NTHell - Happy Ever After?

Tuesday 11am

NTL engineer turns up to fix the problem. After I explain and show him our antique 3Com modem he confirms with me that the problem started a week ago and tells me that the network upgrades they did then basically 'blew away' all the old 3Com and Motorola modems that early adopters had. So he gave us a new modem (they started charging us the standard rate last year which includes modem rental - even though we had been still using our own paid-for modem), said that he'd arrange it to be registered and we'd be on-line in half an hour. At this point I go for a shower to get ready to go to work.

Tuesday 11:30am

Find a message from the engineer on the answerphone. There is a problem with the registration and I'll need to talk to Tech Support to sort it out. So I ring the number he gave me - however that's the old free 0800 number, now replaced with a 5p/min 0845 number. When you dial that and get to the menu entry for tech support it tells you to redial a 10p/min 0871 number. So I go for the 'any other problems' entry, play dumb and let them connect me to tech support.

I speak to a helpful indian chap who guides me through running the registration process myself on my PC (the modem is working, I have an IP address, they just don't let you connect to anything other than their registration server unless the account is all in order) a few times with different PIN numbers (and different error messages) until giving up. He says he's filled out some forms and I should try again in 24 hours.

Wednesday 6pm

I ring tech support (0871 number this time). Speak to a very friendly, extremely chatty, english guy who spends a long time trying to track down the correct account details for the broadband account, without success - my account numbers and email address all seem to be tied to a dial-up account. He's very apologetic about this but suggests we go back to my statements and work out on which account I'm being charged for the broadband.

Now up to this point I haven't bothered mentioning to them that they mysteriously stopped charging us for broadband altogether at the start of the year as I doesn't usually pay to confuse matters with extra detail. This seems a good time to 'discover' this though and we agree that this probably explains why I can't get re-registered. Unfortunately tech support can't reconnect accounts and so it's back to customer services. I redial to save 5p/min.

I speak to a nice lady called Heather who finds the details my tech support call had logged, takes my mobile number and promises to give me a ring when it's been done. Should be the next day although she can't promise that.

Thursday 10:30am

A phone call from customer services. All done, I should just pop my install disk back into my PC and it should all work. I don't bother to explain that's not quite what's going to happen but run through the registration details I was given back on Tuesday as before. Same error...

Another call to tech support, this time it's an indian engineer, I briefly explain what's been going on to him (whilst opening the door for the electricity reader man - at least I hope it was him, I wasn't paying that much attention, I'm pretty sure he didn't nick anything though) and he starts looking into it. He asks for the new account number that I was given. I give him the number Wednesday's tech guy gave me, which had been good enough for customer services to use to do their thing (apparently) - however he says it's the number for someone in an SK9 postcode.

He says he'll put me on hold for a bit and talk to customer services and find out exactly what is going on, I'm not hopeful but 15 minutes later he comes back and says that everything is fixed and it will all work now. I try a test web site - nothing. He says reboot the modem. I do that - nothing. He asks how I'm connecting to the modem, I say through a router, he says I need to do a 'logical reset'. Turn everything off - modem, router, computer - then turn each of them on leaving a few minutes between each one. He says it will definitely work after that, thank you for your call, good bye.

Amazingly, it did. Hurrah!

I wonder if I send them my next telephone bill and highlight the cost to me to get their mistake fixed they'll pay up? On the other hand it'll only be around fixer I expect and their accounting problems have saved us a lot more than that over the years so I guess I'll let it go.