Rant My Nightmere with NTL/Virgin Broadband

I just thought id share this with you guys, most of you probably already know how much of a nightmare NTL/virgin are to deal with but i thought id share my ordeal with you guys in the hope that you would tell your friends, your family and everyone you know not to get a product with them or even switch if they have a service with them.

So it starts off, like everyone when 56k and broadband started kicking off, we were with NTL. We were on the standard £17.99 per month deal with 1mb which later got upgraded to 2mb for everyone. We upgraded to 4mb for £24.99 later on which lasted a few months.

We as a family decided £24.99 per month was too much to pay especially for 2mb when theres many other hosts out there that offer a better deal - So we phoned NTL to cancel. They offer us a deal thats £9.99 per month for LIFE for our current package which we thought was fair...infact much better than we had thought and we accepted - big mistake.

We got a bill for £9.99 the first month which was fine...but for every month after they started to charge more and more - around £20 or £22 or changing amounts basically but always over £10. When phoning they explained we were paying 1 month in advance - a new policy apparently for their customers to pay before they have actually even used the service? what kind of bullCr4p was that? but still it made no sense as the amounts were inconsistant and changing always. Also apparently we were overcharged one month by £17.92 and they said they have issued an "instant refund" - this refund never materialised at all.

Also now we phone in to ask why our amount charged is always changing and where our refund is - They have no knowledge as to why our amounts are changing - apparently they have no information on us being charged £10 for life and nothing on us being overcharged or the refund - Iv had to phone them about 4-5 times because things they promise never materialised.

Now were looking for a new broadband provider - anyone whos able to recommmend a good solid provider with unlimited download would be greatful.

Also for anyone thats read this story - please tell everyone you know exactly how bad NTL are. Funny enough, when i joined hsbc (my current employer) and they talk about good customer service - they asked people in the crowd name one provider that has a reputation for poor service - And numerous people responded with NTL - something the questioner admitted to being a name he heard always when he asked that question - i found this quite funny that a company so bad could get away with such poor service to customers for so long.

apologies for boring you, i just had to get this off my chest =/

/endrant

 

I'll bet the guy on the other end of the line was on commission or something so he just sad anything to keep you and gave you the best he could. *******s are NTL, nothing but issues, and what makes it worse is there customer service is about the worst there is

 

Amen, brother.

 

You think you got it bad (well you do but thats not the point) we didn't even sign up to NTL but thanks to the merger we get all the best bits of the worse of the two companies

 

Ntl used to be good (believe it or not). Sure their CS sucked but their services were pretty damn good.
Now since the VM stuff they've fixed it so the CS suck and the services they sell suck too.

 

Contrary to your story, I had nothing but good fortune with them. They even tried to send me a bill that I wasn't supposed to pay (ended a 9 month contract (student days) but they attempted to send me a bill for a further 3 months). I rang up, they were extremely apologietic, explained why they tried to bill me further, and they then credited me 25 quid for the (very small amount of) hassle they caused me without me even asking.

"YMMV".

 

My experienced with NTL have been less than good. When I moved house a few years back I had to cancel my service 3 months in a row until they eventually stopped sending me bills.

I've since been with Freedom 2 Surf who have been the best ISP I have ever used. Its reliable, fast and their customer service is excellent. They don't say a thing when you annihilate the download cap either.

 

Same here, I've had nothing but good support from ntl. Modem went bang after 2 years came out and replaced it quickly. Water seeped in to our line a few years later again, was fixed promptly.

 

I had a worse problem with Pipex, they failed to cancel my old account and were charging me for two accounts. I was not happy.

 

Aquiss are awesome. full stop. use them.

AH

Edit: Solidus - good to see you around here again.

 

Virgin media are bad, I have mentioned my experience with them before, they did the same with me they uppped to 4 mb connection and charged me for 2mb as agreed that lasted about 2-3months then I get a bill for the 4meg connection £24 ish. I phone them up and they have no record of the agreed price but they have a record of the upgrade for free, see I should have paid for the upgrade cost and then the higher cost for the internet. They are a bunch of lairs in my personal experience, so I told them to drop it back down to 2mb which they did on price but left me on the 4meg connection, so basically I am where I should be but only due to their lack of ability to perform any simple task correctly. Richard Branston has really let his brand name go down hill when he agreed to ntl purchasing the virgin name. Mind you alot of people say his trains are no better. Ironically I have had excellent service and support so far with virgin mobile.

 

My dealings with NTL/Virgin have been pretty poor, but nothing amazingly bad. I would never switch anyway as I hate ADSL, unless you live in the exchange then you'll get crappy speeds . UK needs more big fat juicy, high bandwidth cables criss-crossing around it.

 

Bulldog charged me £40 per month for 10 months after I cancelled, work that out .

 

Never had anything but realy good customer services with both NTl and the short time weve been with Virgin all the problems that weve had were foxed quickly with one phone call.

 

been with blueyonder/ virgin for 4 years now, only had some issues recently with the latest upgrade to 20mb but that was a dodgey modem, not had any issues since, though we pay alot more than £10 (£35 iirc but 20 mb thats been working fine (got last month free due all the modem issues too). So it seems like you were just unlucky imo...

 

We had a bad run in with NTL, the cable tv side.
It was when it first came to our area, and they gave you a have it for 2month and if you dont like it we'll stop charging you and cancel kind of thing.

So it was crap so we canceled it, but they kept charging us.
so after some phone calls to find out WTF was going on, they threatened to put us on a black list if we didn't pay up!

Pay for what? we canceled.
Any way nothing ever happened, crapper than orange maybe?

 

When Blueyonder was Blueyonder ther services were flawless --I never had any reason to call CS. Since they were bought by Virgin, the line has been down twice, and CS has been rather slow in identifying that there was a problem, let alone what caused it. If the line goes down once more, I'll have to take this as an omen and switch to Zen Internet (ISP of the year 2006, PCPro awards)...

Virgin Media is about to be sold again to an (as of yet) anonymous company... whether this will improve things or make them worse remains to be seen. I think the latter...

 

We're with Orange Broadband - but only because Virgin never got their thumb out and actually sent us anything when we signed up.
We originally only got Orange to have their 1 month free trial so we could have broadband and some time to look around for the best broadband deal - which we figured was Virgin.

So we call Virgin up - book the broadband, wait....wait....wait....and nothing. They never sent anything and we just stayed using Orange, which to be fair works pretty well. It's not the cheapest deal around but I'd rather have something reliable and pay a bit more than have some nightmare and save a few quid.

I mean, if it starts off with them not even registering the fact you have signed up with them, it can only really go downhill from there.

 

Just dont get AOL. Thats my mistake and now im on another contract until next year

 

Welcome to the internet.

AH