Direct-action
I have probably received a greater volume of complaints about NTL’s ill-advised decision to impose a €2 charge on customers who did not want to pay their bills via direct debit than any other single issue in the last few months. The good news for all those people who got in touch to complain is that NTL has been forced to abandon the charge which was supposed to come into affect on April 1st, at least for its existing customers. It’s not all good news, however, as the charge will still apply to new customers – something which will have to be reviewed when the Consumer Protection Bill is enacted.
The €2 charge is annoying, but if that was the only problem with NTL,I would be a happy camper. Our NTL connections to digital TV and internet were cut off mysteriously on March 15th. We have been ringing them on a daily basis since then trying to get reconnected! We were told for the first 3 weeks that the problem would be solved between 24 and 48 hours, but each deadline came and went with no progress. The call centre agents have no power to do anything - they have no contact with the technical engineers, couldn’t even give us an appoximation of when someone would call - an absolute disaster. After 2 weeks of no service, the nearest appt they could give us for an engineer was in 3 weeks time! When we finally did get appointments, we waited in to no avail - no sign of an engineer anywhere and no follow-up from NTL as to why the engineers never turned up. I rang cancellations on March 25th and was promised a call-back. 2 weeks later the call finally came. I was then guaranteed 100% that an engineer would come on Monday 16th April. I had to take a half day off work for that and informed them of the same … still no engineer. Even the National Consumer Agency called them for us twice - to no avail. Now the real shock. I found out 2 days ago that an engineer came out to our apartment building on March 15th and disconnected every NTL cable in the building! Without any warning! Slowly, our neighbours started to get reconnected one by one, but we were still without service. When I rang to find out why this happened, the call centre agent informed me that in new buildings, NTL is provided free for the first 3 months and then all cables are taken out. When I mentioned we were a paying customer, his response was that we shouldn’t have been disconnected. After millions of phonecalls (NTL almost never ring you back), we finally got reconnected today, April 19th! A whole month without TV or internet! I have never come across such an incompetent company in my life! and such powerless customer service. Unfortunately we were unable to change to Sky due to the direction of our balcony. and the only compensation they offered? not to bill us for the time we had no service … oh, and cancellations offered us 2 months of free service (at 14.99/month, that’s not such a huge compensation). My advice to consumers: stay away from NTL if you can.
Comment by Clodagh | April 19, 2007 at 5:44 pmI received a letter today from NTL ‘confirming the set up of my Direct Debit’ with them. They letter clained that they had received the instruction by telephone. Alarmingly they also quoted my bank account details and sort code. I have never provided these details and have never called them on this matter. I live alone so there is nobody else who might have done this without my knowledge. I am quiet alarmend that they somehow got my account details. I called them and the girl in the accounts department said that the computer record shows a ’slip’ was sent in to them in March. I have now cancelled this unauthorised direct debit and am wondering if anybody else has had the same experience.
Liam
Comment by Liam | June 20, 2007 at 6:12 pm