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For a few months my internet connection has been a bit iffy. The problem seemed to start at about the same time as the school hols started - so I put it down to NTL (or whatever they're called now) having sold more bandwidth than they could support and all the kids on their holidays were hogging what was there (it has happened before).

To begin with it would be that occasionally I couldn't connect to any websites. The problem got worse and I came to the conclusion that it was something that wasn't going to go away. Over the past few days I've hardly been able to connect at all - nothing today until about an hour ago (hope I get this typed before it goes again).
Anyway, tried to contact NTL today (by phone of course as no internet!). All the freephone or national rate numbers were either entirely recorded "help" or, when I did eventually reach a human, they told me I'd have to ring a premium rate number to get this resolved.
Well, with blood boiling at the thought of paying to sort out their problem with their "service" I rang the number. The polite chappy who replied started by ensuring I was aware of the call charges .... to which he became very aware of my disgust at this and that I expected NTL (or whoever) to pay for this themselves .... to which he assured me that I'd be re-credited if it was their problem. Passified, I explained the problem, humoured him by trying things that I'd already tried before ringing and then reporting status lights on the cable modem after he'd run remote diagnostics.
Upshot is he agrees it's a problem with the cable modem (which they supply) and a chap (he says engineer - I predict it will be a service technician) will come out on Tuesday to sort it for me ... and my call charges will be refunded.

So I'll have to arrange to work from home on Tuesday pm. Dunno how much I'll be online before then though.
Hopefully it will all be sorted as planned.

Once they get it sorted phone them up and ask them what are they going to give you to stay with them. If they dont want to know then fuck them off.

Andy, I don't know which modem you have on your BB but, if it's one of the Teryon ones, there's a known problem with them. Basically, ntl quadroupled the data rate on the cable to give higher bandwidth to accomodate the on demand services; trouble is, the old Teryon modems can't quite cope. I had the same problem with mine but the good news is that a new modem has fully sorted the problem. It's the only gripe I've had with the ntl BB as it's been ultra reliable other than that. Still anoying that the customer has to report a known problem to resolve it instead of ntl pro-actively replacing them.
Anyway, hope they sort it for you.

Tweaker wrote:Andy, I don't know which modem you have on your BB but, if it's one of the Teryon ones, there's a known problem with them. Basically, ntl quadroupled the data rate on the cable to give higher bandwidth to accomodate the on demand services; trouble is, the old Teryon modems can't quite cope. I had the same problem with mine but the good news is that a new modem has fully sorted the problem. It's the only gripe I've had with the ntl BB as it's been ultra reliable other than that. Still anoying that the customer has to report a known problem to resolve it instead of ntl pro-actively replacing them.
Anyway, hope they sort it for you.

Thanks Dave - I'll check which cable modem when I get home.

Seems that all my kids know of friends that have had this very problem and that new kit has sorted it.
I agree it's very annoying that they haven't sorted this out properly if it's a known problem - especially as they put you off contacting them by virtue of the fact that you have to call a premium rate number for an undefined length of time. The fact that once you've called it, they tell you they will reimburse this if it is their fault (although this was not volunteered info) does nothing to detract from it putting you off making the call.

Anyway, hopefully tomorrow I'll be sorted.
(I'm doing this from work at present)

I had exactly the same problem, however mine wasn't caused by the modem it was the bloody engineers in the street, cutting people off at random.

When I cancelled my subscription I got a nice refund £58-95