I made the mistake of changing from BT to Birmingham Cable (Telewest)...more when they first started. I soon realised my mistake when my 'phone packed up and it took me 3 days to get through to report it. This happened twice so I went back to BT.
At the beginning of this year, I found myself in need of a new ISP and this coincided with a visit from a Telewest representative. I said I wasn't interested due to my past experience but he assured me that since Telewest had taken over Birmingham cable, things were very different and service was top notch. Their Blueyonder Internet service was second to none and, as my existing cable connection was still there, I could be connected F.O.C.

When I telephoned their sales department to make the neccessary arrangements, I was informed that I would have to fill in a direct debit form, before a date could be arranged. This was to cover the £30 installation fee and £11 per month for a basic TV package. When I asked about the free installation, I was told it was a special offer which had now expired. To cut a long story short, I had suggested to the Representative, the Sales person I spoke to at their office and the engineer that called that I needed to have their service connected to a ring of point around my house. This was not done, I had to do it myself. The original (BT) installation was invisible but I now have loose cable hanging down the wall and unclipped cable on the floor. There is more but now for Blueyonder.

After loading their CD, my machine slowed by a factor of at least two. After an experimental sending of an e-mail it stopped working although it was saying "e-mail sent". I tried to get through to their help desk but kept getting messages telling me they were too busy call later. It was now impossible to get onto Blueyonder so I reverted to my original ISP only to find that this no longer worked.

I ended up having to have my computer zapped because Blueyonder had corrupted everything. Apparently this is common, a lot of ISP's put stuff on your machine to impede or prevent you from using competitors services.

When I got my first direct debit confirmation, I had been charged £48 not £30, the monthly extra for TV was £11, not £9. When i got the phone call print outs, they had charged me for the long times I had spent trying to send e-mails which were not received when I checked later.