[HourOfTheWolf]

In an ideal world you'd be right, but let's be honest if you got service like this from every company then it wouldn't be such a big deal when one firm does the right thing.

In line with, I suspect, a lot of people I have always found ntl to be great right up until the point where a minor technicality means you have to phone the customer service number.

Traditionally this is the point where I would cheerfully exchange various internal organs not to be on hold for 40 minutes before speaking to someone who has the appearance of having undergone brain death!

I did read the handout that came with the bill that said ntl were investing millions in upgrading customer service and I did give a shallow and cynical laugh out loud on reading it.

Well it appears I have to eat my words as the last four times I have had to call customer service (to deal with one technical problem and two individual package changes and a swap to the value pack deal) I have had the phone answered within a minute and spoken to someone who could actually deal with the problem then and there. On the one occasion when they promised to phone back, they actually did!

There are people out there who would say this was pure luck, or "that's what you get when you call at midnight", but the calls were at different times and for different things. Once might be lucky; twice might be coincidence, but four times seems to me to be getting it right.

Everyone bitches about ntl, but for those of us who have had cable since the NYNEX days and who remember just how "rat droppingly" awful Cable & Wireless were at running domestic communications (look at Bulldog Broadband today for the same levels of love, care and attention from C&W), ntl do seem to be turning it around successfully.

Well done!