Portsmouth Phone Problems

[Graham]

Anyone else having problems receiving calls around the Portsmouth area?

Since last night when someone's tried to call either of my numbers the phone gives a sort of strangled ring sound once or twice then stops.

If I try to phone either of them (from the other line or my mobile) I get a ringing tone once or twice and then silence.

I tried to phone NTL last night, but, of course they'd all gone home and there was a recorded message saying "leave a voice mail only if it's an emergency"

Oh, and the reason I'm typing this is that I'm currently sitting on hold on their fault report line with the phone away from my ear to try to avoid hearing their bloody irritating music that is reminscent of the soundtrack of a 70's porn movie (err, allegedly! ) interspersed with an annoyingly cheerful recorded female voice repeatedly advertising NTL products

[Rob]

Looks like nobody else has suffered. Presumably faults have now answered you?

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Rob C

Looks like nobody else has suffered. Presumably faults have now answered you?

Eventually, but they won't get on to it before tomorrow

This is even better when I needed to get in touch with a magazine publisher because they misread an e-mail and thought I wanted to put an ad in another mag that they produce, so because they couldn't call me, decided to charge my card anyway!

I've e-mailed them now to tell them that I *don't* want the ad and they should refund me, but I've not got a reply yet.

[Graham]

An update to this:

An engineer came around today and firstly started blaming my phone for not ringing properly, until I pointed out that I was having problems on *both* my lines!

After checking out various things (apparently nobody else in the area has reported faults) he said he'd get ntl to replace the cable outside my house, but the appointment wouldn't be until *next Wednesday*!

He then said that if I phoned up Customer Services they should be able to move this up sooner.

So when I phoned Customer Services the guy I spoke to said "I wish engineers would get on with their jobs and stop messing with ours because we can't change the date"!

The upshot of this is that I'm going to be stuck with dodgy phonelines for another *week* and them saying "oh, when it's fixed, phone us and we'll make sure you're not charged for that time" is no recompense (especially when I said "well if you know it's going to be next Wednesday, why not just refund me now?" to which the response was "well, it might not *be* next Wednesday if there's other problems...")

[Neil]

Originally Posted by Graham

<Snip>

One simple click for you Graham.

With BT, at least you get guarantees re phoneline repairs, EG they will divert your home phone to a mobile free of charge, & will refund you for each day it's out of action.

BT is the only way to go for home phone lines IMO, they simply offer things that the likes of ntl/TW cannot & do not.

BT Customer Service Guarantee link.

[Graham]

Originally Posted by Neil

One simple click for you Graham.

Thanks, but there's two not so small problems:

1) The existing BT line has been cut off (as in with a pair of wire cutters!) half way up the wall, meaning a new installation: £74.99

2) I need a second line for my business: another £74.99

That's £150 near as damn it to change suppliers and it's simply not worth it IMO.