Rather than taking responsibility for a botched up negotiation, Virgin Media, who sucked up Telewest and NTL, are broadcasting a message on Sky One in which they blame Sky for the channel being unavailable. "Thanks to Sky", they say, "the Sky One channel is no longer available. They've picked up their ball and gone home.  Foul play? We think so." 

The viewer is then invited to visit their website, virginmedia.com/fairplay, in which they ask a clearly biased question "What do you think of Sky withdrawing its non-premium channels like Sky One, Sky News and Sky Sports News from Virgin Media's TV service?".

Here's another question. Isn't it about time that Virgin stopped acting like a teenager and grew up?  I can hardly believe reading a comment on one message board where someone says "well done for standing up to the big guys". 

Are you serious? The Virgin Group employs over 35,000 people in 200 companies worldwide and has a turnover in excess of over £4billion. They're hardly the little guy or the underdog they like to portray themselves as - if you think otherwise you've been seduced by the Marketeers. This is big business.

Virgin claims to put consumers first, well, what about all the viewers who are now paying the same price for a reduced service? I would say this is really annoying shit dot com.

You've got to pick a pocket or two

Well its the 12th of December and NTL have repaired my service.Please no clapping as I know that there are many of you out there still waiting to have your telephone call  answered and I'd say that there is quite a considerable amount of you out there waiting as I did for someone to Call.

It has to be the worst customer service experiences of my life, and while listening to "Newstalk106" this morning it would appear that there are thousands of NTL'ers out there suffering in the same way. To be fair to Brenda Power on Newstalk she did ask NTL to provide someone to field questions from NTL's customers but true to form NTL declined.No surprise there then, it is not only do they allow its customers to be waiting for hours on end on the telephone, they do not have the basic manners to allow people to express their opinions on the service that they get good money for in a monthly basis.

The only way that NTL will listen is for people not to pay for the shoddy service that they are peddling, I appreciate that its difficult for people to do this as TV has become a mainstay of our lives.People could for example stop paying by direct debit and pay for what they receive and not what they think they will receive (your NTL bill is prepaid) to do this either contact your bank or go online, if available, and simply cancel the direct debit,you can then pay for what you received and if you have a problem deduct the amount(pro rata) and email NTL detailing the deductions that you have made, ensuring that you keep a softcopy and a hardcopy on a file to show anyone in the future.A record of your telephone calls should also be kept for reference. I can almost say without a doubt that any email that will be sent to NTL will never see the light of day, and the onus is on them not you, to show that you informed them of your actions. Alternatively you could go to the trouble of paying them a visit as one gentleman did to get results but I think that time may be a constraint.

Finally to all you out there who cannot get through the freephone number here are two more to use 01 245 8600 now I have to say I did not get through on this and when it rang the person on the otherside simply hungup or rejected the call.What I also did was to ring the above number and simply by adding 1 instead of the 0, I got through to a voice mail, at least you might get answered.

 The other number I have is 061 272190 this is a private number of NTL and is nearly always answered but before 5pm.

I am a customer of Ntl television that is carried over a digital arial. Saturday and yesterday saw the arrival of an Atlantic Storm that was as fierce as anything that I have witnessed in my life. At 11 am yesterday I decided to reboot my desktop box as the weather was bad and the picture broken. After a few minutes a notice appeared on the TV explaining that the box was retrieving my information and this should take a few minutes and TV services will be restored. 24 hours later the same message is appearing on both TVs. So what do you do? you call customer care and see if they can help. I called yesterday 18 times and got no response. I have been calling since 9am this morning and I must say that as much as I love Vivaldi I am growing to associate "The Four Seasons" with unprofessional call centres and companies that will take your money but find that assisting its customers a step to far.

Every 30 seconds or thereabouts a voice comes over saying "we appreciate that you are holding for a customer care agent. Please bear with us a little longer , we apologise for this delay", a little longer 24 hours and I still have'nt spoken to a homo sapien.They say that they apologise for the delay but deep down they could'nt give a s##t about you or anyone else. We are left frustrated and angry , I am so angry now I would bite a dog but you must surpress your anger as if you start shouting down the telephone they will simply hang up saying that you were harressing them. Never mind that your blood pressure is dangerously high and you cant get through thats life in the new world.

There must be something seriously wrong with us as consumers if we accept this but the more I think about it there is little we can do except wait in line for somebody to answer you.

Well I'll sign off now and if this has a happy ending I'll update, a happy ending getting what you pay for.