BTopenworld, NTL top complaints charts

NTL is the most complained about telephony provider in the UK but when it comes to Internet access, there can be only one 'winner' -- BTopenworld. Oftel figures for the fixed line business and residential voice markets released on Wednesday put NTL out in front, scoring 0.8 complaints per 1,000 users, with NPower and Telewest tied in second place on 0.5. Next up, and the only others above the industry average, are BT and Eurocall on 0.4. However, BTopenworld is the nation's least favourite ISP as far as Oftel's figures are concerned, registering 1.6 complaints per 1,000 customers. The only other ISP above the industry average of 0.4 is Pipex, on 0.6. Rivals Blueyonder (Telewest), Freeserve and NTL all score 0.1, while AOL is virtually off the radar screen with less than 0.1 complaints per 1,000. Eleven percent of Oftel complaints so far this year have been about ISPs. On the mobile front, resellers lead the dissatisfaction stakes. Against an industry average of 0.5 complaints per 1,000 users, O2 and T-Mobile score 0.2 apiece, while Orange and Vodafone register 0.1. Mobile virtual network operator out does them all, scoring less than 0.1 complaints per thousand. Oftel's Consumer Representation Section receives around 100,000 complaints and enquiries every year. The latest figures are for the 1 April to 30 September, 2002, period. The details of this snapshot can be found at Oftel's Web site. Complaints can be registered in several ways:
Phone - 0845 714 5000
Textphone - 020 7634 5370
Email - advice@oftel.gov.uk
Fax - 020 7634 8845
Post - Oftel, Consumer Representation Section, 50 Ludgate Hill, London EC4M 7JJ.

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Talkback

My complaint is that BT fail to uphold their adverts when it comes to Broadband, I have a new house and because I have fibra optics connecting my telephone BT is unable to supply broadband, and their comments amount to tough.

So why install a product that is unable to support technology?

BTs attitude is far from good, they are not customer focused, just money and nothing else.

I have had to go to NTL who are prepared to lay a new line to my house to enable me to access broadband.

via Facebook 3 February, 2004 09:07

NTL are f****** USELESS!!!
Since joining with NTL 5 weeks ago we have experiences nothing but lies, excuses and problems.
First we were told our computer was compatible for broadband, when infact it was only the old version of windows 98 so clearly not compatible. They obviously were after our money and not bothered we would then have to spend our money on a new computer. Next the change over of our phone line from BT to NTL was a shambles with some people not getting through as our phone was not ringing at home despite ringing their end. When we finally had a phone line it lasted just 3 1/2 weeks before some fault caused us to lose our line. When we phoned NTL to report the fault we were told to go and test the line with another phone and then call back if we still had no line. So we kept calling back and being fobbed off. i then phoned back to give them a piece of my mind, and was on hold for 36 minutes before some woman answered. One of her stupid questions was: "have you asked to be disconnected?"( would i be calling if i had!!!!!) She then made an appointment for an engineer to come out the following friday, but they did not turn up. How rude? i tried calling again to complain, and after being on hold for 20 minures, they cut me off. we have now had no phone line for nearly 3 weeks and can not see this resolving soon. in the meantime my mother is having to use her mobile phone as the phone, thid does not come cheap. NTL can pay for the mobile phone bills and stuff their contract!!! And the final straw came when NTL sent us a snotty letter asknig why we refused to pay the direct debit when infact it was them who were supposed to be sending on the direct debit mandate to the bank!! looks like they are all a load of idiots who cannot admit to their own mistakes.

via Facebook 22 August, 2004 16:24

NTL - can you believe this, have lost our telephone number, the one we're had for the past 8 or 9 years. We asked about having an additional line put in and instead they gave us a new number - except that we still wanted our old one! 7 hours and 15+ customer service operators later we still don't have our number back. Does anyone else notice how no-one communicates with anyone else in the company? Always get a surname or extension number if you have a problem because just asking for 'Sharon, Gus, David,' or whatever wont get you back to the person you spoke to last time!!!!

