NTL Broadband - acting up & terrible service

OhPinchy

Registered User
Messages
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For the 3rd time in a month my NTL broadband has stopped working. I’m based in Crumlin (anyone else near there had similar problems?). Its been out since last Friday and I had a service call arranged for today. They said it would be between 1pm and 6pm. I said that was not good enough and instructed them to make it the later the better and to call me 30 minutes in advance. I arrived home at 3:45pm to find a card saying they had been there at 2.30pm and to ring them.

Rang them and complained about it and they said it would be next Wednesday before they called out again and they cannot guarantee that calling ahead. I said this is not an acceptable level of service to expect someone to set aside half their working day for a fault on their side and was told that’s the way it is. Asked to speak to a manager and she said a manager would call me back. Few minutes later the same rep called me back saying manager had put me down as a priority call, which meant the same wide timeframe 9am -1pm on Monday, but they will guarantee to call me in advance. I said I don’t regard that as priority treatment, she went off and came back to tell me that’s the best they could do. I told her this is unacceptable and I am considering cancelling my contract and is there a valid reason why they cannot ring/text everyone in advance and none was given. I’m fuming about it and I can’t understand how people put up with being asked to set aside half a working day for a simple call out.

The guy I rang earlier today to ensure they left it late and called me said each engineer has two callout lots for the day 9-1 and 1-6. They do the house furthest from the base first and work back to the base. This means that if you are the last on the route they know this by 1pm but yet they don’t let you know that it will be 5-6pm before they get to you. Totally unacceptable – they have a text message service setup to remind you the day before, all they’d need to do is send an update at 1pm and you would know where abouts on the list you sit. I made that suggestion and also that they should have dedicated emergency engineers who deal only with service issues, as opposed to the current setup whereby they might be fixing broadband on one job and installing digital tv on the next and asked for a manager to call me back to re-assure me the service level would improve otherwise I will consider leaving.

Now to the problem: (ignoring the power light which is always on) upon power-up the cable modem lights flash, then the sync light starts flashing, then the receive, then a pause, then the sync light just keeps flashing non stop. Its not like the normal sync process whereby sync light comes on, ready flashes, then ready flashes slowly, then ready and sync stay on. Sometimes the sync and ready light do come on but even then theres no IP address and soon after all lights flash once and the sync light keeps on flashing then.

I’ve tried everything (disable network connection, turn off modem 30 secs, turn modem back on and let sync process complete, re-enable connection; and also ipconfig /release /renew) but no joy so I’m getting desperate here so would appreciate any advice to get it back up and running for the weekend.
 
Did you get NTL installed lately?

I go tmine installed about 2 weeks ago (no problems so far) and the installation guy mentioned that they got a batch of about 1000 modems that turned out to be faulty, the problem with them seemed to be that they wouldnt pick up an IP address.

I think it was the smaller blue modems rather than the older and bigger silver ones. Which do you have?
 
Open up http://192.168.100.1 in your browser. Log in with root/root or admin/admin as username/password. Find the status page and report what it says there. I've had problems with signal levels in the past. Had a bit of grief trying to tell them that there was a problem (intermittent connection/disconnection). Then I did some homework on the ntl:hell forums and found a set of guideline strengths. Using that I was better prepared to call NTL techies and they sorted it while I was on the phone.
 
along with decani's suggestion, maybe you'll find something here:
"Cable Modem Troubleshooting Tips"
[broken link removed]

drives me mad too when companies give such a vague call-out time, but you will come across this with many companies.. furniture deliveries, etc.

i've used ntl broadband for a few months now, not near crumlin, and the broadband service has been fantastic. hope you get your issue sorted soon.
 
anyone else notice that ntl speeds have changed today.. i was on a 3 Mbps line.. but when i run a speed test, it's clocking in at 7.32 Mbps.
 
I've been watching the ntl:hell forums and it looks like NTL UK are upgrading their 3MB customers first. Speeds are advertised 'up to' 10Mbps. I know I know I know. NTL Ireland vs NTL UK and all that recent buy-out. As far as a I know the deal hasn't been finished yet so NTL Ireland is still part of NTL UK. So it looks like they've been doing some trialling and the roll out is imminent.
 
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