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View Full Version : Seeking help with house move gone bad...


stevep1981
11-11-2006, 06:04
Hi all,

Been a lurker here for a while and have finally registered as I'm wondering if anyone can offer some help & advice with a nightmare of a house move that has gone really badly wrong...

I did a post about this at Digital Spy but got a PM from someone suggesting I post the story here, and to be honest I'm not sure why I didn't think of it in the first place! :dozey:

So if you're sitting comfortably, I'll begin. I will try and make this as brief as I can, but it's a long story. So apologies in advance...

I have been with NTL since Oct 2005, been very happy with the service up until now. Have a triple play deal - 4MB BB, Talk Unlimted phone, and Family Pack TV.

On or around 12th Oct I phoned home moving to arrange transfer of services to my new address. Agreed disconnection on Sat 21st october. My move in date for the new place was the 23rd but there were no installation techs available until Fri 27th so install was booked for that date. Agreed with the rep I spoke to that internet would go in one of the 2 bedrooms, STB in the living room, and I also organised a 2nd STB for the other bedroom.

On 18th Oct my services were disconnected. After much confusion and a call back to them on the 19th they eventually decided they couldn't turn my services back on and a £20 credit was put on my bill. These things happen so I wasn't that annoyed about it, although loss of e-mail before the move was a real pain.

Friday 27th Oct - installation day. Miserable tech turned up at 5.40pm complaining that he'd been called in from home as the tech who should have been doing the install was delayed. He had no paperwork for the job and so was not aware of anything that I'd agreed with NTL. As I was walking him around showing him where everything was going, he was saying, "It's all 3 services? f**k this, just what I need".

Internet was not installed in my bedroom as agreed - he connected my cable modem with a 30cm run of cable into the NTL point on the wall in the living room, behind the TV. He told me that the modem had to go next to the NTL point on the wall. The only reason he didn't want to run coax through the flat was that he wanted to get back home! :mad:

My neighbour asked him to move his van from in front of her garage and got a load of verbal off him, "wouldn't want your f**king car getting wet love." :shocked:

Where he drilled through the wall to install the second STB a lump of plaster fell out. And to top it all off, the phone wasn't working when he left, and he didn't have my PIN number for the internet, so even if I'd been able to use it I wouldn't have been able to, if you see what I mean.

On Monday 30th I rang up to complain (was working on the Saturday). Was told by the CS rep (who acted as if my call was a huge inconvenience) that the best he could do was offer a call back from an installations manager within 48 hours. Asked to speak to a CS manager and was told that nobody was on the floor. Told him I'd call back later, which I did, and was put straight through to a manager. He arranged a call back that evening from an installations manager, and an appointment was booked for him to visit Thursday afternoon, 2nd November. He also arranged an engineer for Wednesday 1st to fix the phone.

On the morning of the 1st as I was pulling out the furniture in preperation for the engineers visit I picked up my handset and got a dial tone. I therefore rang NTL and told them, and they cancelled the engineer that was booked for the 1st.

On the 2nd, the installations manager didn't show up. I rang on the 3rd to find out why, and was told that somebody had tried to call me on the afternoon of the 2nd to tell me that since I'd reported the phone working, the installations manager would no longer be visiting. I received no such call and asked for a call back from the manager I spoke to on the 30th, who had told me I could do that if I had any further problems.

By the 7th he still hadn't called me back so I rang again and asked to speak to another manager. I was told that none were available and that I could have a call back within 24 hours, at which point I told the CS rep that if that was the case then they could come and take my services out. At this point a manager miraculously became available...

I ran through the whole story with him and he told me than in light of how badly wrong everything had gone, he would need to escalate the case to the NTL area manager for my region. I asked him about agreeing some compensation, as I said that if they could cover the cost of a wireless router it would get the internet where I want it & bring the whole thing to a conclusion. He said this was for the area manager to authorise. I was told that the area manager would call me back within 24 hours.

48 hours later, I was called by a guy called Paul, who isn't in fact the area manager, he is the installations manager, and has no authority to discuss compensation or special arrangements. Best he could do is organise a visit by an installations supervisor to inspect the damage and move the internet into my bedroom. This is what was supposed to happen a week & a half ago. It's all well and good, but it involves me waiting in for another day, and if he isn't in a position to give me a credit, then who is? And who is to say that Monday's visit won't be the end of it all?

The point of all this is, that I've been misinformed on numerous occasions, I've not yet had a proper apology for this complete farce, I've spent an inordinate amount of time waiting around for phone calls and a visit that never happened, and it has taken NTL 2 weeks to get sorted something that should have been fixed within 48 hours. I have now been without my internet service for 3 weeks. Yet nobody seems interested and they don't seem to care about how they have treated someone who is, after all, the sort of customer profile they should be nurturing.

I should say at this point that apart from the CS rep who I first spoke to to report the bad installation, everyone I have spoken to has been very apologetic and helpful - they just don't seem to have the backup to be able to sort things out, management seem to have the staff bogged down in policies and procedures.

I am seriously considering leaving NTL - but I love the direction they are taking, what with the on demand stuff & 10MB broadband, and up until now I've had no problems. But I do feel that I am due some compensation for the mess they have made, & an explanation and apology.

So I'm wondering if it's possible for someone to offer some advice on the best way to go to register this as a formal complaint and get an investigation done into how something that should have been so simple could have gone so badly wrong?

Thanks for reading my little novel folks and here's hoping it gets sorted soon!

Cheers
Steve :)

bopdude
11-11-2006, 06:46
Well, what to say, firstly :welcome: to the forum.

Secondly, sounds like a right nightmare, I can't offer any advice myself, other than to say that somebody in the know will pick up on your post, the site does have NTL employees that post here ( of their own choice and doing ) that said, the team do have contacts within NTL's network to pass certain complaints on to, to escalate if needs be, hang in there, it really is 'better the devil you know' IMHO :tu:

:welcome: again, stick around, it's quite friendly around these parts :D

Jimlad59
11-11-2006, 13:28
Hi Stevep

Sorry to hear of your problems here's a link to someone that had a host of problems with NTL. Read it when you've got time because put beside your post, theirs is a novel. But within it is the address to the Customer Services Director so I copied it below. Hope you get some satisfaction. Sometimes the only way to improve the service is to complain to the right people

Jimlad59

http://www.blagger.com/db4/company_id/304/companyname/NTL-+-NTL-Home-+-NTL-World.html


Diane Desay
Customer Services Director
NTL
Bartley Wood Business Park
Bartley Way
Hook
Hants
RG27 9UP.