NTL Business - no new customers?

[Captain Lard]

Hello everyone - new here, write about the small business IT marketplace for my sins. Found out today that NTL aren't taking on any new business accounts - not for ISDN, broadband, nothing - until Christmas.

Anyone know why? Are they just trying to keep a lid on provisioning costs, or will NTL business be scaled right down? Are they still pitching for large-scale business, like the public sector stuff?

Many thanks to anyone who can shed some light!

[obvious]

Barclay Knapp said they were "concentrating on other things" in the Q1 Conference call. What that means is anyones guess.

[Captain Lard]

Originally posted by obvious
Barclay Knapp said they were "concentrating on other things" in the Q1 Conference call. What that means is anyones guess.

Thanks - just listened to it. They have it on media player on the site, with the slides and a picture of Knapp. Is that a syrup he wears, or does he just have weird hair like in a Dilbert cartoon?

Odd thing is he said Business was concentrating on other things in the context of moving away from providing lots of stuff, includiing off-net and CPE, to selling nothing but on-net voice/data services.

But if they're not selling anything at all that's a bit of a change from the Q1 conference call!

[Tod]

Believe me, when you are a customer of NTL business it is impossable to buy anything!!

[meld51]

Hello...where do you get to see the conference call? I'd like to see it!

[obvious]

http://www.ntl.com/locales/gb/en/investors/webcast/archive.asp#

It's a bit tricky to download it from the above location. I mp3'd it here (http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paulhanlon/audio/).

[Escapee]

ntl's business department is in a shambles, they have many business customers who have not paid bills.
In many cases it's not because the customer hasn't tried to pay.

ntl has also given away services for free to customers that they haven't billed for years ( I know examples), and things such as a large CCTV system for a local authority that ntl installed all the equipment and decided not to charge the customer for the equipment or labour costs because they would no longer support this product.

No longer support it, and they had not even finished the installation, the business departments lack of ability is legendary in ntl.

I guess they have an even bigger shake up on the horizon!

[Captain Lard]

Originally posted by Escapee
ntl's business department is in a shambles, they have many business customers who have not paid bills.
In many cases it's not because the customer hasn't tried to pay.

ntl has also given away services for free to customers that they haven't billed for years ( I know examples), and things such as a large CCTV system for a local authority that ntl installed all the equipment and decided not to charge the customer for the equipment or labour costs because they would no longer support this product.

No longer support it, and they had not even finished the installation, the business departments lack of ability is legendary in ntl.

I guess they have an even bigger shake up on the horizon!

Thanks very much Escapee - are there particular regions where its more of a shambles or is it endemic?

[Escapee]

Captain Lard saidThanks very much Escapee - are there particular regions where its more of a shambles or is it endemic?

I only know of detailed problems in the South Wales franchise area, but to be fair business was allways known for giving things away for free to attract customers and generally being a lot of "Hooray Henries" as they went on trips to celebrate the latest product etc.

There was allways a lot of fuss over salaries because business used to pay far more than the home/residential division for the same type of position.
I think the bubble has finally burst for ntl business, it's been a long time coming and I guess some people will have to justify their positions.

I know of another very large company that had unpaid phone bills for a number of years, it was partly their own fault. the main problem was they didn't know where the phone lines terminated and most of them were at remote sites with modems on them.
ntl business couldn't find out from their own records (a lot of this was off-net) so the customer refused to pay.

I know this went on for a number of years, I understand it was sorted recently as business are I guess being whipped into shape.

These sort of things were typical in ntl, the problems that customers know about are generally the tip of a very large iceberg, the amount of problems behind the customer facing scenes are huge.:(

I guess they have seen these wasted Millions as small fry compared to the billions they were in debt, I suppose it's would be like us being overdrawn with the bank for £30K and lighting cigarettes with £10 notes.:D