Flaky NTL Service

eleMental

I know this has been done to death but....

I've recently upgraded the NTL/UPC DVR box/phone/broadband. Over the past 2 weeks I would say on at least 5 occasions I've been watching telly only to suddenly get a "There appears to be no signal...." message. Unplugging, rebooting, etc etc doesnt work and the phone doesnt work either (though strangely the broadband seems fine.)

I've called NTL on all occasions - 2 of which there was a recorded message saying there was a known issue in the Chld area. The service normally resumes after an hour or so.

So am just wondering, is anyone else on this service experiencing the same issues regularly? They advised me to book a service call but said theres a potential €50 "no fault found" fee that the technician can charge if they dont find anything wrong, so I'm reluctant to do that.

Seemingly if >3 people from the area report a fault they send someone out to check the overall signal etc so am hoping this isnt a problem limited to me and that other people are reporting it too.

Thanks

darsar

Hi eleMental,

I have the exact same problem. (CL Wood)

I have the UPC pause/rewind/record box with broadband and it was going on to the 'there appears to be no signal' screen a few times a week. Then one day about two months ago it had gone 5 times before lunch time and I was sick to death of plugging the box out and back in just to get it going again so I had UPC out to fix it.

Repairer said I had a weak signal coming in from outside and he addressed the problem but gradually it started happening again. It is gone now as I type.

:mad:

eleMental

Okay well at least its good to know its not just me, sounds much more like an area problem that our individual DVR boxes. I guess if you call them and one other person calls them then they'll have to send someone out today to have (another) look!

The strange thing is that my broadband is working fine but the phone is dead - wouldve thought I'd lose none or all three?

Have tried unplugging the DVR box 3 times and that doesnt fix it and its gone over 2 hours now. Hopefully something will get sorted soon, though I'm not holding my breath. Am already totally regretting moving everything over to NTL....BT may cost a little more but by god you defo get what you pay for!!!!

JanneG

eleMental wrote: »

Okay well at least its good to know its not just me, sounds much more like an area problem that our individual DVR boxes. I guess if you call them and one other person calls them then they'll have to send someone out today to have (another) look!

The strange thing is that my broadband is working fine but the phone is dead - wouldve thought I'd lose none or all three?

Have tried unplugging the DVR box 3 times and that doesnt fix it and its gone over 2 hours now. Hopefully something will get sorted soon, though I'm not holding my breath. Am already totally regretting moving everything over to NTL....BT may cost a little more but by god you defo get what you pay for!!!!

Had total signal loss around Christmas and so did at least 4 other neighbours... called NTL/UPC at least 10 odd times and they could NEVER find any other calls in the same area... the funny thing was that at least 5 times I handed my phone over to one of the affected neighbours who would then ask if their call had even been registered?!

App. they have to get a minimum of 4 individual calls from the same area within something like 2 hours before they would even consider it an area fault. I had 3 calls closed on me with one of these being a priority call.

The engineer that eventually came out was fairly peeved that the helpdesk hadn't dealt with our calls in the correct way and it ended up being a junction box filling up with water after the broadband had been installed in the well outside our houses. This could be a fairly reasonable cause this time as well as the weather hasn't exactly been the best... :rolleyes:

Either way, we no longer have NTL/UPC and must say that we are a lot happier with our service...