NTL "Customer" support - 10Meg performance drop :/ [Archive]

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Robjones23

07-01-2006, 22:30

Ello all, just wanted to post regarding NTL's customer support, or lack of, when calling regarding broadband issues.

I spoke to a gent in india which already gave NTL a minus point (I'm sure i'm not the only one that, regardless of how good the indian operator is, I get off the phone ****ed off because of the language barrier).

Anyway, I told him that my broadband speed has decreased recently since just around xmas time. I told him that downloads from microsoft.com are hovering at around 25KB/sec.

So the first thing he asked was if i had a router? I said yes and he immediately blamed the router as the problem. I told him I'd had the router for a couple of years now and never had a problem and that i'd tried the broadband without the router connected and had the same problem.

Immediately he said that lots of customers in my area had phone up regarding this problem.

WHAT THE HELL?!?! He tells me it's the router, then when that theory is quashed he tells me that lots of people have been reporting the same issue. LIAR!!!

So we then went through some more tests involving msconfig (setting the safemode boot option with networking) which didn't resolve the problem.

He then told me to go via a proxy for which he gave me the IP. I told him this does improve the speed for IE, but won't affect my other apps which are slow as S**T.

So he told me that now that we've done the proxy change, everything that NTL provides is working as it should be and that its the fault of the software providers that the app is running slowly!!!

I then dropped a bomb on him saying that the other app connects to news.ntlworld.com, an NTL service and that this IS their responsibility. Downloads from there used to be around 1.09MB/sec (note the big B not the little one!) and are now around 78KB.

So he tells me that the rules are that as no-one else has called up regarding this problem, it won't get escalated!!! WHAT?! Where's the customer in customer service!? So I had a rant and a rave to him that it's unacceptable and eventually he spoke to his manager and said he'd escalate it.

I asked him when I should expect a call to say its fixed and he told me I wouldn't get a call as the call centre is inbound only. so I aksed him if he can send emails from the call centre and he said yes, so asked him to email me. He said he couldn't email me because the system only lets him send an email while he's talking to the person.

LIAR LIAR LIAR!!!!!

Customer service has gone down hill and I've never, ever had a problem with broadband until just before xmas and I've been with them over 5 years now at three different addresses.

Why has everything gone to s**t?!

Excuse my rant but i had to get that off my chest!

-Rob

Russ

07-01-2006, 22:37

Sorry to hear about your troubles mate - PM me your name, address and account number and I'll pas this on to the site's contact within ntl on monday morning.

Jim galbally

08-01-2006, 11:25

thats what annoys me the most about NTL's operators, quite often they tell you blatant LIES. I've had it from tech support and customer service in the past

Chimaera

08-01-2006, 11:27

Yeah - never tell them you have a router because that is ALWAYS the problem!

Jim galbally

08-01-2006, 11:30

i to 2nd/3rd line support fo a few call centres with my job (IT Techy) so i visit some of them quite often and know the people etc. etc. now one thing they are told NEVER to do (and don't do) is LIE to the person on the other end of the phone. they can blag them with "i''m not allowed to do that, it's company policy" but they can never lie to them. it's VERY bad for customer service as it makes customers angry.

i think either NTL has a lot of bad staff working for them, or they are told they are allowed to lie on the phone.

OL1V3R

08-01-2006, 11:31

Its a shame really. NTL offer fantastic service, its just when something goes wrong or when you need to change something that it goes downhill.

We moved house recently, and we use the telephone number in the old house for business calls, so its very important we kept the number. Anyway- My mother made sure that we could keep the number, called NTL twice to confirm it, they said yes, for sure.

We move house, order telephone to be installed.. "Sorry, you're in a different exchange, we cant" .. Okay, fair enough its in a different exchange, but again why wasnt this checked beforehand? Its quite inconvenient.

