NTL Ireland sucks
Posted on September 5, 2006
Filed Under NTL, Rant, chancers, customer service | 37 Comments
NTL Ireland suck.
Huh?
If you phone their customer care line, you don’t actually talk to anyone. If you phone during the week, an automated message says they are available Mon-Fri, and Saturday. If you ring Saturday, an automated message says they are available Mon-Fri only. NTL Ireland’s website seems to suggest they’re available 7 days a week.
Hmm!
NTL Ireland offer a crap service. To talk to someone, you have to ring their HQ (forget about the call centre) repeatedly until someone, as a diversion from work, notes your complaint. They never phone back.
Grrr!
NTL Ireland lie to their customers. They promise to visit on Saturday to fix your problem and don’t turn up. Then they promise to visit on Wednesday but turn up Tuesday when nobody’s home.
Fa*xyos!?>! (head explodes)
NTL Ireland does not believe in customer care. If you visit their website and search their helpdesk section for ‘complain‘ or ‘problem‘, nothing is returned. And their most popular help article…’how can I pay my bill‘? Pigs might fly springs to mind.
NTL Ireland just don’t care.
Eircom are another shower of shits but at least they have a formal complaint procedure. Anytime I have to deal with Eircom, it works like this:
I ring their regular customer service line. Once a week has passed, and my query/complaint has not been answered, I invoke their ‘formal’ complaint procedure. Under this process, you get a unique complaint tracking number…and that number is…your account number (sigh). But, at least, once you escalate the problem, they have people with brains, who use them to solve the problem.
Let me give you an example of good customer service…
My (new at the time) boss once asked me to fax him some confidential information to his fax machine. He didn’t know the number (he was new) but his P.A., Jenny, would. So I phoned Jenny and asked her for the fax number. ‘No‘, she said, she wouldn’t tell me the number. (This is NTL’s level). She continued, ‘the fax machine is a bit dodgy and chances are it won’t come through‘. (This is Eircom’s level). ‘Fax it to reception and phone me at the same time. I’ll go and get it, put it in an envelope and put it on his desk‘.
Now that is good customer service.
She said no to an (internal) customer, explained why she said no, and came up with a solution that fixed the problem. It’s really not hard to do.
P.S. Searching Eircom’s website for complaint does return 4 results. At least they’ve thought about it.
P.P.S. I’ve linked to NTL repeatedly in the hope that search engines will push it near the top of their results when people search for NTL. I want people to know how badly they treat their customers in Ireland. Don’t know if it’ll work as it’s a bit obvious!
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Update: Remember, the appointment was arranged (and confirmed by me) for Wednesday.
Tuesday: They turned up to an empty house and left a note suggesting I was a bad person for not being there.
Wednesday morning: Several frantic, and to be honest, frank (i.e. rude) phone calls later, they denied, confirmed, denied, confirmed etc that there was a crew on the way.
Wednesday afternoon: They turned up on time and fixed the problem in 20 minutes.
Thursday: They turned up to an empty house and left a note suggesting I was a bad person for not being there.
What was the major problem? The twenty-year old cable from the junction box (technical term!) on the outside of my house to the backwall of my house. Just like every other 20-yr old house in Dublin?
Muppets!
You can find this post on page 5 if you search google for ‘NTL Ireland’. It’s only the Irish Blogs aggregator but it’s a start. I stopped looking for my blog post in google at page 10.
Maybe I’m a lone voice in the wilderness!
Searching google for ['NTL Ireland' sucks] returns two hits on the first page, one is a link here and the other is to Irish Blogs.
Actually, this probably means I am a lone voice in the wilderness!
your right,… i have been battling out with ntl to try and get my reception fixed,…its been going on weeks now and finally they have agreed to send out an engineer.
he is due to arrive in 2 and a half weeks time.
is that acceptable ?
not for me.
yes, ntl ireland are terrible. i am in dublin and not only is the bandwidth dial-up-esque, when you ring them and they say they’ll ‘ring back’ …don’t wait up
plus you are routed to someone in england..
i would rate their service as among the worst i have ever encountered..
i’ll be ditching them as soon as i can, and they can whistle dixie for the last payment..
