2nd October 2006

Telewest: It's all about service

This could turn out to be a long read, but if you're considering Telewest, I recommend reading it.

So you've moved into a new house and are considering Telewest as your ISP, not a bad choice if you look at what they're offering:

Their other 2 points found here blabber on about PCguard, their online portal but the one that you want to pay attention to, possibly the most attractive point is:

"Full range of support including a great help section for PC and internet issues including information on our Instant Support Tool helps identify and fix simple internet connection problems."

Nobody wants to be stuck without their Internet connection, especially when they rely heavily on it. Good support from an ISP is a must, and is almost the only edge one ISP can have over another. Yet for the last 3 days we have been without our Internet connection. This isn't the first time either, we've been with Telewest for 4 months now, and every month, without fail, we've been disconnected. But the bad service started with the 1st visit from Telewest.

Initial Setup

One of Telewest's agents came around to take details, the account was supposed to be in Tom's name as we'd split bills between house mates. He had no money at the time so we put the account in his name and I was the payee of the account. Because of my bad credit rating, we had to pay £100 up front which we were told would contribute towards our first 6 months of payments. We were fine with this and got setup.

We got disconnected a week later and when calling Telewest, a technical support guy told us that our account had been disabled and he could not see a reason for it, he re-enabled our account and we were back online.

A Saturday morning a month later, we woke up with stinking hangovers, no Internet; a letter informing us we owe them £60.98 was waiting at the door. Upon calling Telewest, they informed us this was £17.99 a month, the 1st payment you pay for two months making it £35.98 with an additional £25 free installation charge. We hadn't been informed of this, so paid them £40 and confirmed we did in fact get told installation was free. We were also informed that the £100 we paid initially doesn't go towards our payments and that it gets refunded in full after 6 months.

Telewest then tried to take the £60.98 again, resulting in a £15 bank charge. Calling them again, I was told "we cannot speak with you as the account is not in your name", even though on the registration form I'm clearly named as the 2nd account holder. I was assured by the helpful service guy that they do not have 2nd account holders and to get Tom to call back. Trying to explain that I wanted to pay the outstanding balance, I was informed that he could not tell me the amount payable and that I could make a payment of an amount I wanted. That called ended with me informing them they're not getting another penny until they want to deal with me and hanging up.

As Tom wasn't in, I called back in a fowl mood wanting to get straight through to a supervisor to sort this out, I came across a service rep. called Simon (he'll know who he is if he's reading this). Now I have to say, Simon is a beacon of light for Telewest, in the 6+ calls I've made to them, he is the only one who's been useful, friendly and gave me the feeling he wanted to help me. I explained the situation, he refunded both the £15 bank charge and the £25 free installation charge and got us back online.

Other Months

To try and keep this short, I won't go over each month individually, needless to say we've been disconnected and each time I've had to ring Telewest, pretend to be Tom, then pretend to be me to make the payment. This last incident which provoked me to write this we were disconnected on Friday, apparently due to a failed Direct Debit, which despite the £1,000 in my account and the bank saying there is no reason it should fail.

I rang Telewest on Friday at 4pm after lectures, I paid and was informed that we would be back online within 24 hours. 24 hours passed as we were still not online, ringing them back I was flobbed off with "oh well it can take 48 hours, bye". Another shining example of Telewest support. After 48 hours Tom rang them back and was told that it should be activated in a few hours, but being a Sunday technical are not in so it may be Monday before we get the Internet back.

Monday came, still no Internet, Tom rang them again, this time being informed that our account had not been re-activated as we owe them £4 as a fine for the failed Direct Debit. They agreed to put this on next months bill and re-activate our account. Finally after 4 days we had our Internet connection back.

Conclusion

Telewest haven't once been clear with what's happening with our account from day one. The service representatives (excluding Simon) have all seemed more interested in ending the call as soon as possible than actually resolving our problem, and over the past 4 months we have spent at least 10 days being offline. Telewest won't tell you that you've missed a payment, they'll just disconnect you, only once have we received a letter asking for money but they made sure we were disconnected ready to receive it.

Between us we've spent over £25 on phone calls to Telewest, most of which result in no action being taken and us coming off the phone somewhat annoyed. I am sending a letter of complaint to Telewest covering all of this and will post their response if we receive one.

My advise to the world is, if you are considering Telewest, spend plenty of time considering it, personally I wish we'd waited the 3 weeks and spent the extra money to have a BT line fitted and gone with a ADSL ISP than Telewest and once this contract expires I will not be going with them again. In my opinion they are the worst ISP I have ever come across.