NTL customers outspoken over outage

Last week silicon.com reported problems with NTL's services which meant users were without email for at least a week.

That story sparked a flurry of reports from angry NTL customers, informing us of the full extent of the problem, and venting their spleen against the telecoms company. By and large the problems appear to be ongoing.

silicon.com reader Karen Harman wrote and told us: "My husband and I have consistently experienced problems with NTL email for about three months. We live in Cambridge and work from home so this has been a considerable annoyance."

"We haven't received any information or apologies from the company at all, ever," she added.

Alan Caswell was similarly aggrieved. "Email in Swansea has been sporadic and taking ages to send messages, often not receiving messages at all," he said. I have written to NTL asking for a refund, I received an automated reply which had nothing to do with this and am still waiting."

Another silicon.com reader Zane Wilson added: "I am an NTL customer in Frimley, Surrey. I can certainly confirm that NTL's assertion that 'no emails will be lost' is false. I am aware of at least three emails addressed to me over a period of two weeks that were returned to sender as undeliverable."

Mike Bibbings confirmed that he too has lost emails. "The past week has been terrible for email, and some emails have been lost," he said. "Overall the email service over the past few months has been very poor, with access consistently timing out."

Kevin Shirley wrote in to tell us: "I'm in Bedfordshire and I've been having problems with NTL email for several months now. Indeed I'm currently having problems accessing email on two of my NTL email accounts."

"NTL email is horrendously unreliable," he added.

And it was a similar situation up in Teeside. "I am from the Teeside area, and have been having problem with receiving my email for over a week now," wrote silicon.com reader Kathleen Garvey.

And the problem didn't stop there. We received emails, from Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cardiff, Hertfordshire, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, North Yorkshire, Surrey, Swansea, Teeside, Warwickshire, West Midlands and West Yorkshire.