6 months later, ntl visited my house to fix the problem.
I don’t know why but ‘the computer’ keeps adding “rel=”nofollow” to this link. I don’t know how to fix it now so here (hopefully) is the right link…
http://isadub.com/blog/2007/03/22/ntl-ireland-sucks-the-sequel/
If that doesn’t work, just delete the ‘rel=nofollow’ link and it should work??
i think that ye are so sad!!! After reading through all this crap i finally decided to leave a comment, so that meant turning on my computer to access the net which is indeed supplied by ntl, and has worked perfectly. when you get through to there customer services the people on the other end of the phome try there best so for feck sake give them a break!!! how would you feel listening to you ignorant bunch all day! Have ye nothing better to be doing with your lives??? God above read a god damn book!!
god ye people iritate me!!!! your so cought up in your pathetic lives that you dont even give a shit about anything else!!!!
THE WHOLE LOT OF YE ARE FUCKING SPASTICS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
NTL I WILL TAKE LEGAL ACTION …..!
I was so pleased to find this message board about NTL and had I come across this site before I took on NTL Broadband I would have never subscribed.
Am absolutely fecked off to say the least with NTL customer service, I live Dublin Ireland..
My story so far.
It started back in April 07 when I joined up for NTL broadband, from April to June NTL couldn’t get a signal from my house and it took NTL 3 months for them to install my broadband. It took 20 calls to get an engineer out over a period of 2 – 3 months NTL were charging me for the service that I didn’t have, my line was not connected and I had no modem. In that time I was getting evening calls twice a week from NTL offering me special deals on Broadband Max. I thought it was some kind of joke. I made threats to NTL telling them I will close the account and take them to court, only then did they send out the engineer and 10 minutes later the engineer left and my internet was working.
Now the only thing left to do was get a refund for the period in which my internet broadband was not working, so far NTL have not refuned me, I don’t wish to take legal action but it loks like am heading that way.
Last month I decided to upgrade to Broadband Max 12mb speeds. From the minute I was given the upgrade I got 3 days of fast internet access. I had the line tested by a friend of mine who ice qualified engineer. NTL have reduced my bandwidth and caped my downloading. My so called Braodband Max now operates at the speed less than a 56k modem.
I have been in contact with NTL Ireland technical support no less than 12 times in the last month. Each time they say my call is logged and that I will receive a return call within 48 hours.
No thanks to L, G, A, M and the rest of you idiots in customer service, especially L, all I can say is go and get a job somewhere else because you never fucking follow up your calls. On my last call to technical support I get L who again. He took all my details and I recognized his name and voice. He asked if I was having problems with my account and internet access. Funny guy, as he never fixed the problem or sent an engineer out to me. I have to say this guy needs to go back to school, one thick idiot. I told him he has been reported and I want to talk with a manager, he wouldn’t put me through to anyone else who was able to deal with my call and problems.
So if you want to save money, DON’T BOTHER WITH NTL BROADBAND , if you find your self in my position bypass those idiots in Technical support and try HQ.
I will send a second post to let you know when NTL finally catch on that they are loosing customers by the day if not minute and I hope this letter losing them potential customers because they are the worst people I have ever dealt with.
Regards Mic
[edited to remove full length names of NTL staff]
Hey
I have read all those posts here and i just cant hold from not posting my reply.
All the problems you people are having is because you are too f***ing lazy n too st**id to read manuals provided with equipment. Also you probably dont have a clue what does it mean “terms and conditions” even if such words are being mentioned many times a day on the radio and TV.
Before getting internet service check those conditions, if knowledge doesnt allow to understand them get a solicitor.
