Chris_H
10-10-2004, 00:51
Hi all,
Around 3 weeks ago now, I started to experience around 5% packet loss on my NTL cable connection in Witney, Oxfordshire (just outside Oxford). This happens from time to time, and thus I thought nothing of it, until it got worse and worse, becoming more like 50 or 60%, varying depending on time of day. I checked with two friends in the town, who informed me they had the same problem, so I left it, assuming such a severe problem not just confined to me alone would be detected by NTL.
On Monday 27th September, I decided that they obviously weren't going to do anything about it, so I commenced efforts to contact Technical Support via 0845 6500121. I tried for 30 minutes before work, 30 minutes after work, and an hour every evening, all week, and didn't succeed in getting through until Saturday evening at around 23:45!!! Imagine my relief when I got through quickly on this attempt, and the man I spoke to seemed to know what he was talking about. He told me he too could see packet loss at two points on the network that my connection is carried through, and he was thus going to escalate my fault report on two levels. I enquired as to whether the fault was affecting a lot of people, he said that yes indeed it was, and would receive a very high priority, telling me to call back if I didn't see any improvement during the course of the week. I went to bed frustrated that it had taken so long to get through, but relieved that some kind of action seemed to be occuring.
Over the course of this week the connection got nothing but worse, and throughout Wednesday the modem was losing signal several times an hour for several minutes at a time. On Friday evening at around 20:00, the working week being over, I started trying to contact Technical Support again, to report the severe lack of any progress. I had also noted that for a fault that was supposedly affecting many other customers, nothing regarding my area had appeared on the service status page of www.ntlworld.com (http://www.ntlworld.com). I had no success whatsoever getting through on Friday, for much of the evening I was hearing a message telling me that all the staff were busy and to call back, and hanging up - every time I redialled in an attempt to get through, to hear this, presumably I will have been charged a call connection charge of 5 pence - brilliant.
On Saturday evening, I tried once again to get through, for several hours repeatedly paying the 5 pence a time for the priveledge of hearing that all the staff are engaged, until 00:00 when it was replaced with a message saying the office is closed.
I am at my wit's end with NTL. Thankfully, I have only had to contact technical support 5 times in the approximately 3 years I have been a customer, but not once was it straightforward and not once did they keep any promises initially, and for a period of 2 months I had a latency of 500ms + to all locations, giving up on tech support as they flatly refused to admit any fault, until the problem luckily went away on its own. Once we had an intermittent connection problem that they thought was local to our modem or our coax, and I took a total of 7 days off work in a month, one of which had to be taken as unpaid leave as I ran out of paid leave, and not once did they show up - the only time an NTL engineer has ever set foot in this house at the time promised is the day the service was installed!
The line quality of my BT line is being tested by an engineer on Monday morning to confirm I can order ADSL, and if all goes well I'll be cancelling my NTL subscription immediately, as well as persuing them to obtain a refund for the period during which my service has been ridiculously poor. Should my line fail the test, I have no idea what I'll do - if anyone skilled in getting blood out of a stone has any suggestions on how to get decent support out of NTL instead of a bunch of lies, I'd be very appreciative :confused:
Around 3 weeks ago now, I started to experience around 5% packet loss on my NTL cable connection in Witney, Oxfordshire (just outside Oxford). This happens from time to time, and thus I thought nothing of it, until it got worse and worse, becoming more like 50 or 60%, varying depending on time of day. I checked with two friends in the town, who informed me they had the same problem, so I left it, assuming such a severe problem not just confined to me alone would be detected by NTL.
On Monday 27th September, I decided that they obviously weren't going to do anything about it, so I commenced efforts to contact Technical Support via 0845 6500121. I tried for 30 minutes before work, 30 minutes after work, and an hour every evening, all week, and didn't succeed in getting through until Saturday evening at around 23:45!!! Imagine my relief when I got through quickly on this attempt, and the man I spoke to seemed to know what he was talking about. He told me he too could see packet loss at two points on the network that my connection is carried through, and he was thus going to escalate my fault report on two levels. I enquired as to whether the fault was affecting a lot of people, he said that yes indeed it was, and would receive a very high priority, telling me to call back if I didn't see any improvement during the course of the week. I went to bed frustrated that it had taken so long to get through, but relieved that some kind of action seemed to be occuring.
Over the course of this week the connection got nothing but worse, and throughout Wednesday the modem was losing signal several times an hour for several minutes at a time. On Friday evening at around 20:00, the working week being over, I started trying to contact Technical Support again, to report the severe lack of any progress. I had also noted that for a fault that was supposedly affecting many other customers, nothing regarding my area had appeared on the service status page of www.ntlworld.com (http://www.ntlworld.com). I had no success whatsoever getting through on Friday, for much of the evening I was hearing a message telling me that all the staff were busy and to call back, and hanging up - every time I redialled in an attempt to get through, to hear this, presumably I will have been charged a call connection charge of 5 pence - brilliant.
On Saturday evening, I tried once again to get through, for several hours repeatedly paying the 5 pence a time for the priveledge of hearing that all the staff are engaged, until 00:00 when it was replaced with a message saying the office is closed.
I am at my wit's end with NTL. Thankfully, I have only had to contact technical support 5 times in the approximately 3 years I have been a customer, but not once was it straightforward and not once did they keep any promises initially, and for a period of 2 months I had a latency of 500ms + to all locations, giving up on tech support as they flatly refused to admit any fault, until the problem luckily went away on its own. Once we had an intermittent connection problem that they thought was local to our modem or our coax, and I took a total of 7 days off work in a month, one of which had to be taken as unpaid leave as I ran out of paid leave, and not once did they show up - the only time an NTL engineer has ever set foot in this house at the time promised is the day the service was installed!
The line quality of my BT line is being tested by an engineer on Monday morning to confirm I can order ADSL, and if all goes well I'll be cancelling my NTL subscription immediately, as well as persuing them to obtain a refund for the period during which my service has been ridiculously poor. Should my line fail the test, I have no idea what I'll do - if anyone skilled in getting blood out of a stone has any suggestions on how to get decent support out of NTL instead of a bunch of lies, I'd be very appreciative :confused: