The first irritation arose whilst still living in the flat.  Shadow1980 phoned them to advise them that we would be moving, and the date on which our services in the flat could be terminated which was around 2 weeks after this phone call.  3 days later, we discovered our internet was down, and our TV was telling us we weren't subscribed to any of our usual channels.  After another 45 minute wait on the customer services line, we were told that our set top box didn't exist on the NTL network - someone had cut it off because we had advised them that we were moving.  Evidently cutting it off is a much simpler process than turning it back on, as they advised us it would be 2 weeks before the service would resume if it were to be turned back on.  We told them not to bother, since we would be moving out around that time.

A few days later, we were called by another customer services employee in order to arrange a time for the engineer to come and install our TV/phone/internet at the new house.  The only available date was about a week after we had moved in between 1-6pm, so I took the afternoon off work to wait for him to show up.  When he eventually arrived, I explained to him where we wanted everything connecting - the TV in the living room, the internet directly above that in the study and the phone in wherever the existing phone points were.  Now I'm pretty sure this must be a fairly standard arrangement, most people have their TV in the living room and their PC in the study.  However when I explained this (bear in mind we had already been through this with the guy we set up the appointment with, so it souldn't have been a shock) his face fell, and he informed me... "I don't have the right type of cable to put it upstairs."

WTF?!?!  How is it possible for an internet installation engineer to not have the "right type of cable" with him to install the internet?  How many types of cable which he might need to use can there possibly be?  Surely his van is big enough to keep some cable in!  Evidently they no longer issue the set-top box we have, it's an old model.  (Remember, we only had it issued to us when we had it installed in the flat a year ago so it's not like it's some kind of ancient technology.)  Now let's just say this geezer didn't seem to be the brightest star in the sky, and trying to get any kind of information from him has well and truly prepared me for a new career working for MI5 as an interrogator.  Eventually, after an exchange which included me having to explain my reasons for really not wanting wireless internet on my PC through a router which was downstairs, he decided he could come back to fix it the following Tuesday afternoon, after 4pm. (This was Thursday so we're now on to the 3rd week of no internet now, which we are of course paying for in the meantime).  So I took yet more time off work to get home for 4pm, and of course, he did not appear.  When I finally got someone from NTL to get him to call me, his excuse was pretty simple - "I totally forgot."  Awesome!  So now I've had time off work twice, and I've still got no internet.  He assured me he would come the following day after 6pm so that I didn't have to take yet more time off work.  He even gave me his mobile number so I could get hold of him to sort it out.

So now it's Wednesday lunchtime - I phoned the engineer and spoke to him, and he assured me he would be there after 6pm.  Well 6pm came and went, and it was soon apparant that he was actually in the pub watching the England/Holland game since his phone was now also turned off.  I managed to get hold of in on Thursday, and he had now decided that he didn't want to come on an evening because it would be dark.  Of course, he couldn't have realised that the week before when he arranged to come on an evening...  so now we've had 3 broken appointments, and still no internet.  "Saturday morning!"  he said.  "Call me on Saturday morning and I'll answer my phone and come round".  Well the fact that he explicitly stated he would answer his phone should have given me a clue as to what was coming.  Of COURSE he didn't answer his phone on Saturday.  NTL customer services did though, and we were told that a manager would call us back "probably today but at the very latest  by Monday".  How amazingly useful - obviously talking to a manager will get our internet installed!

Monday came and went with no phone call of course, however on Tuesday afternoon Shadow1980 got a call from an evidently misinformed manager who thought our only problem was that the engineer hadn't left us a cable. After some frantic explanation Shadow1980 managed to explain that we actually needed the cable installing it, and posting it to us whilst thoughtful of her, wasn't really going to cut the mustard.  An appointment was arranged for Saturday (so now we're heading into the 5th week of no internet) and miraculously he did actually turn up, with cable in tow and manage to get us hooked up again.  Now the fun part really starts - trying to get back the money we've paid in the meantime for internet we didn't have!