ntl Hell
Ah the joys of dealing with British companies. We finally decided that we wanted cable TV rather than freeview to hopefully get better reception and more channels. We’re not allowed to mount a satellite dish outside our flat, so thought that our only option was ntl (they have connections already in every room). The first fishy thing about dealing with ntl, is that we found we couldn’t just order cable television, we had to also order a phone line with them. Finally decided, why not, and made the order. The technician came out to install, said we had to wait a few hours for the cable to start working (why is this always the excuse when something doesn’t work right away?) and left. He left us with a box that kept rebooting itself. Nice, huh? So I called back ntl, explained the problem, and they booked another appointment for a tech to come out and fix the problem. To add insult to injury, they give you a 6 hour window which you have to wait around for the tech to come out. I thought 4 hours was bad! Tech came out, swapped out the box, explained that it would reboot once or twice to download our channels and left. Box number 2 kept rebooting itself every five minutes, and then, to make things interesting would occasionally freeze as well. Called ntl again, another appointment for a tech, more waiting… Tech came out tried a third box, and surprise, it did the same thing. He left us with the second box and promised he would call by noon with a solution. I wasn’t surprised or amused when he didn’t call. Called them back around 2, they promised that someone would call back before 5. They really are a bunch of jokers at ntl. No call, I called at 5:30, spoke with a customer service rep and told him that they had until 10:30 the next morning to fix our problem and give us functional television or we would cancel and demand a full refund. I guess that’s one way to avoid a 6 hour service window. Same tech came out at 9:30 gave us a fourth box, and ran out the door assuring me that this box wouldn’t reboot itself. By the time it took me to walk from the front door back to the living room, guess what. Yup, the box was already rebooting itself. He disappeared really fast. I ran down the stairs after him and he was already gone. Called back ntl and tried to cancel. I was told only Allen could do this since the account was in his name. While I was waiting on hold to be told this, I did find a great website. Turns out, ntl basically just sucks, their technology sucks and their service sucks. At least I knew I wasn’t the only person who had wasted hours of their life to try to get functional television. Allen called them and in only a half an hour cancelled our account and was assured that we would not be billed for the week and a half of broken service they had provided us with.
One would hope that this story would have a happy ending here, but when I checked our bank account today, I found that they had indeed direct debited us for the entire bill. I called them and spoke with billing and the representative their told me our account had been turned back on. I was dumbstruck and informed her that we had not authorised our services to be reconnected. Why would we? We had already given them 4 chances to get it right. She reassured me that we would get a refund noted on our next bill and would then be able to call them and request a check be sent out. Hopefully they’ll get it right this time, although I’m not holding my breath.
