Airborne porcines

Wonders never cease. In the pantheon of Things Unlikely To Happen This Century, sitting just about top of the list is getting through to a real person at NTL. This was a significant achievement in its own right, but to find someone actually capable of helping me and without being rude and ignorant was, as David Coleman would say, quite remarkable. In this case I wanted them to take money off me, which you'd think was the raison d'être for a business, but which can be unaccountably troublesome when NTL are involved.

They had sent me a default notice as I hadn't paid my phone bill for ages - my fault of course, but really, could they make it more difficult to pay? The notice instructed me to ring a freephone number within seven days to pay the bill or make arrangements to do so, otherwise it was "see you in court, Bub". Naturally the number is only open between 8am and 6pm and is so jammed that you cannot even get onto the call-queuing system. This means they do not have enough lines to cope. This might not seem such a bad thing; victim of their own success, etc. Except for one thing. NTL are a telco. Does this not seem the sort of thing a telco ought to be able to organise with ease? Particularly for the use of its own accounts payable department. Is it any wonder they're in such deep doo-doo? I was almost tempted to go to court and use my willingness but inability to pay due to the impossibility of getting through on the freephone number as my defence.

This is what gets me about NTL. The services they provide are excellent. I have an NTL phone line which has not given a moment's trouble in five months and the 512K cable modem service which, a couple of outages due to core router failure and once due to a DHCP server screwup aside, has been thoroughly excellent and reliable. I know a couple of people who have cable TV though them and say the same of that. But customer service.... dear, oh dear. I don't know anyone who is with NTL who doesn't have grief with their bills, either getting them correct, getting them on time or merely being able to pay them. Come on guys, sort it out. Your customers like not having BT in the house. And the thought of paying BT's outrageous price for ADSL is too, too horrible.