I am former customer of NTL and Virgin when they were seperate internet providers.

Virgin.net were pretty good, I liked the straight forward honest pricing, none of this “its cheap to start with, than its more expensive once youve been using us for months” nonsense.

NTL are a different matter, they have the advantage of being the only (IIRC) ISP which you dont actually need a telephone line to use, so keeps costs down if like me you have no need for a landline and associated line rental. NTL’s customer service was legendarily bad. But to be fair there are horror stories with every ISP.

What annoyed me in the past, the registration process seems disorganised, and things like transfering ownership of my broadband to my dad when I moved out seemed impossible after several phone calls and forms I had got me and my dad to sign, it took several attempts to get it right.

Anyway this was 3 years ago, so I thought this week should get better.

My friend (Mrs W) wanted to get broadband and already had TV package and phone, after signing up got a box with the cable modem and wiring, included about 25 metres of network cable, as the cable modem connects with a 2 way adapter to the back of the Cable TV box. This is a little unorthodox but I managed to set this up all ok.

The main issue was there was meant to be a letter (which arrives seperate from the rest of the package for security purposes) with a PIN number. This has not arrived.

I tried installing the CD, which wanted this number, after calling customer services they told me it would be 1234. Nope it wont take that. She then said 67… No that wouldnt work either. Then told me to ring technical support on 0906, I told theres no way Im ringing a premium rate technical support number when the issue isnt technical. I decided to give up that evening as it was getting late.

The next time I was round my friends house, I rang earlier this time, I got there as soon as finished work, still no letter with PIN number. Customers services lady sighed and said speak to sales they will sort you out. Sales said we cant help you, customer services are always putting calls to us, we cant help you. I demanded to speak to manager, who told me the person I spoke to the previous day shouldnt of given me the PIN number, and said he would not give me the details by email (we had an ntlworld account which had been used by my friend for the last 6 months) but said it had to be sent out by letter.

Another day wasted, and useless staff that arent trained properly and just completely incompetent arghhh!

Still at least I got my friends printer set up and installed.