NTL Review

Overall Rating

None.

Customer service.

This is a summary of my experiences with NTl over a 12 month period. Ok where to start?

Call centres:

In a word dire. Consistently failed to meet my customer needs at pretty much every interaction. I often spoke to people who I feel sounded like they did not care. Queue waiting times were regularly over 20 minutes which is poor. I was misinformed about the services I was paying for, how much I would be paying and what my phone number was.

Technical:

I initially signed up for phone lines and cable TV and took the option of a second phone number. After a fortnight I had not received any phone calls despite friends and family telling me they had called, and left messages. After a phone call to NTL and after a long wait I found out that my two phone numbers had been given to somebody else, despite the 'welcome to NTL' letter having the tel numbers on it that I had been quoted! This was remedied by telling me what my actual numbers were! I was given a month's free rental to compensate.

Then my 2nd phone line stopped working after just two months, I called and after a long wait to talk to the service centre I was told the fault was logged and an engineer would investigate. I lived in the property for a further 6 months. The 2nd phone line was never fixed.

After 4 months my cable TV box packed up. Two weeks later I received a replacement unit, and the faulty original was left boxed and labelled on my doorstep as instructed by NTL to be collected. The box was never collected and three weeks later I receive a bill from NTL for the new box claiming I had 'failed' to send them the faulty one. I explained that I had left the box out as they requested, the call centre agent claimed they had not said this and I had to pay the bill for the new one or 'post' the faulty item at my cost back to them, so a technician could tell if it was faulty or had been abused. I refused to do this as this was their problem as I had followed their instructions for collection. I was told that I was not being honest and they had not told me this. I asked to speak to a manager and I was put on hold and never actually spoke to one.

Two months later I moved to a new address within the same town, less than half a mile away. I rang up to inform them of this and I was told I could keep the same number, which turned out to be wrong as I was on a different exchange. Two and a half months later my phone line went dead and I was unable to make outgoing calls. I called their call centre and after a long wait I was told by quite possibly the worst customer service agent I have ever dealt with, that my direct debit had been cancelled and I had to set up a new one. I explained that I hadn't cancelled my direct debit so why was it cancelled? I was told that because I had changed addresses that 'in effect' I had done this! I explained to the customer service agent NTL had done this without explanation or writing to me which is breach of the 1974 consumer credit act and allowed my account to get into debt. At this point I told NTL where to put their service as I was moving out in less than a month anyway. The lady I was speaking to then said she would send me a new direct debit form. I asked her why as I had no interest in using them ever again, her answer was very poor.

The service I got from NTL was so disastrous that I still refuse to go anywhere near Virgin media, who have taken them over.