General Poor Service & Connection since Update?

[MFKR78]

How many people have noticed or suffered this in different places?

My connection speed varies a lot of the time it seems. However what's really getting up my nose at the moment is the fact that since this upgrade we've lost the broadband and cable tv services 3 times in 3 weeks now for over an hour and a half at a time. The first time it was mildly irritating, the second time more so and last nights third time has really wound me up. As usual everything just suddenly goes blank and there's bugger all you can do about it but wait until it comes back. Last night being just before a prog I'd waited to watch started (which isn't repeated) and also right near the end of the football. This also meant there was nobody to report to seeing as they finish work at 8 (not that I'm prepared to ring and pay them for their mistakes anyway unless I absolutely have no choice to get my service back) so yet again everything goes off randomly and we're left to suffer.

Why is it that this is now happening on a regurlar basis? The second time was only just fixed before the England vs Sweden game so god help them if it had stayed off. Is there EVER a time when you get the full service you're paying for from NTL? It's quite honestly one of the worst companies I can think of for service. Ridiculous. :mad:

[matty0001]

Vote with your feet, phone SKY and BT. Its the only way NTL will ever get the message that their service is the worst in the UK. I'm cancelling today, SKY will be in on the 29th of June, and BT on the 7th of July.

[MFKR78]

I really wish I could.

We've got everything tied into NTL and unfortunately when we moved here someone had cut the BT line completely, meaning it would cost to have it all installed again. The only other thing is with the seperate rooms as we have 3 STB's in the house, 2 upstairs and the main 1 downstairs. With what I've seen from Sky I'm under the impression that while the main dish and reciever for downstairs is cheaper, seperate rooms would be costly.

With all that together it makes it incredibly difficult to switch services. I'd love nothing more than to go to Talk Talk or someone else for Broadband and phone and believe me I'd choose Sky generally over NTL any day of the week but it seems like it's way too costly to set it all up and a hell of a lot of changing and work.

I just wish NTL would start to show some signs of improvement seeing as we're stuck with them but I can't see it ever happening. Things are just going further downhill.

[KN4995]

Aye. Same here.
I was upgraded to 4mb from 2mb last week. Great download speeds to begin with, now lucky to get 300KB/sec and every site I uses either takes an age to load or simply times out. I musta tried every poxy proxy on the list.
Broadband & TV services screech to a halt about half a dozen times a day for varying lengths of time. I've given up relying on a connection for anything.
Whilst I was looking forward to the speed upgrade, I secretly dreaded it - I just knew this was gonna happen.
Not gonna bother ringing CS - last time some snotty ar$e told me unless I'd had an outage of over 3 days, it wasn't considered urgent.
If I didn't absolutely dread the nightmare of switching TV/Phone & Internet providers, I'd be gone like a shot. Hopefully one day soon I'll get the spare time to switch elsewhere. Not fussed about prices - just want a package that works.

[nadeem]

I've noticed since the upgrade my browsing has been very slow. Downloading is fine 450kb/s.

Bet ntl will say its my pc! to reinstall windows lol?1?

[Kempy]

Yep my connection won't go higher than 2.82Mbps and im supposed to be on 4mb, I have even uninstalled zone alarm to see if that helped but it didn't, im not going to bother with CS it's like talking to a brick wall

My speeds are all over the place

Wed, 28 Jun 2006 20:56:50 GMT

1st 512K took 2375 ms = 215.6 KB/sec, approx 1777 Kbps, 1.74 Mbps
2nd 512K took 1984 ms = 258.1 KB/sec, approx 2127 Kbps, 2.08 Mbps
3rd 512K took 2688 ms = 190.5 KB/sec, approx 1570 Kbps, 1.53 Mbps
4th 512K took 2500 ms = 204.8 KB/sec, approx 1688 Kbps, 1.65 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 1791 Kbps, 1.75 Mbps

[MFKR78]

Aye. Same here.
I was upgraded to 4mb from 2mb last week. Great download speeds to begin with, now lucky to get 300KB/sec and every site I uses either takes an age to load or simply times out. I musta tried every poxy proxy on the list.
Broadband & TV services screech to a halt about half a dozen times a day for varying lengths of time. I've given up relying on a connection for anything.
Whilst I was looking forward to the speed upgrade, I secretly dreaded it - I just knew this was gonna happen.
Not gonna bother ringing CS - last time some snotty ar$e told me unless I'd had an outage of over 3 days, it wasn't considered urgent.
If I didn't absolutely dread the nightmare of switching TV/Phone & Internet providers, I'd be gone like a shot. Hopefully one day soon I'll get the spare time to switch elsewhere. Not fussed about prices - just want a package that works.

Yep it sounds like we're in the same boat.

The cable tv service is the worst of the bunch. It's ruined 2 things for me this week alone, and when it does actually work it's so painfully slow to use that it's ridiculous. Simply checking the tv guide for a couple of hours later takes an age. It's like working with stone age equipment.

[drdaws]

Most sites seem to be accessable at normal speeds but my home page,ntlworld.com takes ages to load. Anyone else finding this? It's been like this for several days now. I'm on 1mb, speed test gives .88mb.

[Enuff]

My connection seems to be ok judging by the speed test, but it still feels sluggish, i've noticed over the past month or so (maybe longer?) that my modem lights seem to freeze for about 2 or 3 seconds before it actually takes me to a page.. it used to be pretty instant, could this be due to traffic shaping? Overall, my system is in tip top shape.