via Facebook 8 November, 2004 15:11

Last month our NTL phone bill got buried under some other papers and didn't get paid. On thursday last we had a letter saying if the outstanding bill wast paid within 7 days our service would be downgraded. Immediately we wrote out a cheque and mailed it Friday morning together with a covering letter. Friday night in the middle of a conversation the phone went dead. As the NTL offices were closedat that time, on Saturday I had to make 3 phone calls before finding out that they had disconnected outgoing calls. I had a long conversation with an operative who obviously didn't understand what she was reading off a screen, and the information there was in conflict with that in their letter. Since we have over the past 5 years had to put up with numerous unexplaind disconnections of both phone and modem services costing us considerable lost of income, this was the last straw. BT are installing a phoneline and broadband services in one months time. Perfect timing for us to cancel our contract with NTL. This is the only way I have of showing my dissatisfaction with a standard of service I personally would be ashamed to provide to my customers.

via Facebook 8 March, 2005 07:26

Can anyone out there advise me on this? I paid our NTL phone bill at the beginning of March over the phone. I gave my card details and name (the bill is in my partners name) and was provided with a payment referece. Two weeks ater when checking my statement the money hadn't been taken and I'm now broke. I called NTL who confirmed to me that they had received payment from my bank via my card payment. They confirmed the type of card and the name (mine). Meanwhile my partner inds out it has been taken from his account, and subsequently has gone overdrawn and being charged by his bank on a daily basis for an unauthorised overdraft. On speaking to NTL he gets no aplogy, was told that they could give him a refund if I now transfer the payment to amy account! They say I would not have been told over the phone that they had taken my payment (in other words I'm a liar). The worst of all is they did say that if payment deatils were taken down incorrectly they just look at previous payment details and debit it from that account and don't seem to feel that they're doing anything wrong! What can we do to ensure my partner gets his bank charges reimbursed. Surely it's against the law for them to take money from his account without his consent? I'm more than happy for them to cut us off, they're such a crap service and this is not the first time we've had cause to complain.

via Facebook 18 March, 2005 09:20

NTL, the very sound of it makes me furious. I've put up with their crap service for so long now I thought I had got used to their incometence. As an NTL customer I've encountered most of the previous complaints shown on these pages. I have been reluctant to ditch NTL as my business is internet based and I'm not sure what the hastle of changing all my settings to a new service provider will entail. However the final straw has been changing my direct debit from one bank to another. I (sadly) have three accounts with NTL, which they obviously can't cope with, as when I changed the direct debit details (an easy task I would have thought) I received confirmation in duplicate on all accounts. Well you might think, at least you know its sorted. THINK AGAIN!! Two months and several long boring phone calls later I am still receiving Overdue Balance threatening letters. I can't believe their incompetent arrogance. When I call them and they look me up on their database and say 'Oh yes it should have gone through' and 'for some reason this or that hasn't happened' Give me strength!! No apology, no assurance it won't happen again. OK NTL you win, I give up, I'm going elswhere, which is obviously what you've wanted me to do for the past 9 years. I'm obviously so thick I didn't get the point!! Wish me luck.

via Facebook 30 March, 2005 10:35

NTL is the worst organisation to join to.It was great mistake to join them.They wrongly charged me and disconnected my service.I had to call whole day to sort it out.It took 20 minutes to talk to human and they keep on transferring from each dept to other without listening the problem and each n every time i need to give my details.They promise but don't implement.All they do is lie.Hvae to tell same problem each and every time!!!!!They r worst!!!

via Facebook 4 April, 2005 19:35

In March 2004. I applied to sign up for a NTL deal. This deal included unlimited internet access and unlimited phone calls for £25 per month. They informed me that it would take several weeks to set up. As I wanted to keep my BT telephone number, NTL stated that I could transfer it to them without any problems.
I was given a temporary phone number until the transfer could take place. NTL arrived a week later and installed a phone socket box next to the BT one and informed me that when the BT line went dead I should unplug the phone and then plug it into the NTL box. I checked the line each day and found it was still connected to BT. I contacted NTL on numerous occasions only to be told that BT were being difficult and would not release my telephone number. I contacted BT and was informed that NTL had never been in contact at all. I again contacted NTL and this time they stated they were having technical difficulties. At the end of May 2004 I was eventually connected and the phone line appeared OK.

