refund as were were talking about an amount owing to me in the approx region of £125, and
3) which was said with tounge in cheek, that they could consider refunding the interest I have lost on that money had it have stayed in my account where it belonged for those six months.
Paul told me it is not possible for him to get this sorted out. He said I have to speak to the Disconnections Department (yes the Disconnections department, Not the Customer Service department and Not the accounts department). Paul asked me if I would like to be put through to the Disconnections Department so I said yes and I was put on hold for FIFTEEN MINUTES listening to a very repetitive tuneless tune all that time, until my
better judgement prevailed and I gave up holding.
I called back NTL Customer Services and was put through to someone called Louise Branson who explained she was from the Manchester office and she gave me her extension number. ((Other member of staff in her office claim they dont have extension numbers, they just email everybody in the organisation if they have queries!, yeah right - Try getting anybody at NTL to give you their direct line!!!!!))
Louise Branson is a Customer advisor. Her business explanation was that this whole problem was caused because "I still had the broadband internet connection and that had stopped the sytem from stopping the debits for the TV". So she was going to raise a manual credit today and the next invoice would show a refund of the basic pack charges. The next invoice was not due until about 27th September. She said I had to pay backdated charge for the telephone line of £11.50 a month. I explained that was not right and she said every month I owed NTL £11.50 for the phone line and £11.50 for the Cable TV service. She did not believe me when I reminded her I dont have the Cable TV service and that I had been told on 23rd March 06 that I could keep the telephone line rental free of charge whilst I still had
the broadband account. This seemed to be sheer lunatic accounting. Louise claimed the words I spoke simply could not be true.
She retracted from the phone call saying she had to go to a meeting.
Mark phoned from the disconnections department saying he had arranged disconnection of the phone line. He said there was no charge for this. He said somebody had changed the accounting system that very day because earlier in the day when we spoke it correctly showed up that I paid nothing for the line rental, and that suddenly a charge of £11.50 had been added for it. I asked him to send an email to Louise Branson to ask her to call me on my mobile.
Louise phoned back and tried to imply that all the time since the TV box was removed I had in fact been paying £11.50 a month for the phone line. I explained again this was not so and that the statements that I had in front of me did not reflect the position she was trying to describe. She again opted out of the phone call to speak to her manager.
Louise spoke with her manager, Elaine Burkhill and then called me back. Louise told me this whole problem was caused "because I was one of those customers who try to get services out of NTL for free". I ended the conversation at that point explaining I would address this whole matter with someone else at NTL.
Another round of conversations later (about half an hour holding, being put to and thro, listening to that music, and finally after explaining that because I considered this whole mess could be perceived as a load of false accounting and that I was willing to speak to the police about the matter I finally was called back by somebody who seemed finally able to talk business.
I spent about half an hour or more on the phone with her breaking down bit by bit, month by month, error by error, the exact amounts that were still being "incorrectly" taken from my account. She ended the conversation with a promise that she would issue a cheque to me on 4th October for the amount owing which was at that stage £142.20. She explained that Louise had arranged for a manual credit of £66 and so she would raise and send me a cheque for the balance of £142.20 minus this £66 minus a "part month credit" of £29. She said she would phone me on October 4th to advise me of the amount.
On October 4th she phoned me while I was out and she phoned the next day while I was out and again left a message. I had advised her previously of good times to call. I was not well that week and have only just started to feel better now, so I have left a message for her to call me back. She promised she would issue the amount owing by cheque on 4th October. NTL already have my mobile number so they could easily have contacted me if they really wanted to bother. They could even have written to confirm how they were going to sort out this financial confusion they had caused but the idea of them putting anything in writing seems to be beneath their business idealogy.
Because I have been ill and not able to call back for while, NTL have decided to hold on still to the money they took out of my account and they have still not sent the cheque nor raised this manual credit.
I have checked my bank statements and they have not put the amount they owe into my account either.
I wonder why they claim they are something along the lines of Britains "favourite" service with their "Hooray for NTL" campaign!
Still waiting for them to come back to me.
Total time of my own time wasted on this so far is about 5 working hours.
You can guess how I'll vote!
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Re: NTL Customer Services: Your personal experience