In reply to Mic i can state that you were too lazy to check the d*mn paper with your package n didnt have a clue how to plug the cable into correct sockets even if this is self-understandable for everyone who has finished the school. Your speed has been reduced because you didnt read terms and conditions where it is said about download allowance. So you were too lazy to get the correct ISP meeting your needs and finish installation procedure.
All coments are here because you are too lazy to look for info or spend 10mins to read the info provided by your ISP. You aint ready for internet technology yet.
I do tech support myself and i cant stop laughing from the calls we are getting every single day. We are getting around 3000 calls every single day and around 30 customers know why de hell they have got PC and ordered broadband. All the rest are complaining about things completely not related to the service or asking questions about installation which is pictured and explained in the instructions. So around 99% of customers wasting money and time because of this escalation cannot be done within day or two and you need to be on the Q for 20 mins or so, you dont receive call back within 48 hours or so. To fix and improve this you need to have 1 agent, 1 tech, 1 car for every 3 customers which is not possible at all unless you are prepared to pay thousands for the service. So cant you just become less lazy and buy the damn book named “Computer for dummies” or smth else type like that.
However if you aint happy about spending eur5 for the book or reading instructions than become happy with service you have coz you aint ready for better service yet.
P.S. I dont do tech support for NTL, Eircom, Irish Broadband or other Irish ISP.
I work for the independent international tech support company.
Hey Isadub,
It is very nice of you to give the NTL employees a day out. I hope their knuckles dragging across the carpets of your blog didn’t burn their little sensitive selves to add to the woes of the thing that crawled up their ass and DIED!
I’m happy to report that after 3 1/2 years with NTl broadband and 20+ years with NTL/Cablelink I am finally calling it quits with them.
Here’s why:
About 4 months ago I was receiving major cut-offs with our TV Analogue service. So about 2 weeks ago I rang ntl customer care, and of course had to listen to the obligatory music for 20 minutes before someone finally answered.
When they did answer I complained that it was unfair that we were pre-paying for a service that we were not receiving to it’s fullest. Also tried to explain that when the TV went down the Broadband also did(she didn’t know what I was talking about). They then tried to fob me off to someone else.
I threatened to get the whole lot cut off and only then did she say that there was a problem ‘ONLY’ with the crumlin(dublin) area and that technicians were on it.
Ok, yeah no problem, we’ll take your word for it…4 months on to the day and still random blackouts with the connection, and the broadband hasn’t been working all day.
So once again I phoned “customer care” and was left waiting 25 minutes for someone. When I explained all of it to her she asked if my broadband and Tv has been still off for the past 2 weeks since the last phone call, I then told her it had never been permanently off and that it just sporadically goes off for hours on end. She asked if I was refunded for it, I then laughed asking which number to ring for that.
About 3 minutes into the call she asked me what exactly my complaint was…*sigh* I told her that basically everything i had said for the first 3 minutes of the call was my complaint and wondered if she was even paying attention to what I was saying.
This annoyed me and told her I wished to cease my subscription with them, as usual she trying to pass me on to some one else, but enough is enough. I was told that i have to write to Limerick to confirm it which I gladly siad I would and hung up.
Just wondering if this is how they treat all their customers that have been with them so long.
I now ordered eircom wireless broadband and Sky digital, a move I didn’t even need to make if NTl had have dealt with me as a paying customer like I should have been treated.
End of rant
I’d better type fast cause who knows how long my NTL BB connection is going to be on for….I have been with them for the past two years and it has been off more times than I remember.Over the past 5 days the service has been intermittent.
Obviously I have rung customer service, ha, and like everyone else have been on hold for eternity, been hung up on and been told its impossible for a Saturday slot for a callout. So they expect me to take a half day to get a problem resolved thats not my doing?? Having told them thats not going to happen I have been told this Saturday a guy will be out. I can hardly wait!!!
Yet again he will come out(but who knows what time, so you got to wait in all day), run a line test and tell me the problem isn’t at my end.Thank you NTL.What a service.