At the time of getting connected I contacted NTL stating I wanted call barring on the line which they said they would do. In August of 2004 I received a bill for £200 for one month, on checking the bill I discovered that most of the numbers listed were premium lines dialled via the internet. We had been hijacked by a porn site which had reset the number that should have been dialled. NTL denied that I had requested call barring and that they would take me to court if I did not pay the bill. Which I eventually did. A month later I received another bill which exceeded the £25 per month. After checking the bill I noticed that calls were supposed to have been made from my home whilst my family and I were on holidays abroad. I informed NTL of this and was accused of lying by a member of the Customer Service Staff. Whilst talking to thm I noticed that on the second page of my bill there was a second telephone number. (this was the temporary number they had given me when I first started with NTL, although I had never used it) I asked the person I was dealing with if they could check this number and was told it was not in service. Whilst still on the line I used my mobile and dialled the number. A man in my village answered stating it was his number and that he had not had a bill for three months. Not surprising I was getting it!. NTL did not ven apologise.

In May of this year I purchased a Amstrad Emailer and requested NTL to cancel call barring to allow me to register the Emailer with Amstrad. NTL said they had done this, but I was still waiting a week later. Eventually NTL contacted me saying call barring had been cancelled. I registered the Emailer and to my astonishment when I attempted to may a local call I found I could not dial out of the house at all. I again contacted NTL only to be infomed that I had requested call barring on all calls which I had not.

In my opinion NTL are the worst Telecommunications Company in the UK and should not be in existence. The sooner they go to the wall the better. They are unprofessional, discourteous, rude and lack any understanding of how to deal with customer complaints. I was a professional Police Officer for 25 years and I would have been sacked had I spoken to members of the public they way they speak to their customers.

via Facebook 8 June, 2005 14:38

Beware op NTL?
I moved home in july of last yearand informed ntl by phone and email of the fact.I cancelled my direct debit.
I heard nothing untill two days ago when i received a letter demanding £120 and threatening to send the the details to a dept agancy.
I have contacted them after 2hours on the the phone
only to be told that the service ie my ntl line was still live and that i had to pay for it?I under protest decided
to pay by switch which was done they then demanded my Bank details i refused they then more or less said see you in court??? I did not want further hassle so paid by credit card.Beware any would be NTL customers this company cares not a jot for its customers and gets money by false pretences.

via Facebook 22 June, 2005 08:25

I agree totally. NTL are a terrible organisation. When I moved house I needed to cancel the phone line but NTL made it so difficult for me that I decided to cancel my internet at the same time (the phone number i was meant to used would disconnecting me after 15-20 minutes holding yet customer services wouldnt help. The 'trained' customer service person said that as they were able to connect to it internally there isnt a problem. I had to keep trying until it let me through....scuse me??). I eventually cancelled (incidentally the staff in that department couldn't be nicer!). Only then, NTL wanted me to pay the advanced charge that was due and they would credit it later when their accounts got up to date (ya what??). Except as I no longer had an account I had to call them (call them!!!!) to request the cheque. Another frustrating 3 hours trying to claim a £10 credit, I don't think so. I waited for the amended statement instead which I paid in May. Now their bolshy debt collectors buchannan clark & wells can't seem to compute that there is no debt. My answers dont fit their little tick boxes (I paid by internet banking eejits!) The latest is they are going to take me to court and (in bold letters) I will have to pay costs and accrued interest for the outstanding debt (hah). Maybe I should calculate the cost for the time I have spent (and emotional distress of course) dealing with the Buchannan/NTL numbskulls and add interest onto that!

