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February 2001 Telewest had been plaguing me with nice glossy brochures for about the past six months. "Better pictures and sound!" "eMail on your TV" "Films and special events on demand!", "Widescreen pictures!", etc.. etc.. you get the idea, and for months I'd just thought "Nope.. I don't need it" and didn't upgrade. Eventually though, I succumbed when they were offering the installation/upgrade for just £30, and I thought 'Sod it.. only £30..' be silly not to. Oh how I wished I hadn't... I'm not actually in when it gets installed - my girlfriend was, and she just let the guy in, he did his stuff and trotted off. She could still watch her gardening and house decoration programs on 'UK Style' so she was happy. The first things that I try when I get home is the interactive service. Oh.. it doesn't work. It says "Please wait..." for three seconds and then goes back to the TV. Well, it's late, I'm tired, and stupidly I think it might take overnight or day until the 'interactiveness' kicks in, so I leave it. March 2001 In fact I leave it for about 10 days, until it's March. I call their 'service' centre one Saturday morning. I give my details, I explain it's a new installation - perhaps they haven't activated something? - and could I have it working please? I'm told to "try it later and it should be working then", and stupidly I believe them. It doesn't work later, not the next day, nor a week later. I call the 'service' center. The prerecorded message that you get even before you get through to a call taker says that "There are general problems with the interactive service which we are aware of. If you are calling to report about the loss of interactive service, we are aware of the problem and are working on it." Oh... does "loss of interactive service", include not having it all in the first place? i.e. I didn't have it to lose it. I hang up. I call back a week later. I get the same prerecorded message. I don't bother to call them back until ... April 2001 ... two weeks later, so we're now into April. At this point something exciting happens - my box stops working alltogether! I get home one day and the display is showing "Err". I call them up, and they send a guy out two days later, meaning I had to watch terrestrial television only off of the aerial. When the engineer comes out, I politely inquire about the interactive service still not working. He notes it down, says that he'll log it for me and that if it's not working within two weeks (two weeks!) then to call them again. So I wait two weeks, and of course ... nothing happens. I've found out now from my friend that lives about five streets away that there is a green LED on the front of the box that should be ON all the time that it is 'hooked up' to the interactive service. Mine isn't permanently on... what is does is flash a few times as it obviously tried to connect to the interactive service and fails. So I call again. I speak to a call taker. "There are general problems in your area, call back in two weeks", I'm told. Really? "So how come my mates is working who lives just 2 minutes away?" I call back in two weeks. "General interactive problems in whole of South East, we know about it, are working on it". recorded answer message. Don't even bother trying to get through to someone... is the jist. I call my friend around the corner. His interactive service is now not working. "But it was yesterday!". Oh goody. May 2001 And into another month... and still my green LED blinks away now and then. I've sort of given up now ever thinking that interactive might ever work. I'm not calling them to get it fixed because I want to use it now, I'm calling them to get it fixed on principle that I don't think Telewest actually give a toss about it's customers and haven't a clue about how to provide any sort of 'service' in the first place. So I call again. Oh! This time, interactive 'definitely should be working' in your area, our general problems are fixed now (they sound all pleased with themselves), so we'll send out an an engineer. The engineer turns up. He swaps the box round. It still doesn't work. He scratches his chin, then his head, and then his chin again. "It's not your box in here, so it must be the network point out in the road - I'll log it with our network department. Give it a week and it should start working". They're good at that phrase... "Wait a week or two and see what happens". Next time they send me a bill I'm not going to pay it. Then when they send through a final demand, I think I'll ring them up and say "Yeah.. Well.. Wait a week or two, and I might get round to paying it". So I wait a week. And guess what happens! Go on! Guess! That's right! F**K all! I call them up. I don't have to look up the 'service' center number anymore as I know it off by heart. They offer to send out an engineer. Er.. no thanks! I don't want an engineer... I know it's a network problem, the last engineer who came out was logging it with them - what have they done about it? But it seems that the call taker, can't speak to them direct and she has to leave them a message. She says they're very busy, but I should hear back from them within two days. June 2001 I give them three days, 'cause I'm a nice guy. No - really, I am. And I hear nothing. We're now into June. I am starting to grow fond of my flashing LED though. I sit in my lounge late at night with the TV and lights off, sipping on a mug of tea and watch the mysterious - flash - flash - flash - as it tries, and fails to connect to interactive service. Here's a close up of the LED display. See that second light on in the middle? That's the one you have to keep an eye out for.