Then what will happen I expect that the service will mysteriously be up and running again for a month or two then back to square one. Well this time is the last for me and I’m ditching them.
Only thing I’m worried about is what other ISP’s are like.I have read on forums that eircom/ESAT BT and others can just be as bad…maybe better the devil you know….
Oh and even when your connection is on here in Dublin you don’t get the full speed you pay for.I pay for a 3mb service and the download is only at 2mb while upload is less than 200kb.
They really got to invest in the network and stop taking on new customers because it can’t handle what it’s got at the minute.
So if you are thinking of NTL for a BB service, think long & hard is it really worth the grief??
Btw Tony if your still out there, you’re a tosser nobody likes you………
Hi,
I am grateful that you advised of your difficulties, as I was toying with the idea of bundling my NTL TV with a broadband connection.
My broadband for the past 2 years has been with UTV (and no I am not an employee or have any connection with them). We have had our ups and downs including a three day outage, for which much apologies, though no offer of refund. When the service was capped, they always sent a warning e-mail when the limit was being approached. I’ve now got unlimited usage (extra €5) and have, touch wood, been ok for some time now. Have had intermittent problems but generally these traced back to router, which a reboot usually fixed. Accessing their support can prove difficult, but if you stay on for 20 minutes you usually get through. Their technical people do try and help, we once had a marathon 2 hour telephone session trying to fix something a few years ago when I was on dial up with them.
Best news is that they are reasonably priced, they bundle unlimited telephone use (after 6 pm and weekends) to Ireland/UK with the package, so my monthly bill, including line rental, phone charges and unlimited broadband rarely exceeds €100. Calls to mobiles are charged. I have three adult kids and we have 3 desk tops and 1 lap top connected wirelessly to the internet through our own router. I still have the dial up modem they gave me for when the router turns nasty.
As I said, I have no relationship with UTV, except as a customer, and have had my frustrations with them, but have not yet identified a better service. (I was with Eircom, and BT previously over 5 years ago).
hi,
can you give me the e.mail address for NTL customer care
richard
from their website…
By email:
Online.sales@upc.ie for Sales information
Customer.Support@upc.ie for Customer Care and account queries
Jobs@upc.ie for Careers information
NTL are so crap it’s beyond belief
Haleluiah, it’s not just me then. After reading all the above comments (except one or two that claim it’s our fault for not RTFM) I would like to know if anybody knows of a worse company to deal with than NTL. I doubt it exists. If you can supply details I’d like to put it to the test!!!!!!!!!
Feel a bit sorry for you guys that are wrapped up in their BB/Phone package as well. Mine was a TV issue and they couldn’t even transfer me by phone from a call centre in Tipperary to a call centre in Limerick!!!
NTL are the worst company I have ever dealt with end of story. Had them for BB it worked for a week on and off. Called [customer care] glad they arent caring about anything else in this life or we would all be dead!. Of course no answer went to work and emailed customer care cause my BB wasnt working. called again emailed again from work of course. Finally sent a registered letter and called COM REG. Got a phone call told them I wanted to cancel BB. Then got a bill for 4 months of BB. Already have eircom in the house for last month and a half. Got a text from NTL requesting me to call them so they could pick up router. Called sent texts and emailed them from home now that i have eircom, still no response and another bill for BB even though they want router back?. NTL the biggest shower of fucking wasters on the planet.To the SPANNER that said people should read the manual or buy Pcs for dummies try actually reading the comments from people about NTL. Im sure you are a very good tech but like you said you dont work for NTL. Ireland now has one third of its population using BB and Scumbags like NTL are trying to cash on this by offering a service that they simply cant provide. If any one else tried this they would be done for fraud. From my experience with NTL dont waste your time calling. Send a registerd letter and call COM REG and tell them you want to open a case. Sorry for the rant and hopefully this will save someone else the grief of dealing with these MUPPETS.
