ntl - better broadband for existing custs

Scarlet_Fever

hi all

not sure if this is in the right place but i saw a story in the guardian this week (link here)
http://money.guardian.co.uk/phones/story/0,13283,1534329,00.html

'Upgrades to the latest offers are either never made or not clear, say the accusers. They only win a good deal if they threaten to leave.

Ntl denies the charges. It insists customers are made aware of broadband upgrades in particular.

But the company still has more than 200,000 people paying the old rates for the old service out of the 300,000 who signed up.

.....

When ntl launched a much faster 1Mb service he suggested he be upgraded to the new speed - which they agreed to.

When the company dropped the price to £9.99 for new customers, he was back on the phone to complain. He is now paying the lower price.

...'

anyway - i phoned up and easily upped my broadband speed, but was unable to get them to drop the price, so am now looking at moving over to sky anyway!



Willow : I knew it. I knew it. Well, not in the sense of having the slightest idea, but I knew there was something I didn't know

rdwarr

I was on the £25.99 per month 512K service. I received a letter saying that I'd get an upgrade to 2MBps at no extra cost and was more than happy with the increase in download speed.
I could have downgraded to the new 512K service but chose not to as it has a lower download limit (3GB per month instead of 1GB per day).
I'd advise any NTL customer to keep track of what's going on by visiting their website. It only takes two minutes a week and can save you money or give you a better service.
NTL has improved a lot over the past few years; moving to BT/Sky is not recommended purely on grounds of being "huffy" as things may be worse!
Good luck,
Richard

charlesworth82

I was told that anyone can updgrade to the new speed by calling them up - however i was also informed that by upgrading to the new speed the new terms come into action - which means you have a limit to the amount of stuff you can download each month. Whereas on the old terms you have unlimited download available.

hushpuppy

rdwarr wrote:

I'd advise any NTL customer to keep track of what's going on by visiting their website. It only takes two minutes a week and can save you money or give you a better service.Richard

Hi,

Thanks for the info, but can you explain how to check on the NTL site what an individual customer is signed up to and is payig for their internet connection as you alluded to as per quote above?

Thanks

eco21

Im a recently new customer £9.99 for 1mb, dont think I can get much better than that just now

Munki_2

I was paying the 24.99/month for 700k(ish) (originally 600 but they upgraded everyone a while ago). Then they were saying that all their customers would get a free upgrade to 2mb. However they are very slow at doing the change over automatically (dragging their heals I think). I happened to be looking around at the possibility of switching to BT and getting a cheaper broadband provider, so phoned NTL to say I was looking at switching, and asked them if there was anything they would offer me to keep me as their customer. They offered me half price line rental on my phone for a year (making it £4.75/month) and half price broadband for 6 months (12.50/month).. plus they forced through the free upgrade to 2mb straight away (all I needed to do was reset my modem).

So they came up trumps for me... from a simple phone call, over £130 saved for a year.

I'm not sure there are any new download limits in particular. I believe they still have their restrictions which they give you a slapped wrist if you go over the limit. It just will take less time to get there with the faster download speeds. That's the way I understood it. You may want to dig out their T&C's from their website and take a proper look.

Munki.

charlesworth82

As said above "I'm not sure there are any new download limits in particular. I believe they still have their restrictions which they give you a slapped wrist if you go over the limit".

Users who regiestered with ntl a while back dont have the restrictions that the new users have and can download as much as like as often as they want. By asking for the upgrade you move onto the restricted service (which they brought in around a year ago).

Alfie_E

hushpuppy wrote:

...can you explain how to check on the NTL site what an individual customer is signed up to and is payig for their internet connection as you alluded to as per quote above?

If you use a cable modem, you can use ntl's Connection Speed Upgrade. Once you've logged in, you'll be shown what you're currently signed up for. At that point, you'd exit without upgrading. If you've got a set-top box, you'll have to call ntl. As the four different packages have very different speeds, you could try a Cable Modem Simple Speed Test. The four services are listed below.

Speed... Cap
300kb/s. 1GB/day
1Mb/s... 3GB/month
2Mb/s... 1GB/day
3Mb/s... 1GB/day

You can look at the ntl Broadband usage allowance guidelines, for further details.

Previously, ntl broadband services were "uncapped", but the terms and conditions included a "fair use" clause. The 300kb/s, 2Mb/s and 3Mb/s services are services, or upgrades to services, that date from that time. ntl's explanation for the introduction of a 1GB/day figure was that they were giving a concrete figure to what they defined as fair use. The 1Mb/s service is a truly capped service. As its terms and conditions are significantly different to the 300kb/s service, ntl couldn't just move all users of the old 300kb/s service to the new 1Mb/s one. It might have been nice if ntl had looked for all the light users of their 300kb/s service, and sent them an email or letter suggesting they might benefit from moving to the 1Mb/s service, just as it would have been nice, if they'd made an across-the-board cut to £9.99/month. But, companies are often a bit towards their existing customers.

For those out of their initial twelve-month contract, it has certainly been worth calling ntl for a price reduction in the past. See NTL at it again! Make the call and save some cash.... I rang up at the end of last week, and was offered my current 2Mb/s service for £16.50/month, not just for a number of months, but permanently. Not quite the reduction some other MSEs managed, but I don't have ntl telephone or TV. If ntl customer services get a large number of people wanting a reduction, after the Guardian article, their resolve might harden.