The third LED below it (not on in this picture), comes on when you press a button on the remote control. So in the end I invented a game to pass away the time whilst on the phone in the queue to the Telewest 'Service' center. You had to press a button - any button that didn't do anything - on the remote control and time it so that you got it to light up and then off again, at the same time as the middle 'interactive' light flashed at you as it failed to connect. Hours of fun. 14th June 2001 I started to date things now as today I wrote them a letter. It took about three drafts to pitch a level of sarcasm which I thought was acceptable. It was also not as bad as some letters that I've seen. In fact, I think I was quite nice really all things considered. So I print it out, and post it on my way to the airport as I'm now off on holiday for a week and a bit. 30th June 2001 Home from holiday. I've missed my flashing green LED. My holiday cottage had no TV at all. But ... the TV back home is just as bad! It's almost not watchable, most channels are choppy - keep freezing, breaking up and the sound is dropping out. Some channels are worse than others. I'm forced to stick to the ones that are watchable. 2nd July 2001 Some channels disappear completely. E4 (essential for Big Brother 'live' viewing) now gives a black screen with an "Inaccessible" error message. 3rd July 2001 I call them again from work the next day. I think it's only the fact that I'm at work in front of my colleagues that stops me swearing at them. Actually that, and the fact that I know that it's not the fault of poor girl that's answering the phone. An engineer is booked to come out tomorrow. 4th July 2001 The engineer turns up. At least he doesn't try to replace the box this time. He admits it's a problem with the service box out in the street, that this happens a lot and there's not a lot he can do about it. He seems rather depressed himself as there's very little he can do, and a lot of calls he goes to fix are exactly like this. Says that he'll hand it over to the network people. He also commented from putting his metres on our box inside that the "The signal is all over the place" - which would explain the choppy TV signal. He looks really embarrassed that there's nothing that he can do, and I do sympathize with him. Engineer leaves... Get straight back on the phone to the 'service' centre and tell another poor girl that I'm just a tad pissed off now. That my TV is basically unwatchable, and what can she say that will prevent me picking up their box, throwing it out into the street and calling up Sky and getting a dished installed instead? She goes quiet for a countable number of seconds. I wait. She says "I'll just have to tell my supervisor that, hang on a moment", and puts me on hold. (I take this as a good sign that she's actually making the effort to do something). I wait. I wait a bit more. The excitment is killing me. She's back! Hurrah... a "Senior network engineer" will come round tomorrow - when would be a convenient time? Fantastic. I even get to choose my time now. Must remember to use that magic "Sky" word again in future. 5th July 2001 "Steve" my senior network engineer arrives at 6.18pm. I gladly show him how ITV, Channel 4, Sky One and E4 don't work at all. BBC1 and BBC2 are choppy. There is some irony I'm sure in the fact that the only channel I can get perfectly is Sky Sports which when we switch to it is showing it's cartoon advert for a chap to come and install a Sky Mini Dish! Steve looks at my box. He gets his meter out. He goes out to the box in the street. He wanders back to his van. He gets another tool out. More tweaking going on with the box in the street. Head scratching, chin itching, and then... then... then.. DING! You see the lightbulb appear above his head... He goes to the back of the box and unscrews the cable going into it. (And I'm thinking - I've checked it's secure myself, surely it's not that?), and then he holds up the end of the cable to the light, pauses for a moment, squints then says "Ah ha", and then very carefully with his fingers peels away a tiny ring of plastic sheathing that had been left behind when it was first installed! Yup. A half ring of plastic sheathing still attached to the cable and less than a millimeter in thickness was causing the cable to connect properly enough for the TV signal to work (badly), but not well enough at all for their to be enough signal for the interactive service to work. I kid you not! A tiny piece of plastic had caused five months of misery. I didn't know whether to laugh or cry, or kick myself for not checking it that thoroughly myself ... The point of this whole story though is Telewests ineffectiveness of dealing with such a problem and the way that the 'in house' guy, bounced it to the networks people, and the networks people check their end, clear the call down as 'fine' without telling me and assume that all is OK when it's clearly not. A simple call from Telewest to me saying "Is everything fixed? Are you happy?" would have revealed that I'm not. Late July There is more to this story to tell, but don't know the full details as it was dealt with at the time by my other half of the time. But the general TV service again went choppy and unstable, and she called them out to have the box replaced again, and be told a really useful tip - "Don't put the Telewest Box inbetween two other units" (It was inbetween the amplifier and the video recorded), as they have a tendency to overheat and perform improperly - i.e. It's a really cheaply built box. But I knew that already from the way that the display wobbled if you pressed the buttons to hard on the front of the box ...
