The overall rating of a review is different from a simple average of all individual ratings.
Advantages:
Cheaper than BT, good customer service, excellent choice of tarriffs, flexibilty, good range of advanced add - ons .
Disadvantages:
You are surcharged for not paying by Direct Debit ( ! ), occasion boo - boo by customer service, clarity of line not as good as BT (but see review) Mobile option doesn't include Three .
I'm back on the net now with access virtually 24/7 so be expecting new reviews and the same old att...
I'm back on the net now with access virtually 24/7 so be expecting new reviews and the same old attitude. Regards-Peter.
Member since:25.07.2004
Reviews:64
Members who trust:6
Back in the dim and distant past before I was married, my wife had a BT line. She liked the number, didn't want to change it and went mad if I suggested it. So I had five years of paying high phone bills c/o Blasted Tripe-and there was no way was I going to be allowed to change.
That was until she started getting cranky phone calls at regular intervals, which upset us both. The Police couldn't really help because the crank calls weren't blatently obscene and BT wanted a nice fat £35 fee to change the number. So my wife relented and when the Telewest rep called, I signed up for Telewest and had BT disconnected. Telewest were running a free connection promotion so I saved £35 over BT straight away.
The installation work was simple enough-involved running a line from the street into the house, installing a box and getting it all running. This took about a couple of hours and the installation went very well-no mess and minimum of disruption.
On connecting the line though the first thing I noticed was less clarity than I'd had with BT, a certain amount of hissing and crackle-not
obtrusive but not the clarity i'd enjoyed with BT. However, i was using c/o my wife a very cheap handset so that may have had something to do with it.
My first bill with Telewest was £14.95 in comparison to the over £25 I used to pay with BT using the forerunner of their 3-2-1 tarriff. A great bonus was the free calls after 8pm to other Telewest numbers which contributed to to that reduction.
I've moved twice since then, both times Telewest have installed new services such as my Internet connection (Blueyonder which is also excellent), and Digital cable TV. On each occasion, the installation has been completed with the minimum of fuss,the engineer(s) have always arrived on time and left with the job completed. So top marks to Telewest..
Since then Telewest have revised their tarriffs and have also introduced a range of advanced features which are as below
3-2-1 Tarriff £10.00 rental calls to land lines 3p per min 6am-6pm 2p per min evenings and 1p per min at weekends calls to other Cable phones 6p per call with no time limit evenings and weekends.
Talk Evening and Weekend £10.00 line rental £6.50 service charge 4p per min to Landline and Evening and Weekend calls to landlines FOC
Talk Unlimited £10.00 line rental,£15.50 service charge and UNLIMITED land line calls FOC (subject to a fair-use policy if any wannabe business people think they will get this installed then think again Telewest WILL rumble them and disconnect them!)
Add ons include a Talk Mobile call option for £1.50 per month which significantly reduces cost to Mobile phones (Except Three which is an annoying omission!),Talk International an International Call Option for £3.00 per month which leads to massive International call savings eg Jamaica from 80p per min down to 22p per min for 1st min then 18p per minute,Conference Calling which allows simultaneous calls with two people, Call Barring, Caller ID, Anonymous Caller Blocking, Call Waiting,Call Divert,Enhanced Voicemail-all these options cost £1.00 per month per option more.
Services selected must be held for a minimum of thirty days.
Telewest also provide on-line billing which saves the wait for the postman,though I'm sure we could all wait for that one lol!
So Telewest gave me a nice reduction in my bills, an ever increasing range of call options and facillities and their installation rates have been top-notch.
And the drawbacks?
Well sadly Telewest charge £2.00 extra for not paying by direct debit so if you don't have a bank account you pay more, they have a nasty £10.00 late payment charge-though I suppose they want everybody to pay on time,their Mobile call option excludes Three phones which is a very annoying omission as I have several friends on Three besides myself and their customer services have made the odd boo-boo like not sending me a hard-copy bill , therefore stopping me paying on time and landing me with a £10.00 late payment charge. Overall though the customer services have improved remarkably over the last few months and get me sorted with the minimum of waiting and problems.
So overall, i'm VERY happy with Telewest and would strongly recommend their excellent services. Even the quality of the line has improved.
It's good news all round.
Those of you in a Telewest area and on Blasted Tripe-DITCH THEM-you won't look back either!
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Advantages: Fast-reliable internet, digital quality TV, not overly expensive Disadvantages: The TV locks up, few interactive options, available in certain areas only
jeylee 06.11.2003 (06.11.2003)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Telewest
Advantages: Good pic quality on TV, phone crackle free and cheap, internet reliable mostly Disadvantages: A little offhand, internet 'dips' in performance
Elnoj 18.08.2001 (13.09.2001)
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Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of Telewest
Mar 30th, 2005
very helpful by (100%):
