Stories that people send to me
These are genuine emails of stories that people send to me once they've read my website!
"You wouldn't believe the problems I am having with them and have done since day one.. Let me give you a quick run down.
I first signed up with them in June 2001, and had the telephone, TV and the very quick 'SurfUnlimited' package. I had no trouble with the installation apart from the bloke dragging loads of black wires round my house instead of just going through the existing hole from where the previous occupiers also had cable (work that one out!).
Anyway, I thought - nice, we just pay £10.50 a month (or whatever it was) and can spend as much time as we liked on the net - WRONG!
My first bill showed the advance charge for surfunlimited BUT also charged for each individual call. So I rang them up - 'we will look into it and get back to you'. No one rang but I did have the calls credited on the next bill. This was fine until I noticed they had again charged for each individual call made. So I get on the phone again. This time one of their customer 'service' ops said that we must have been using sites outside Telewest's control.
I asked her to explain and she said 'like eerr adult sites'. I'm no prude but internet porn has never been my scene or my partners, and I also knew that a credit card request usual pops up for some of those sites and wasn't hotmail out of their control? No reply!
To cut a long story short they did sort it out, after I had wrote numerous letters and made loads of calls. In the end I stopped paying by DD as I didn't trust them to take the right amount. There is definitely something wrong with whoever/whatever tots up their bills - which you will see later.
Every month I have had a bill there has been something wrong since then - meaning every month I have had to spend time trying to sort it out. In April we decided to have a bit of a move round and this involved moving the TV from one side of the room (where the box was) to the other side (no box). So I rang and asked them to move the box. The girl said yes they could do this .... for £25. This didn't bother me as we had knocked walls down and knew that we would not use the box in the present place.
So the engineer turned up (a contractor of course) equipped with 2 miles of cable. He was openly still pissed and/or stoned from the night before and all he did was extend the cable from the box over to the other side of the room. I asked him about moving the box and he said it was telewest instructions to just extend the cable. So now i have a cable running all around the side of the room - lovely.
I also had my bill in March telling me that I was overdue by £39 which had been brought forward from the previous bill - I was like ... what?? As I knew I had paid all the bills (this was the time when they had the FAB idea to put all the bills together i.e.. TV and telephone). So I ring up again and speak to a nice young man who informed me that I hadn't paid a bill since January. I said well that's funny since it says on the bill - payment received, thank you.
So again I cancelled the direct debit (I was still paying the TV by DD, it was the phone/internet I cancelled in 2001) and refused to pay the amount they said I owed - by this time I was shit hot on a calculator and thinking about offering my services.
Surprise, surprise, April's bill came and everything was up to date with the payments recorded. So then we come to May - and this is the classic! The bill came and it included the £25 charge for the effort of extending a bit of wire. I was expecting quite a big bill due to me refusing to pay the past bill (this is getting complicated I know). So the bill was for £106. I wasn't happy with it but sent a cheque for £100 (I was at work and count remember the full amount). Imagine by shock when I had one of their 'pay or be cut off in 7 days' letters saying I hadn't paid. I rang them up - no they had no record of the payment. I rang the bank - yes £100 came out at the beginning of May.
I rang Telewest back to be told 'we have no record of the payment so it is your problem'. I rang the bank - and ordered a copy of the cheque. I got the cheque which had been cashed by 'Telemids'. I wrote to them enclosing the copy of the cheque and asking for an explanation. I also rang and wrote and said I wanted to cancel the surfunlimited as we didn't use the net much and when we did - it was that slow that we couldn't be bothered. Still I was charged in advance. I had a phone call early one morning when I was off sick. The girl said they had now received the money and 'is there anything else I wanted to discuss'. I was taken a bit of guard as I expected at least an apology so I just croaked 'no' and put the phone down.
Ok - and onto the most recent episode. In June 2002 I had the bill and saw that they had been so kind a to give me a refund of £79.50. I was chuffed and thought fair play, at least they've offered a good will gesture. The bill said that I need take no action as I was in credit by £10.30. This was stated on the bill as (minus)- £10.30.
Great I thought!
Not so - on Tuesday I came home to find another snotty letter saying I was going to be cut off for not paying £10.80 (don't ask me where they pulled this number from - possibly the Lotto). I had the bill for July the same date (oh yes - still being charged in advance for the internet - funny how they managed to upgrade my TV channels but not cancel this service).
I was gob smacked to see that it was a reminder, lovely shade of red, for £66. I looked through the bill - apparently £29 had been bought forward (where from?). And a direct debit had been refused for £39 from the back. Where did they get this amount from?
Let me tell you - They had added £29 to - £10.30 and came up with £39.30. I have since asked them what school their PC systems went to. However, this ghostly £39 is not mentioned on the front of the main bill - so god knows what that's all about.