Hi,
I see I am not only one “happy” person because of crap NTL service! I have been dealing with the “customer service” for 2 weeks and nothing has been done, no single call from them, nothing!!! I am really fed up with NTL’s arrogance towards customers! Only one thing NTL is good at is sending bills! No way, I am not gonna pay single penny for the “shitty service” (sorry for my language but I can’t find other words which accurately describe the service)!
Regards,
Jakub
I ordered NTL’s broadband ultra package last week. I was told someone would come and install it today between 9am and 1pm. I waited in all morning – no-one came. I rang NTL to see what the story was, I explained the situation to 5 people and each time they just put me on hold and another person would pick up the phone and say “how can I help you?” Seriously it’s like there all having a laugh! I’m not waiting in anymore…they won;t be getting any money from me.
Have been trying to get my broadband sorted for weeks with NTL, and still waiting. Promises of call backs are common but rarely followed through in my experience. I wait an average of 15-20 mins using the 1908 number before I get to speak to someone and then they put me in a cue to speak to someone. I have noe gone to calling the sales department as they tend to pick up within 5 – 10 secs.
I have recently moved house but forgot to cancel my NTL account, I rang up(or tried)yesterday and their”new and easy” phone system gave me the runaround for at least 10 minutes, then at last got through to the billing dept(not a real person but another extention)waiting another 10-15 minutes, then gave up, what a complete and utter bunch of incompetent morons! I now have to drive 20 miles to actually go in to them as I can’t even mail them,now if I ran a business like that I’d probably go bust in a couple of months so god knows how the hell this lot are still in business is beyond me.
NTL Ireland is the worse company that I have dealt with in my 61 years on this planet. This is what you get when there is little or no competition. High price, poor service, and no one to complain to. If the government was doing its job they would crack down on NTL or remove their monopoly franchise. Don’t hold your breath.
I have UPC is that the same as NTL I giving them 120euro per month and it’s going up I TRIED to them to take out sky movies because they are making shit of great films by repeating them every night, but they tell me I will also lose some childrens channels aswell. There must a cable company somewhere out there to which you can pick the channels you want to pay for instead of good and crap put together as one package.
Hey, I feel your pain. But today I got somewhere. Check this post out: http://www.davidmcgettigan.com/?p=151
I myself have not had a good experience with ntl but as someone who is in the online marketing business and managing online reputations I was more interested in the effective way you have pushed this post up the search engines so that it was the third return in google.ie for ‘ntl ireland’.
We didn’t have a choice in using ntl as it’s tied in to our apartment complex but had we had a choice and I’d seen your post which immediately caught my attention as I searched for them I would have definitely been deterred from using there services.
Well done, very effective!
I have recently had the misfortune to call Chorus
NTL, about poor sevice etc, on both occasions having waited to the death to actually speak to someone ,In mid conversation ( Heated I might ad d) they hung up on me twice, and when I stared one of the call statign that I was recording the call , I was informed tha ther were legally not oblidged to take the call… I mean what the hell is that all about – I now want to get a NATIONWIDE BOYCOTT OF NTL going… anyone with me.
Great oppurtunity for SKY now ….
Thank you creator for this Blog post. Much needed!
Could add on with a long horror story of my own about the NTL customer service. Lets just say I recognize all the terrible treatment from above posts. Currently sitting without working Internet & Phone, had it that way for 29 days and counting..
I was mostly interested if poster Jim Mcconnell or anyone could please explain to me how to go about this “Send a registerd letter and call COM REG and tell them you want to open a case”
Thanks,
Angus
Hey, no company care’s about their residential customers since its the business customers that make them rich…thats why you can go with any dsl/bb company and get treated like shit!
