NTL @ home

[Nij.UK]

Hi,

 

does anyone have broadband from NTL at there home, the speed for the 2mb was going to go up to 4mb and i was wondering if anyone's had been upgraded yet?

 

Thanks

[SpuffMonkey]

Nope. But I did get a 50% cost reduction by phoning customer service and saying I was thinking of going to TalkTalk...

[Nij.UK]

yea ive got that reduction aswell cause i had a few issues with them and told them that the service was crap and i was thinking about moving

[Gatt]

We're on their 1MB broadband - not gonna change it just yet as we'll be moving house in a few months.

 

After we move i'm looking at getting the speed increased and if possible a static IP too.

[Nij.UK]

do NTL do static IP for home users? im not sure if they do, and if they do, will you have to pay extra?

 

I wouldnt mind getting a static IP address

[apeo]

What are your experiences of ntl? I have a mate who has it and he seems to have is service down more than its up..

[Nij.UK]

well the problem that i had was, ive been with them since they started, so a good few years now, and my modem was old and coming to the end of its life, and they said this was the reason i was having a lot of down time.... so they said engineers would come and they never turned up on the days they were ment to come.....

 

so they asked me to pay for a modem upgrade, which i wasnt pleased about at all... and that was thrown back in there face, along with there poor service to keeping to there times....

 

so i complained about that to the customer services and basically i was offered either the 10MB broadband at 25.99 or to stay on the 2mb broadband and they half the price, so i decided to say at 2mb...

 

when u kick up a fuss with them, they do something about it, thats my experence from the past...

 

one example... the council dug up the road and took out my cable connection, told ntl and they said it was up to the council to pay, which i told them thats not my problem... and then they gave me a date ( 3 weeks later) to come and fix it, and i said i wanted to leave, and believe it or not they were at home the next day...

[Andrew_C]

Been with them 18 months, and apart from one dept saying they would install on "Day X", and street digging gang saying "Day Y", I haven't had any problems.

[indie]

What are your experiences of ntl? I have a mate who has it and he seems to have is service down more than its up..

I've had nothing but utter crap off them!

 

Ordered triple plan online, got an email saying I wasn't in an NTL area, rang them up pointing out that the shop below me has an NTL phoneline and I live on the main road in my area, and there's an NTL green cabinet less then 50 meters away. Surely there has to be some duct going past my property somewhere!

 

They said whoops, our mistake, we'll get it installed next week, that date comes and goes still no NTL. I rang them they said that the recent block paving of some shops inbetween me and the green box had sealed up their access hatches. So they said they had to notify the council and do the work on a Sunday to keep fuss to a minimum.

 

They come a few weeks later, poke the floor with some rods and go, I hear nothing for a few days so I ring them, they say they need an actual consturction crew as the duct is damaged.

 

Again a few weeks later they come and fix the problem and install the services. The idiot who came to install my phone line drilled from the outsite in and knocked a load of plaster off the wall, he then said he would come back and fix it, which he didnt.

 

Now they keep billing me twice for my Family Pack Digital TV and Broadband, every month I ring them up, they remove the second family pack from my account and my digital TV goes off, I ring them back up and explain, they appologise and I get the channels back. EVERY MONTH!

 

I fired a letter off to NTL by Recorded Delivery, I got a letter from Royal Mail a few days later saying they refused it, so I sent it Special Delivery, 3 weeks later I got a letter saying someone would look into my complaint. 3 weeks on, I've heard nothing.

 

Oh and there was the time my digital TV went on holiday, rang up NTL and they explained there was a break in a local cable and it should be fixed soon. Funny that I was ringing them from my NTL land line and my Internet was still working, they then changed the story.

 

They're almost as bad as Powergen who took 4 months to merge my Gas and Electricity accounts onto one bill, every week I would ring up, explain what I want them to do, every week I would get the same answer, "It'll be done in 5-7 days".

 

END RANT

[indiegirl]

NTHell... don't get me started!!

 

(nor about Powergen!)

[GrumbleDook]

I have been through the NTL problems ... and compared with BT I still think they are better.

 

As for Powergen ... I am glad I moved to British Gas ... they may be a few pounds more each year (and only a few) but at least they get the bills right, my name right, my address right, and actually call you back if you need them too.