I worked out that the bill should have been £20.50 for TV plus £4.60 for telephone calls (I have taken off the surfunlimited charge as I informed them in June that I would not be paying if they tried to charge me). This therefore is £25.10 and of course then we add this to the -£10.30 and get ? Yes! - £14.80.
I phoned them and was on the phone for 35 minutes! I got through quite quickly, it was 6.30 pm. I spoke to the girl and explained which took 5 minutes. It was obvious she didn't have a clue so goes off to speak to someone else and comes back 25 minutes later to tell me she didn't know what was happening and would I like to phone Credit Services.
You can imagine my answer.
She also told me she was emailing someone who would ring me back - no return call of course. So I have copied all the correspondence and bills that I have had and sent a very well worded letter to their head office in Woking. I have informed them that as far as I am concerned the 'service' and billing regime they offer is not fit for purpose or use and they are therefore not within relevant legislation which would interest the Trading Standards (I'm a food safety manager so have a few contacts in the right places)! I await their reply!
I would love to tell them to 'second word' OFF but its all the hassle of getting connected and installed with someone else. But I really cant take anymore - I dread the bills each month and I haven't got the time or energy to keep phoning and writing.
That is the basic story, some of the amounts I have quoted are not exact, but just to give you an idea. I refuse to pay amounts that I do not owe and I think I've got a fair case with them and I have told them that if they do cut me off for not paying this £10.80 then I will seek legal advice as they are not keeping to their side of the contract. I have also informed them that these demanding letters had better not affect by credit rating.
Dear Geoff,
I have just been reading your Telewest disaster stories.I am so pleased to have come across your Website while looking for an alternative to NTL.
Obviously I considered Telewest but now I think I'll pass on cable TV altogether. The week end of 8/9 February I decided to take the plunge and subscribe to NTL for telephone,TV and internet.The package was chosen including additional channels,agreements signed and an appointment made for everything to be installed on Saturday 15 February,between 8:00 a.m & 12:00.At 1:10 p.m. two clowns turned up.
One looked half cut and stayed outside my sitting room window grinning like a hyena.I asked the other clown who was in my sitting room whether his colleague was alright out there in the cold & shouldn't he come in. I was told that he was fine and would be working outside anyway. The clown in my sitting room then spent 20 minutes deciding where to put the cable and there seemed to be a difficulty for every solution. If he brought it in through outside wall into the sitting room at floor level he would have to find a way of avoiding the open fireplaces on the wall closest to the TV. Why not move the TV to close to where the cable comes in to the room?" Because the TV arial comes into the room at the opposite end. "So why not extend it?" - "Ooh don't know about that". "How about feeding the cable under the floorboards?" - "Not allowed to lift floorboards."
Then why not bring the cable into the room at the level of the dado rail 12" below the ceiling and run it along the inside of the dado rail,and down the side of the built in shelves in the recess in which the TV is situated? "We only drill at floor level and we don't carry ladders that are tall enough to for us to reach the dado rail." Eventually the clown agreed that the last suggestion was the most practical and agreed to do it but warned that it would take at least 2 hours and was that alright? I said that it was but I would have to cancel an appointment that I had for 3:30 p.m.I would be only too pleased to do that if it meant that everything would be installed that afternoon. The clown said that it would be. So I then cancelled my appointment.
When I had done so the clown said that he would need to go back to the depot in Stockwell to get some more cable. I live 5 minutes from Stockwell and you can walk it in 20 The clown said that he would have a word with his colleague who would get on with sorting out the telephone lines and went outside to the van. I left the room for a few and when I came back the van and both clowns had gone. 1 hour 30 mins later they had not returned. I called Customer Services at NTL and was told that they had been sent onto another job. I asked why. Customer Services said that apparently I had rescheduled the appointment. The clown knew perfectly well that I hadn't,so the man was a liar as well as an idiot. However,customer services had spoken to the manager at the depot and assured me that the contractors would be coming back. I called several times throughout the afternoon and was told that they would definitely be coming back to do the job that day. Finally at 6:00pm, they admitted that the clowns were not coming back.
Obviously the job was too tough for them or would take too long for the time that they had and they did not wan't to do it but I cannot for the life of me understand why they could not have said so. The poor idiots just ran away and no one at NTL could tell me why. They still can't. However, pissed off though I am at spending an entire Saturday waiting for nothing, I am a positive thinker and having read the emails that you have received I have come to the conclusion that someone up there is trying to tell me something. Cable TV comes with a lot of hassle and is it really worth it? Why do I want it when I rarely watch TV anyway Because of the films. All the good films are now on satellite or cable and there is nothing but crap on terrestial TV. Well... maybe but how many of them would I actually bother to watch and is it really worth £720 a year? If I really want to see a film I can get a video. The NTL clowns and your website have saved me £65 a month,that's £720 a year. Keep up the good work.
Charlotte