The way they see it is ‘when you start paying big we might then stop to listen’.
also wanted to say that NTL and Eircom are the only two DSL companies worth going with as eircom has their network that also supplys Irish broandband, Perlico BT Ireland, O2, Vodafone, and Meteor (Eircom’s Mobile company, which is sort of strange as eircell was originally Telecom Eireann’s mobile company but then eircom sold it off) so its not so surpising that the network breaks down so much with so many companies using it and then NTL have their own network.
NTL Ireland are lying about their broadband speed offers. I have 6mb and only get 1.7mb on average sometime s3.2 on a great day.
Contention ratio is beyond belief.But hey, They are cynical about the public’s knowledge of what is “fast” or “slow” they dont recognise irish Speed test as an acceptabe indicator of their available speeds. AVOID
i have the same trouble with ntl… moved to a new house recently and some of our channels were missin. rang ‘em up and they claimed the channels are from an aerial but they’re from cable under the ground… anyway get on to the manager and they’re like trained parrots in there. they keep sayin “there’s nothin we can do.” gonna get sky soon i think. if a sky salesman visits my house they’re gonna get a very warm welcome.
Paying for their BB for 6 months, had it working on and off for 4 with most issues listed above: thick twats in customer service, long call waiting, no call backs, stupid field guys, no follow up, near dial up actual speed on 3mb, network outages for the whole area 2-4 times a week for half a day or more and so long. And all this in 4 months!!! What a service!!! Today’s call toped anything in this topic: After 45 min of waiting and 3 min on hold after a question the ….. ….. ….. ….. (fill in the blanks) of a TECHNICAL SUPPORT OPERATOR told me that he “DOESN’T HAVE AUTHORISATION CLEARANCE” (exact words) to help me set up my e-mail account properly (pop3,smtp names, username and password)
Given the 1st entry date above and same problems since then, may be it’s a company policy?
A suggestion now:
Customers should address ALL their service complains directly to their CEO R. D (googlable) at HQ in writing. They can start something like this:
Dear Mr D
Given that your company for our monthly payments supplies the service below any standards, appauling quality and that NTL/UPC/Chorus has none or adverse customer service, I feel that I can address my request for customer care to you.
and then follow on with complaint
Such letters will at least be delivered, opened and read (at least the first line).
even 50 letters a month with some media coverage might do the trick. Even the letters from those above the list might do. What do you think?
hey people, I understand your complains, I also had troubles with ntl broadband; in Poland UPC has just introduced (dl/up) 120/10 Mbit/s connection (!); it is for about €50/mo. while the slowest available option is 8/1 Mbit for about €18;
UPC chello (that’s how it’s called here) is considered rather a good provider here in PL, i really cant uderstand how there can be so huge difference between countries as this is a one company!
Anyway, good luck with your ISPs!
Hi People.
I paid them 52 euro monthly for an internet and cable television and i had 10 MB transfer connection without limmits.
I use RapidShare so i never think about limits.
After 4 months they send me NTL bill to pay and there was no 52 euro but 152 euro.
Me and my girlfriend call them the same day and they said that i dawnloaded to many things and i have to pay for that.
I was talking with a nice girl but she said that it’s kind a penalty or something and there’s no use to do it in a different way.
I hung up my phone and another day i cancel direct debit.
Next 3 weeks i get NTL bill for 346 euro.
I just want to say that i will never ever gonna order annything from Chorus NTL
NTL SUCKS…
Ntl strikes again, had a rep come to the door and agreed a digital upgrade, had not heard from them in two days so rang them and they set up an appointment without telling me. So I changed it to today. Got a phone call yesterday to confirm, and they dident even turn up today, rang their phoneline and got put on hold for 20 minutes, more bad service. I do support myself and there is no way I would treat any of my customers like that.
UPC/NTL is nothting else than old NTL with a new name! Be careful with that company – they cannot connect me to internet for over 3 weeks! 10 telephone calls and they ask me everytime same question – what’s your phone number? what kind of issue you have with your connection? It’s amateurish!
Chrous NTL – the worst customer service ever seen! Those morons don’t understand what I say.