Rone

08-01-2006, 18:30

Ive just gone through all this, even got a new Blue modem, and some very good customer care indeed.
BUT, it seems theres a lot of this about, mine went slower than dial up over Christmas, the engineer said he had seen a lot of this recently, and doubted that a new modem would fix it totally, but at least they made the effort.
Its really variable atm, and its nowhere near the solid reliable 3meg i have enjoyed for the last year, i hope it gets sorted, i dont really want to consider another provider. :(

city

08-01-2006, 19:15

My service has been very poor since I downgraded to the 10 Meg service.
I am currently getting 125kbps down and 454kbps up which is really poor.
I have never had anything better than 500kbps download from newsgroups.
Looks like I will be upgrading back to 2Mb shortly or maybe try another isp.
Disgruntled customer.

Darone

08-01-2006, 19:54

I've had exactly the same experience.
My service has gone to pot since i went from 3Mb to 10Mb with a modem upgrade. I now get worse download speeds than i did with my terrayon modem.
Customer support have shown no interest at all in my problem and i agree when people say they feel they are being lied to. My Problem was escalated and i was told i would be contacted within 72 hour.
I waited 4 days before ringing again, only to be told that the operator who dealt with my call was on holiday.
It really is beyond belief and no attempt has been made to look into my problem.
As with Rob above, i have never had cause to ring tech support in the 5 years i've been on ntl broadband. I've always been very happy with the service but when they won't even accept there may be a problem, i'm sorry to say that i'm now looking for a viable alternative to Ntl Broadband.

The excitement of the move upto 10Mb broadband has long since passed and now i just have a headache and a bitter taste in my mouth.

Cheers.

city

08-01-2006, 23:33

I can't be bothered ringing CS now even when you get through you get treated like a complete idiot getting you to try all sorts of things things on your PC which has no bearing on the situation. NTL stop treating us like idiots and either give us the service for which we are paying for or refund us when you underperform.

A five year now pi**ed off customer.

Stuart

09-01-2006, 00:05

city, it sounds like you will need to call Customer Services. If you get bad service, then we can notify our contacts within NTL, but they will not do anything unless there is a call logged with Customer Services.

andybeary

09-01-2006, 00:12

I am also in the same situation

i have been with NTL for around 4 years and started off with the 1 meg service which was then upgraded to 3 meg (or 2 meg in my case) no problems at all. I was then sent a lett from NTL in December saying because im a top paying customer i will be upgraded by end of December. Its now January and instead of the upgrade im getting 1.9m/sec downloads with a loss off internet connection every few hours.

I have rang and emailed NTL who always put me through to India, i am then told that my area has been affected and told to wait a week or so. Its been 2 weeks now and its getting worse. When i emailed customer service they just send me a automated response saying i should ring broadband tech support which is (india). I asked in my email to pass the email to the relevant department and still got the same automated email back (which is made too look like someone actually typed it). Im now at a loss on what to do i have the motorola surfboard modem sb4100. why should i pay 37.99 when i could pay for the 2 meg connection which is what im currently getting.

my email is andybeary @hotmail.com could someone please esculate this as i just cant get though to anyone. I cant bare to ring again and wait another 20 to 30 minuites waiting for someone in india to tell me what i already know.

Andy

sicknote

09-01-2006, 00:12

oh dear friday 6th found out my connection sucked and as i speak is below 1.5mg and people trying to post work to my site cant its crap to say the least and from reading ubove looks like it may not improve:( i have been with ntl for at least 5yrs also and have to say on my 3mg everything was great now 10mg suks and cant see me staying with ntl on performance like this
another ****ed off 5yr customer about to leave:(
Friday 6th - monday 8th less than 1.5mg it looks like a trend so get yer finger outta yer asses ntl and sort it otherwise a lot of people are gonna vanish:)

Russ

09-01-2006, 00:23

buba3d

09-01-2006, 01:02

Hmm to me it looks like a UBR problem, usually when i can't get any news server updates to certain groups

Rone

09-01-2006, 10:39

The funny thing is, everyone you speak to at NTL say theres no problem and the networks fine.
My neighbours connection is as cr@p as mine is, but they say they cant be bothered to ring up.. :(

sicknote

09-01-2006, 12:44

rang them regarding the rubbish speed from fri-mon and they seem to think theres an snr problem with my line so they are sending someone out today between 12-6pm to look at it which aint bad considering i only rang them at 12:13pm so we shall see :)

lima

09-01-2006, 15:25

Yeah - never tell them you have a router because that is ALWAYS the problem!
In my case it WAS the router...! That said, the speeds now on 10Meg do yoyo up and down a LOT more than when I was on 3Meg.

