ESB killed my NTL

Quigs Snr

Power cut last week, power down for 7 hours to my whole estate and several others, when it came back my NTL was not working (broadband and tv). Called out NTL and they arrived yesterday.

They believe that whatever ESB did they fired a huge current into the house which tried to find earth through the NTL cables thus burning them out. The NTL box at the front of the house has a charred and split cable in it, whilst the inside of the box is soot damaged. In the meantime one of the NTL outlets in one of the rooms has blackening i.e. fire damage for 3 or 4 inches all around it.

I was advised to call ESB, which I did. They took my number and told me a station manager would get back to me (he didn't, this was 24hours ago).

Now the bad part. Mine is a 3 storey house and the cables come in underground. A couple of years ago I refused extra connections from NTL because it would mean running a cable from a box on the ground floor at the front of the house, up to the living room on floor 2, drilling a hole in the wall and then running cables all along the inside of the house in plain view. My other current connection is on the top floor. So NTL are saying that they will not be able to repair the current cabling the way it was, instead they will have to deface and devalue my property.

In the meantime they also think that ESB should pay, which I would have to agree with. Any thoughts or advice ? What are my rights here. To be honest I would like an ESB managers head delivered to me in a box, but I would settle for my house being put back 100% the way it was.

Gillo

Don't ESB have a customer charter for levels of service?

It could be worth making another call with a copy of that to hand.

I'd also get back onto NTL, it's them you pay for the service and they are not providing it. Let them do the footwork with ESB and in the mean time get your service back up and running.

That said I've heard bad stories about their customer service.
The smiley doesn't mean anything- my daughter wanted me to post it!!

DeiseGal

Quigs Snr wrote: »

Power cut last week, power down for 7 hours to my whole estate and several others, when it came back my NTL was not working (broadband and tv). Called out NTL and they arrived yesterday.

They believe that whatever ESB did they fired a huge current into the house which tried to find earth through the NTL cables thus burning them out. The NTL box at the front of the house has a charred and split cable in it, whilst the inside of the box is soot damaged. In the meantime one of the NTL outlets in one of the rooms has blackening i.e. fire damage for 3 or 4 inches all around it.

I was advised to call ESB, which I did. They took my number and told me a station manager would get back to me (he didn't, this was 24hours ago).

Now the bad part. Mine is a 3 storey house and the cables come in underground. A couple of years ago I refused extra connections from NTL because it would mean running a cable from a box on the ground floor at the front of the house, up to the living room on floor 2, drilling a hole in the wall and then running cables all along the inside of the house in plain view. My other current connection is on the top floor. So NTL are saying that they will not be able to repair the current cabling the way it was, instead they will have to deface and devalue my property.

In the meantime they also think that ESB should pay, which I would have to agree with. Any thoughts or advice ? What are my rights here. To be honest I would like an ESB managers head delivered to me in a box, but I would settle for my house being put back 100% the way it was.

Hi,

My name is Sonia.
I had the same problem and my house is also a 3 storey house. I think we live in the same street. I live in number 12.

I rang ESB and today a lady call me back saying to give all the bills to ESB on the Gracedieu road and they will pay. NTL also came today and fix the problem. If you want you can call up and Martin (my fiance) and I will give more information on it. ESB told us that on the same street it happened on 6 houses.

I hope it helps

Sonia

Davy

Best of knowledge ESB don't guarantee supply. If it was current it would have blown your main fuse which is 80amp or 63amp. Was this affected?
The customer charter referred too, deals with customer outage times, low voltage complaints and other problems see here

A more likely scenario would be a voltage surge, which could be prevented by a surge adapter. 230v is normal, but voltage is accepted +/- 6% 207v - 244v

Quigs Snr

Thanks DeiseGal, I got sorted in the end, the damage wasn't as bad as they first feared. They were able to salvage my cable. Number 19 wasn't so lucky I hear, he was so badly damaged, the boxes literally exploded off the wall and from what I hear its a train wreck in there. Mine merely melted and did a bit of damage to the wall in the immediate vicinity, but somehow the cable survived. They replaced the box outside my house and one of the connections inside and I was sorted.

NTL get a lot of bad press on here, but to be fair to them, they didn't mess about in the end. Credit where its due. I believe the issue arose from builders hitting a cable on the Carrickpherish road, so NTL are charging the ESB who in turn are charging the builders.

Sponge Bob

ESB earthed, NTL caught the Earth and toasted.

Good luck with our corrupt regulators, I would hassle the Lekky Regulator not that shower in Comreg.

Hoagy

Quite likely to have been caused by ferroresonance.

ted1

the ntl gear should be isolated from the ESB supply. its a funny situation