All entries for Monday 27 February 2006

NTL …. customer services rating = 0%

Guess what? I’ve joined the “I BLOODY HATE NTL” bandwagon.

Scenario:
Upgraded to 10MBit. Currently on 2MB on a Terayon Modem.
Only 5MBit can be achieved according to www.adslguide.org.uk

6:30pm

Called NTL Customer Support.

“We currently have 75 callers waiting to speak to a customer services advisor, the wait time will be approximately 4 minutes…”

They say that some cable modems cap out at 5 to 8.5MBit. I am entitled to a free cable modem upgrade to cater for the 10MBit speeds. So they pass me to Broadband Technical Support to ask for the sales department to sort it out.

Broadband Technical Support asks me to some really long ass winded series of tests using their appaulingly bad “Test My Speed” website. This is simply a random 50MB file dumped on a webserver. Download with Internet Explorer and save it to the desktop and look at the transfer rate (blah blah blah, very ‘sophisisticated’ speed test). This peaks at 280kb/s. I give them their MAC address, they disconnect my cable modem remotely and reconnect again, by the time this got reconnected, this took 10 minutes, and by then my mobile phone died of battery.

Called up Broadband Technical Support again. This time it was a different person, explained the situation again. In the slowest possible manner(and perhaps the most dumbest idiots english ever), they ask me to go back to their shitty “Test My Speed” website. I confirm the transfer rate (again)... it’s still the same (again), they ask for my MAC address (again), they disconnect/reconnect me (again). Thankfully this took shorter time. “Test My Speed” website again, download 50MB file AGAIN …. TRANSFER RATE IS THE SAME …. AGAIN!!! They tell me it’s definately the modem is capping out at 5MBit … (yes, even customer services know that), ..... they DON’T offer free replacement modem because my current one is too old and that it’s still working ... (WTF??????), they transfer me back to Customer Services to sort out this modem business with them.

7:30pm – Called up Customer Services

“We currently have 90 callers waiting to speak to a customer services advisor, the wait time will be approximately 4 minutes…”

I’m getting a little pissed off now. Spoke to some nice woman on the other side. She also agrees that Broadband Technical support offer a free cable modem … (deja vu?). No-one in customer services can arrange cable modems to be delivered. They pass me back to Broadband Technical Support …... AGAAAAAAAAAAAAAIN!!!!!! DOUBLE WTF????

7:45PM – I got cut off …. %!$!!!!

7:50PM – Called up Broadband Technical Support, long ass wait again.

Person on the other end spoke to his supervisor. He cannot provide me a free cable modem without paying £60 for it (Isn’t your rip-off package of £34.99/month STILL not enough???). I have to speak to customer services AGAIN….. and request a 3-way conference with Broadband Technical support.

8:10PM – Called up Customer Support …. AGAIN!

“We are currently closed, we are open from Monday to …. ” CLICK

_following several minutes of kicking my cable modem around the room, I finally left myself with 3 options …

1) Call up those blatantly proven useless idiots at Customer Services and create threats to send a nuclear warhead to NTL HQ.

2) Find the nearest sledge hammer and smash up the cable modem to pieces. (Yay! It’s faulty, so they should replace my modem for free!)

3) Quit NTL completely, and go through the painful and expensive hassle of getting a BT line, ADSL modem and ADSL router, and find a decent ADSL provider.

I can also explicitly prove the following facts:

1) Customer Services and Broadband Technical Support don’t get on well.

2) Customer Services are more knowledgable than Broadband Technical Support.

3) NTL cuts people off the telephone queue, because they don’t like receiving complaints, nor do they care about them.

4) NTL provides the worst ever customer support I’ve ever experienced.

: 27 Feb 2006 20:52 |  Tags: Customer Ntl Services |  Comments (18) |  Close comments |  Report a problem