November 27th 2001 So I'm moving... moving out of my house. The house which took five months to get the interactive service to work. This should be an interesting experience, I need to get my name off of the bill that turns up to my house and change it to my ex-girlfriends name who's staying in the house. I know I could eMail them, I know I could write to them - but surely I could just call them and it will take them one minute to deal with on the phone right, right? Wrong!! I call them up at 10am - get an prerecorded message straight away -
Hear it! (119Kb MP3 file) Pre-Recorded Message Damn right I do. I want to have some fun and see if they can improve on 25 minutes. They don't let me down - It goes up to 35 minutes when I call back at 11am, down to 18 minutes when I call at midday, and then back up to 25 minutes when I called at 2pm. So about twenty past three, when I try to call again, I have a quick sweepstake in the office at work amongst colleagues to see who can guess the nearest time of the length of the delay. (Five people, £1 each, an easy fiver for someone) Mike: 35 minute, Stewart: 20 minutes, Me: 18 minutes, Julian: 15 minutes, Steve: 10 minutes. Excellent, so I call them up, and ... ... I got straight though! No kidding.. no delay (Steve won the sweepstake, nice one mate) and spoke to a very nice chap who actually sounded like he wanted to deal with my call for a change. He took my details and asked what I wanted, and I explained my situation - I just wanted to get my name off of the bill, and my ex-girlies onto it as she was staying in the house and would thus now be paying for it. So he says, "Sure.. you'll need to speak to out customer services department for that, I'll just transfer you". And puts me on hold. And at that moment, I suddenly realise that the simple thing of "Changing a name", might not be that simple for them. So I get to hear their 'on-hold' music, as of 3.24pm, and I wait. And wait... and of course, wait a bit more. Until 4.06pm.
42 minutes later It's an 0800 number - so it's costing them money, right? During that 42 minutes, I put the phone onto speaker mode, so that rest of my colleagues can hear how "Telewest are now called 'Telewest Broadband' - the cable company for the future". Yeah, right - so far in the bloody future that they've forgotten about me that's been put on hold for three quarters of an hour before I've given up. I also went to the loo, got the coffees in - even did a bit of work (!), all the while waiting on hold, until I just got bored of their music and cancelled the call ... ... and of course I've still got to get my name of their bill, so this story will be added too at a later date! November 28th 2001 I only bother to try and phone once today.. at 7.15pm in the evening whilst I was still at work. Obviously everyone else must have gone home by then, found something wrong with their service and rang up Telewest as well, as the queue wait time was up to a staggering 58 minutes! Note to Telewest - Employ more staff! And if that costs money, then fine - put up your prices slightly. I would rather pay slightly more money and get a better service rather than have to wait fifty-bloody-eight minutes on the phone to talk to someone, ok? I'll try again tomorrow. Probably. December 12th 2001 Wrote to them again. January 25th 2002 Argh! Get a bill back to me that's been redirected to me at my new address. January 27th 2002 Decide to call them up to try and sort it out. Quite impressed as when I called the number I actually get through to a human quite quickly - but she's just someone who directs to me to the right department. Explain that it's a billing matter. Get put through to a woman who I explain the situation more thoroughly to, and she says that she'll put me through to someone who can help me. So after a few more seconds on hold (they've changed their hold music to some nice classical number now), I get a chap, who I have to explain to again the fact that I want to change the name on the bill for the old account, and he says "OK, but I'll need to transfer you to our customer services team", and before I can get a word in edgeways, puts me on hold again! So I do one of this disbelieving look at the phone receiver moments (like they do in Eastenders all the time), and I decide to give up, hit cancel, and I write them another letter ...
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This
is what a Telewest Broadband "Digibox" looks like.