via Facebook 29 June, 2005 15:02

NTL. Lost broadband connection, rang NTL. After hanging on for ages spoke to a guy in India who asked me to check everything that I had already checked. Told me that an engineer would have to be booked,but could not get one to me until Monday between 8 and 12! ie. 5 days later!
Took Monday off work, No -one turned up, Rang up again and spoke to a guy in India, then a guy in Wales.
Everyone came out with NTL's favourite word "sorry". Would re-book for Wednesday. Asked to speak to a manager. "Will get one to call you back sir!" Guess what no-one called back.
Engineer came and problem was sorted on Wednesday. Only took 6 days! Super service!

via Facebook 12 September, 2005 16:21

oh dear have read all this stuff about NTL and is all horribly familiar. My son and I are still trying to cancel a line on a rented property the new tenants can use it if they chose to and we would be liable. customer services failed to note our request in August but did change billing address. 3 letters to customer services so far unanswered. I have cancelled direct debit but they continue to charge monthly and increased amount by £2. Rang today with only a 10 minute wait to find they have no note of cancellation request on our a/c. Have now tried e-mailing them - at least they responded automatically and therefore confirmed they have been told.
Really worried about the likely costs that we may incur and simply unable to resolve the issue as they cannot deal with your case!!

via Facebook 28 September, 2005 15:11

I can only say that BTOW must be shockingly bad to be worse than NTL.

At least with BTOW 'someone' is accountable; at NTL just getting hold of someone to complain about their dreadful service is a real and largely impossible challenge.

I expect a level of service where I can call up a support person and get a resolution when for example both my internet and television service goes down for the best part of 48 hours. Outages prior to this have been common but never for such a long period.

The above scenario happened to me. I wrote a strong letter to NTLs head office but in the time honoured NTL tradition it was ignored. (it was sent recorded delivery. I know you got it NTL).

I can't quite believe how bad NTL are but they really couldn't care less about anybody. Their service level is risible and shows no sign of improvement.

via Facebook 8 October, 2005 05:52

I have a simple complaint about NTL broadband - it doesn't actually work! I've had their broadband for a couple of years now, and at first the performance was pretty good, but lately it has been getting slower and slower, to the point where it is totally unusable.

For the last three weeks it has been taking up to 10 minutes to load a single web page. Any web page. And this on a supposedly 2Mb connection. In fact I doubt I'm getting more than 1-2Kb out of it.

Of course attempts to report this via their 'customer services' site have been completely ignored. I was just on the point of moving to BT, but having read this site I'm at a loss to know where to move to. I doubt anywhere could be worse than NTL.

via Facebook 11 October, 2005 13:45

Receied a letter from NTL this morning stating that i've overshot the ''acceptable'' download quota for September and fearing the worst i read on.....

My punishment for excessive use is for NTL to lower my download speed to 512kbs,reduce the cost of my connection to £17.99 and,wait for it,give me unlimited downloading for the month !!

So,instead of paying £37 for 30 gigs a month i'm now paying £17.99 for a theoretical 150 gigs a month.

So basically NTL have saved me £228 a year and given me exactly what i wanted - an unmetered connection,albeit at a reduced speed.

Hmm,and then you wonder why NTL struggle in the corporate world.

via Facebook 13 October, 2005 15:30

I s anyone else disgusted with NTL's E-mail service?????
Every day there seems to be a fault, unable to send and receive messages

Just how long do we have to pay for a service we are not getting????

via Facebook 23 October, 2005 20:19

NTL? Don't make me laugh! In MAY of this year I tried to get a line cancelled. Dawn assured me she would do it. By the end of JUNE nothing happened, so I spoke to Sarah, who assured me she would do it. To be certain, I got through to the business department, who assured me that though it might take 30 days, they would do it.

By AUGUST nothing had happened so again I spoke to Dawn. She explained there had been so many requests for cancelled lines that they couldn't keep up, but it would be done in 30 days. "Can you divert incoming calls?" I asked, because I get five spam calls a day on the line, usually from India. "Where should they be diverted to?" was the reply. "I don't care--the speaking clock would do!"