My case pre-December 05:

3Meg
XP Pro
Linksys BEFSR41 v2 router
Samsung STB

Speed tests always without fail showed 2.9MBps constant (ok within a few k either side).

Post upgrade I was getting 1-2MBps fluctuating and tops was about 2.5MBps.

I took advice on another thread here and changed the router (which was maxing out at 10MB) for a WRT54G (54MB) router.

Now my speeds on the Samsung go from 4-7Mbps..... here's a typical speed test:

Mon, 09 Jan 2006 15:19:54 GMT

1st 512K took 3885 ms = 131.8 KB/sec, approx 1086 Kbps, 1.06 Mbps
2nd 512K took 531 ms = 964.2 KB/sec, approx 7945 Kbps, 7.76 Mbps
3rd 512K took 3846 ms = 133.1 KB/sec, approx 1097 Kbps, 1.07 Mbps
4th 512K took 500 ms = 1024 KB/sec, approx 8438 Kbps, 8.24 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 4642 Kbps, 4.53 Mbps

So if you've got an old router - the 10MBit NTL feed does (in my case anyway) make it perform worse than on the 3 Meg service.....

Still waiting for those free (come on NTL) upgrades then I'll get me a SACM.... :)

Sage013

10-01-2006, 14:09

Anyone know the reason for ntl not supplying a SACM free of charge to all 10Mb STB users instead of charging £50.00? Seems kinda odd that they say your now getting up to 10Mb when they now very well it's not possible (I know officially it's up to 5Mb (not that I get that) for STB users but they keep refering to me being on the 10Mb package). I appreciate the costs involved to do this for everyone but, we're paying a lot of money each month for the top package and are currently getting slower speeds than before. For the length of time I've spoken to ntl over the last couple of weeks about this issue, they've probably spent more than £50.00 of employee time saying no to me, and they're going to be spending even more time in the future!

Ignition

11-01-2006, 13:14

Hmm to me it looks like a UBR problem, usually when i can't get any news server updates to certain groups

Of course, uBRs often stop to look at which newsgroups you are updating and selectively block them :rolleyes:

BBKing

12-01-2006, 10:45

Are these the new super-powerful layer 4 scanning capable UBRs that we're not supposed to tell anyone about?

ohwhatagiveaway

homealone

12-01-2006, 10:56

Are these the new super-powerful layer 4 scanning capable UBRs that we're not supposed to tell anyone about?

ohwhatagiveaway

start looking into all this stuff, you begin to realise how complicated it can be

http://www.ezchip.com/html/tech_L4-7_switches.html

- my brain hurts ;)

jtwn

12-01-2006, 10:58

Don't think hes going to become in a hurry you bullies :D

Darone

12-01-2006, 17:29

Ok folks, the next chapter in this long running saga.

Had an engineer out yesterday and got a replacement modem. he checked my power levels and said they were fine. I called tech support again to tell them everything was fine at my end after engineers visit and that in the engineers opinion, NTL were at fault. I asked if any changes had been made to my account and if so, could he change them back to the same setup as before, when everything was working great.
I was told that i'd been put back on the server i was on before my modem upgrade. He also said that my problem was being escalated to the faults team.

The result so far is that my speeds have dropped even further!

I have a friend who lives less than a mile away and his 1MB connection is only slightly slower than my 10MB connection.

I know i shouldn't request help from any NTL employees that may frequent these forums but i don't know what else to do.
So if any kind soul would like to take up my cause or at least point me in the right direction to resolve this, i would be eternally grateful.

Thanks for putting up with my overlong posts and general desparation.
I'm not normaly like this...honestly.