NTL Cock Up

Seth Brundle

I have been with €ircon BB for about 4 years - reliable but expensive.

Anyhow I decided to take the eplunge and go with NTL with a view of setting up with blueface. I rang up NTL customer services [sic] on 19th Jan and set it up for an engineer to come here today (Feb 3rd) in the am. The engineer was to call me before arriving. I also signed up to direct debit for my account.
I rang €ircon last Monday and had them cancel my BB for yesterday, which they did.
Sat around waiting for NTL this morning and at 12 I decided to ring NTL and see what the craic was. As it turns out, there is no record of my order.
The support member I was talking to is a supervisor and told me that he would see if my install could be done today but failing this, it would be done next week. So far no positive news has come through and at this hour seems doubtful.
I rang NTL again a few minutes ago to find out where this all was and was told by the girl that the person I spoke to earlier was away on lunch or something and would call me sometime. She then went on to tell me that it may be because my account was in arrears. But sure its in arrears because the dopey bitch on the 19th never processed my direct debit mandate!
Have I just made a bad move by moving from one bad company to another?

PixelTrawler

NTL is a service you sit and pray never breaks because you dont want to have to attempt to get support...

Having said that once your up and running Blueface seems to work well on it. ( Talking about Blueface, other companys could do well to learn how to offer good service from them - best support ive come across so far )

My main gripe apart from the slow downloads the odd time, is the ping to game servers which is not good for me at least, although others with NTL find it ok

Seth Brundle

Im just after re-reading the email sent by the fella I was dealing with yesterday. The email was supposed (as I requested and it was agreed upon) meant to be sent to someone who could escalate my case with me cc'ed on it.
Looking at it now, there is no other recipient and the sender's email address is xxxx@zefone.com - WTF? Surely NTL give their staff an ntl.ie address?

thefinalstage

I believe that zefone is a partner of/parent company of NTL.

JNive

this must be who is running the new VoIP/Digital Phone system they are getting going

Seth Brundle

Spoke to them this morning.
Apparently they will not order BB for me because my balance has not been paid.
Also it appears that a customer service manager would not speak to me, nor would the agent give me the managers name.
The agent also strangely said that there is no customer service department when I asked to speak to a customer service manager!!!

PixelTrawler

Are you saying you set up a direct debit, They failed to set it up properly, have made an attempt to charge so now your ntl account is in arrears and now wont fulfill your order that you set up the direct debit for in the first place:eek:

It looks like you gone through their support processes so your next options are Comreg ( Comreg may not do anything about cable broadband ) and/or the consumer association.

The other alternative is to pay the balance by credit card, get your account out of arrears, get the BB and get them to make sure the direct debit is set up correctly. Might be quicker... ( and don't expect an apology for their mess! )

Seth Brundle

I called them on Jan 19th to order BB and was asked if I wanted to set up DD. I agreed and gave the operator my bank details.
It now appears that the entire call never happened as there is no record of it or my BB order or my DD request. My last bill which I was led to believe would be taken by DD remains outstanding.

I will take the last option you suggested but Im really pissed off and dislike being made feel like Im resonsible for the entire mess.

PixelTrawler

I totally understand you being peeved at the situation. Its pathetic the lengths we have to go some times in this country to resolve issues because at the end of the day there is little in the way of consumer protection and very little you can do about companies behaving this way...

Except of course not take their service but this of course means you end up losing out too...

Kenpo

kbannon,

My complaint letter is on its way to the MD of NTL.

They are the biggest shower to W*ankers I have ever come across.