Laughter.. a promise that it would be done. By October nothing had been done so again I rang and got the same shpiel. November.. nothing. NTL. Hah! It's comical.

via Facebook 16 November, 2005 21:50

BT offered SDSL in my area from May of this year. SDSL is a beefed up ADSL with high speeds in both directions. The charge was £1,000 per month.

In June they installed it, but I explained after two weeks that it was no longer required, due to the client requiring it having gone bust. I sent all the equipment back and they confirmed that the line had never been used.

They insisted that I would need to pay £12,000 for a year's contract!! I explained that nobody told me I needed to sign up for a year--I checked the original emails and it says nothing about twelve months.

They won't back down so I'm reporting the whole matter to Ofcom--can you imagine the balls to rip someone off for that much loot? Their only expense was sending an engineer out for 30 minutes--a guy who made it clear he was also mightily teed off with BT as an employer.

via Facebook 16 November, 2005 21:58

Had ntl negineers fit TV, phone and broadband on 3rd Dec. Unfortunately, the set top box did not work and after some investigation it was found to be the cable running from the outside of my premises to the junction box in the street at fault. The installation engineer said he would put a call in for the engineers to sort it out and assured me it would be done either later that day (they were in the next village), Sunday or first thing Monday morning. I asked if this would affect my broadband connection and was told it wouldn’t.
The engineer left with just the set top box plugged into my TV, leaving the video, DVD and roof aerial unplugged. I later had to reconnect this to be able to use my TV that evening as no engineers turned up to sort out the cable.
By evening, I had attempted to connect my computer to the internet unsuccessfully and phoned the customer service line. My first question was whether the cable could be the problem even though the installation engineer stated the cable wouldn’t affect broadband. I was again advised that the cable would not cause a problem and it must be the modem. I spent the next 30 minutes on the phone unplugging and plugging in the modem before the operator finally informed me that the modem was at fault. An engineer would be required so she would request one. At this point I informed her that an engineer request had already been made.
She checked her records & saidthat no such request had been made and after being told I could only get an engineer on Monday afternoon or I would have to wait a week, I agreed to take a day of work. The engineer eventually turned up at 17.45 and told me the problem was definitely the cable and he could do nothing. He informed me he would request an engineer to get the cable sorted and promptly left.
I then phoned to make a complaint to be told that no request for an engineer had been made so this was sorted out at that time. I was also told that BT had not yet transferred my number and was told (for the first time) what my temporary number was.
I also advised that I’d already had to take one day off work, still hadn’t got the services I’d ordered and had been an ntl customer for only a week. The operator informed me that no compensation could be paid but she agreed to reduce my bill for broadband, cable TV and phone line rental for a period of 3 months.
As I had to go away on business, the engineer did call that week but as the property was empty I have no idea when.
Upon my return on 9th December I found the set top box to be working but with only a handful of channels (13 in all). My phone was working but my old number had not been transferred and my broadband access was ok on one computer. Yet another phone call was made to customer services who told me to switch off my set top box and turn it back on again. Having done this I was to wait for 30 minutes then see if I had the correct channels. Over an hour later there was no change as yet another phone call made. This time I was transferred to another operator in a different department who asked me again to switch off my set top box wait for a short while then turn it back on. This was done and within a short space of time, I had the required channels.
A few days later, I decided to reconnect my work computer and Lap Top to the internet. Unfortunately my laptop has insufficient RAM (a requirement I was not informed of) and I could get no connection with my work computer. A phone call to customer services (again) informed me that my network card was at fault and I’d have to connect using the USB cable. I was talked through the process but told I could only run one computer at a time. This contradicts with what I was told by the salesman.
Finally on 20th December I was told my BT number would be transferred on the 20th and on that afternoon I checked it to find it had been done.
Seventeen days after your engineer originally called I had TV, Telephone with my original number and an internet conne

via Facebook 9 January, 2006 17:30

told ntl in october about my mothers death,in december i phoned them again and have done so many time since. they are still charging her with line rental i wonder if they have a conection to heaven. she is now listed with their debt collector! the fact is they should owe her money as all rental is payed a month in advance

via Facebook 27 February, 2006 20:29