I'm cancelling NTL broadband thread

cordsie

Post away if you're planning to or are or have cancelled NTL broadband. I'm doing so today for the following reasons:

-6 months worth of connections dropping for hours at a time.
-No acknowledgement of problems in the area ever, despite how many times I've rang customer service.
-Crap customer service overall
-Misleading policies with respect to download limits

I'm going back to a DSL provider (which I won't name, this is about slating NTL not promoting someone else,) but it would be nice to get a nice long thread together that someone might possibly shove in NTL's face at some point. I don't really want to debate any of the issues (there's another huge long thread here about that,) just collect a few simple statements of solidarity against these shiesters.

bk

Well I have to say, except for the recent stupidity of routing through Holland, I've never had any problems with NTL. I have found it to be rock solid, with little or no down time and much more stable then my old DSL connection.

BTW I notice any problems very quickly as I work from home frequently and use VPN and VNC. If the connection ever drops my VPN connection immediately drops so it would be very noticeable for me.

The point of my post is that just because you have had a bad experience, doesn't mean everyone has. You can have a bad experience with pretty much any operator.

cordsie

I'm aware that people's experience will vary, but there has been quite a lot of discussion about NTL's decline in service, and I'd just like to get a sense of how bad the problem actually is.

Dariukas

i live in galway and NTL service was really bad for over 2months... But it seem they finally fixed the problem, for the last 5 days my ping is between 30-40... before that it was 120+... unless they disconnected few peeps in my area

Jumpy

Heh, I wonder how many of these "I hate" threads are actually competitors stirring the pot.

Its rarely someone with more than 10 posts. Usually all in Broadband.

Mojito

I'm switching to Magnet at the moment. Then I'll cancel my NTL broadband and tv service as I now have Sky installed.

CuLT

Jumpy wrote:

Heh, I wonder how many of these "I hate" threads are actually competitors stirring the pot.

Its rarely someone with more than 10 posts. Usually all in Broadband.

Who'd be bothered?

Boards.ie's bb forum is hardly the centre of the consumerverse

I'd imagine most of these sub-10-post users are genuinely people who just type "cancelling <insert provider> because they are terrible!!!!!!!!!" into google*.

*I just tried this after I wrote it, boards.ie wins hands down in google searches "in Ireland" for that.

bk

CuLT wrote:

Who'd be bothered?

I'm not saying cordsie is, but it has happened in the past.

We caught a BT employee pretending to be a BT customer and signing BT's praises over on the IOFFL forum before.

Pines

I'm currently subscribed to NTL but am moving house. I'm not going to use them in my new place simply for the reasons Cordsie posted regarding customer service and tech support.

My most recent experience of them was when my broadband service (great when it works) went down. I rang customer service and waited about 30-40 mins, then got a UK based agent.

He did the whole "try restarting your modem" script, and I told him the problem was at their end ... my modem was working just fine and nothing had changed in my apartment. No problem at their end I was told and they'd send an engineer out to look at my modem .

Following day, everything was hunky dory, presumably because they'd rebooted their own equipment. Rang to cancel engineer's visit. Same deal holding for 45 mins, eventually started pressing combinations of keys at random and got talking to the receptionist and asked her to pass on the message since their tech support was incommunicado.

I also sent an email for good measure to cancel, and submitted a web form to complaints, describing the abysmal tech support and asking them to note the cancellation of the engineer also. 1 week later and the engineer predictably turns up on my doorstep. he resignedly said it was nothing new to end up making a call that had been cancelled.

They couldn't organise a p*ss-up in a brewery.

I'd still consider using them except that I'm looking for digital tv service in the new place and they don't supply a HD recorder like Sky+ (apparently they don't think there's a demand for it) and the reviews of their digital tv service on these boards would make your hair turn white. So it's Sky & BT for now for TV/BB/phone, followed by Magnet for all three (mmm, 8MB uncontended) when my exchange is enabled.

And I don't work for any of them, I pay them to work for me

40coats

I'm going to ditch them too, changing the usage cap to upstream and downstream from downstream only did it for me. I've been happy with them for a good few years now but the package they're now providing is not what i signed up for.

Dariukas

Dariukas wrote:

i live in galway and NTL service was really bad for over 2months... But it seem they finally fixed the problem, for the last 5 days my ping is between 30-40... before that it was 120+... unless they disconnected few peeps in my area

exact same problem for me, but in the last week it has seemed to sort itself out, although i did email them and they never replied.

00sully

Jumpy wrote:

Heh, I wonder how many of these "I hate" threads are actually competitors stirring the pot.

Its rarely someone with more than 10 posts. Usually all in Broadband.

I used to think NTL were ROCK solid. now they are plain crap (in my area anyway- D15 based on me + 3 other users)

KTdesigner

00sully wrote:

I used to think NTL were ROCK solid. now they are plain crap (in my area anyway- D15 based on me + 3 other users)

Oh dear, I just moved to Blanch and got NTL Broadband Max (supposedly 6mb speeds) but haven't seen anything like that speed. Can't even play Battlefield online anymore, keep getting kicked for lag. Aaaaaaaaaaaah.
Its actually slower than my previous Eircon regular 3mb Broadband package (but that was a lot dearer). You just can't feckin win here.

Try these for speed tests:
http://www.bplspeedtest.com/speed-test.php
http://www.auditmypc.com/internet-speed-test.asp
http://homepage.tinet.ie/~leslie/testpage.htm
http://bandwidthplace.com/speedtest/

Each time I test I get different results (of course) but I dont even get half the speed of what Im supposed to be getting, sometimes it even times out on a test. Doh!