 

The problem I have with NTL is that when we have a brown out they need to reset the local exchange otherwise things are pants ... if they work at all ...

 

And they always want to send an engineer to my house to check it ... and then say that they have not had problems from anyone else ... and the fact that I am using my mobile to ring and tell them of a problem because none of the local phones are working doesn't explain why?

[indiegirl]

I think the amount of ranting about NTHell should suggest to Nij that they're perhaps not a viable option ;-)

[Andrew_C]

Don't think that BT are any better. The amount of sh1t my folks went through after requesting what should have been a simple change was quite untrue!

[E1uSiV3]

WEll im with Telewest who have been swallowed up and i have noticed a drop in service quality over the last year so god help us all...

[Norphy]

Well, I'm going to go against the flow here and sing NTL's praises. I've been with them coming on for five years and have had broadband for about three. Yes, there has been downtime but whenever I've called NTL I've got through to them quickly, if they've had to send engineers out (which they've done twice) the engineer has appeared when they said he would and got the problem sorted. I couldn't be happier.

[SpuffMonkey]

OK - here's my 2p worth - been with them about 5 years, and have 95% of the time found the connection extremely reliable and fast. Alas the customer service and add ons (email servers, news servers etc) have been unspeakably bad at times - so I pay extra and get those elsewhere.

 

The 2MB connection rarely gives less than 240k download speeds, which I appreciate, having seen the local ADSL speed which is pants.

 

My IP address has changed twice in 2 years

 

I only pay by electronic transfer after we had a difference of opinions about billing

 

NTL : "It is not our policy to correct an incorrect billing"

Me : "Its not my policy to pay an incorrect billing"

 

They are supposed to charge extra for this - but are so badly organised that they never have.

[mac_shinobi]

Trying to logon to yahoo mail ( Parents are with NTL for internet ) and we share internet via Belkind54G router and there is a belkin wireless range extender.

 

I can now get to the yahoo mail page but it refuses to let me logon ( wtf !! ) ??

[indie]

I thought I better say that although my experience with NTL customer services has been less than helpful, when it works their service is excellent. When I lived with my parents we had broadband for 5 years with not a single problem, no billing errors or anything.

 

Even though I'm still waiting for someone to get back to me about my many months of problems for what I pay to NTL I get what I want cheaper than having to go to BT for a landline, Sky for TV and someone else for DSL.

[sahmeepee]

OK, weighing in for the :thumbup: side now. I've had 2 outages with NTL in 3 years. One was due to their lame billing department who happily accepted my direct debits for 4 months without telling me that my initial payment hadn't gone through - then cut me off without any warning or explanation at all. I had that sorted out in less than a day.

 

On the plus side, their speeds are exactly as promised for me. I get a rock solid 3mbps download. Unfortunately the 10mbit upgrade they started advertising in December hasn't materialised and it seems I'm now paying more than the 4mbit customers for slower speeds.

 

Why am I pro-NTL then? Just because I've found the quality of the connection to be very good - fast, dependable if not the cheapest. I'm on about my 4th IP address in 3 years.

[ChrisC]

I nearly had an argument with an Ntl "engineer" over the phone, we had no internet for about a week (with spots of connection), phoned up, and the guy kept insisting our wireless network wasn't configured right and to use the "windows internet connection wizard" and I basically said what the f*** will that do, my wireless network works, and I'm a professional network technician. Basically we said shove it, can't be bothered with all this.

 

Couple minutes we phoned to cancel, and this person was much more helpful and actually told us the correct "initiation IP" or whatever it is, and it worked.

 

I can't stand engineers who know f*** all, and just have a list of instructions to speel off to you!

 

Chris

[ChrisC]

Mind you, apart from that rough patch, it's generally pretty reliable.

 

I have a relative that works for ntl, and one problem is the "hubs" (let's call them exchanges, sounds better) they are using are all old cable and wireless, meaning they're starting to break, and are over subscribed, don't have the money etc to replace them, so i'm not sure what it's going to be like in the future.

 

Chris

[EvLPhenom]

I've been with them for the best part of 18 months in general they been okay but when there is a problem they always point the finger to your computer eg my internet connection really sucks whats the matter with it. i get the response it must be your computer

 

this gets really annoying when 3 other people in your area are having the same problem.

 

and jsut lately my connection is faster but seems to be down more than its up. :twisted: