[SWLUG] Introduction/ ADSL in cardiff

[Steve Hill]

On Fri, 24 Feb 2006, Jonathan Wright wrote:

> A mate of mine had the same with NTL - he lived in the only house in the 
> street which couldn't be connected to Cable. They just ran out of spaces in 
> the distribution box on the street (the 'little' green boxes). Nothing they, 
> or he, could do!

My experience of NTL is similar, but combined with appauling customer 
service:

When I moved into my flat in July 2000 I phoned NTL to arrange 
installation of phone and TV (the cables were already there and just 
needed reconnecting).  I was informed that at the time it was 
analogue, but the digital systems were all in place and ready to go and 
would be turned on in November 2000.  Fair enough.

I was told that they wouldn't be able to send an engineer for 6 weeks to 
do the reconnection.  Slightly unhappy about this I agreed.

6 weeks later I took a afternoon off work and the engineer turned up, 
installed the cable TV and told me he just had to pop down the road to 
connect my phone line.  He never reappeared.  So I phoned customer 
services, waited on hold for 90 minutes and then asked what happened to 
the engineer...
"He wasn't able to connect you because there were no free connections in 
the multiplexor - we're arranging an upgrade to it and then you will be 
connected"
I was somewhat annoyed since they had already had 6 weeks to work out the 
multiplexor needed an upgrade.
"Ok, when will the upgrade be done"
"It's scheduled for 2 month's time"
Now very annoyed...

Over the next 2 months I made regular calls to their customer services 
line.  Usual call queuing times were *at least* 90 minutes and I would 
estimate about 30% of my calls were answered with an immediate hang-up 
(I've been told by various people who worked in the NTL call centres at 
the time that the penalties for not answering enough calls were reasonably 
harsh and so it encouraged them to increase the number of answered calls 
by hanging up immediately)

Some time towards the end of October 2000 they phoned to say they were 
sending an engineer out.  At first they said they would only send one out 
on a week day and only agreed to do a weekend when I flat out refused to 
take another half day off work.

The November roll-out of digital never happened (of course).

At the start of 2003 I got tired of waiting for them to get their finger 
out (still didn't have digital, hence no cable modem), cancelled my NTL 
contract and got a BT phone line, Sky Digital subscription and a PlusNet 
ADSL connection.  All that went very smoothly and I've been pretty happy 
with it all.

Some time in 2004 or 2005 an NTL salesman came around canvassing the area 
trying to sell the "new" digital services which had only just been rolled 
out (remember they originally said November 2000).
"What kind of internet connection do you have" he says
"DSL" I say
<confused look> "Is that some kind of broadband?"
(!)

Needless to say, there's no way I'd ever use NTL again.

-- 

  - Steve
    xmpp:steve at nexusuk.org   sip:steve at nexusuk.org   http://www.nexusuk.org/

      Servatis a periculum, servatis a maleficum - Whisper, Evanescence