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 12:49:12 GMT

1st 512K took 515 ms = 994.2 KB/sec, approx 8192 Kbps, 8 Mbps
2nd 512K took 391 ms = 1309.5 KB/sec, approx 10790 Kbps, 10.54 Mbps
3rd 512K took 656 ms = 780.5 KB/sec, approx 6431 Kbps, 6.28 Mbps
4th 512K took 547 ms = 936 KB/sec, approx 7713 Kbps, 7.53 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 8282 Kbps, 8.09 Mbps

[progers]

Lost Broadband completely this morning, just as I was lined up to do all my internet banking of course!!!

Ethernet light on and D/S blinking.

Decided to call; 0871 number much against my better judgement-at 9:50 there was a queue of 40 waiting to talk to the technical specialist, waited until 10:30 and the queue was 75! ntl must be making a fortune out of these new fault reporting numbers, what a bloody shower.

Anyway, went out and it was back on when I came back in.

I'm also seriously thinking of moving to BT/SKY; the bloody cheek of a company charging me to report a fault with their kit, then not having the staff to answer the call.......:mad:

[MFKR78]

Exactly. See this is another major problem I have with the company now. Every time they f**k up (which is often enough as it is) they now make a shedload of money out of it. That was an ingenious plan by someone at NTL.

Aside from the fact that it's beyond belief in the first place that a company makes money out of it's mistakes, how do we have any proof that we aren't being held in queues or on hold generally, or even getting through and then deliberately led all around the houses on a simple task to bump up the cost aswell? It's very easy to keep people in queues when you're staff and even easier to drag out a call, so you could deliberately hold things up which in turn would make them more money.

The fact that the option is there for them to do this and the fact I don't trust anything that NTL ever have said or done leads me to believe this is nothing but a shambles and a con routine. NTL are nothing but a disgrace.

[MFKR78]

Well I got up this morning and switched on the PC to discover that the broadband wasn't working, and guess what? Looked across and all the cable tv boxes were off again with no signal.

4th time in 3 weeks now. I've had enough.

[poolking]

Well I got up this morning and switched on the PC to discover that the broadband wasn't working, and guess what? Looked across and all the cable tv boxes were off again with no signal.

4th time in 3 weeks now. I've had enough.

Think yourself very lucky, until the fault in my area which appears to have been fixed, I was getting several disconnections a day for a month, longest period 17 hours.

[Zee]

I was getting simular to what you lot are getting, since October, so between April-May i kept complaining, getting people to come over from NTL and check my internet, i think they finally got ****ed off at me and promiced to upgrade my area, for the last 3 weeks now, i've been getting good speeds :)

Just don't stop complaining to Technical Support.

This was my speed test while downloading a torrent at 400KB/s and uploading at 25KB/s

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 13:54:53 UTC

1st 512K took 438 ms = 1169 KB/sec, approx 9633 Kbps, 9.41 Mbps
2nd 512K took 437 ms = 1171.6 KB/sec, approx 9654 Kbps, 9.43 Mbps
3rd 512K took 438 ms = 1169 KB/sec, approx 9633 Kbps, 9.41 Mbps
4th 512K took 500 ms = 1024 KB/sec, approx 8438 Kbps, 8.24 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 9340 Kbps, 9.12 Mbps

[poolking]

I don't have bottomless pits of money to keep ringing Technical Support when I do have a problem. Great when you have to fork out even more money to report a fault on their own network, maybe if NTL didn't try and buy everything they could set their eyes in the 90s then they wouldn't have to claw back a lot of money by charging us through the nose, but then again we are just lowly customers and not shareholders.

[Martyn H]

Just to let you know the kind of speeds I've been getting since the upgrade to 4MB.
Even pages like the BBC homepage can be painfully slow to load. I know I'm not paying more for 4MB but this reminds me of dial up.

Fri, 30 Jun 2006 22:13:36 GMT

1st 512K took 1402 ms = 365.2 KB/sec, approx 3009 Kbps, 2.94 Mbps
2nd 512K took 1592 ms = 321.6 KB/sec, approx 2650 Kbps, 2.59 Mbps
3rd 512K took 1622 ms = 315.7 KB/sec, approx 2601 Kbps, 2.54 Mbps
4th 512K took 1563 ms = 327.6 KB/sec, approx 2699 Kbps, 2.64 Mbps

Overall Average Speed = approx 2740 Kbps, 2.68 Mbps

---------- Post added at 23:21 ---------- Previous post was at 23:18 ----------

[MFKR78]

The speeds are awful tonight since I've come on aswell. Nowehere in the same street as 4mb.

It's the same when it comes to complaining for me too. I do get your point and I'm not being funny but I refuse to spend even more money to keep moaning about the service you're being charged for in the first place.

[alferret]

The speeds are awful tonight since I've come on aswell. Nowehere in the same street as 4mb.

It's the same when it comes to complaining for me too. I do get your point and I'm not being funny but I refuse to spend even more money to keep moaning about the service you're being charged for in the first place.


I hear Sky and BT offer TV, Broadband and Phone services :erm:

[Martyn H]

I hear Sky and BT offer TV, Broadband and Phone services :erm:

I left Murdoch's Sky TV after 2 price increases in a year.

[Martyn H]

The speeds are awful tonight since I've come on aswell. Nowehere in the same street as 4mb.

It's the same when it comes to complaining for me too. I do get your point and I'm not being funny but I refuse to spend even more money to keep moaning about the service you're being charged for in the first place.

~~~May I respectfully suggest that one of the Moderators takes up this issue with ntl for resolution as a matter of urgency?