NTL vanquished

Two and a half hours of phoning today, but I've won. Download speeds are up to scratch, the telly works, and I have an operational account username and password. Incidentally, the reason the download speeds were so bad was that despite mentioning I wanted the 600K service at least four times in the initial salesdrone conversation, they still gave me the 128K service. The problem was identified finally by Steve in Broadband Technical Support, who was so friendly, helpful and technically knowledgeable that after talking to him I made him go and get his line manager so I could tell said manager what a jewel Steve was.