Telewest customers victims of rogue charges

Ntl Telewest has admitted that some of customers who have signed up for its TV Drive service have been the victims of rogue charges.

Although Ntl and Telewest have recently merged, the problem only affects Telewest customers. It arose after some existing customers had their digital TV boxes swapped for the company's TV Drive service .

This service provides a digital box that combines Telewest's normal digital TV services with a personal video recorder (PRV) that can record two channels at the same time, video on demand, high definition television and time shift television.

However some of these customers started noting they were being charged for films that they hadn't ordered through the Teleport video-on-demand service.

One person explained how Telewest customer service was adamant that she had watched the films and could also give a blow-by-blow account of programmes accessed through Teleport replay.

"I was told I had been watching celebrity poker , Top Gear and Dragons Den – none of which I have ever watched when live or on Teleport replay," she said.

Investigation of cable forums by Computeractive revealed a number of other puzzled Telewest customers complaining of being charged for films they had never ordered.

To stop these rogue charges being levied against their accounts, people were advised to place a block on the Teleport services, which includes TV replay.

Computeractive alerted Telewest to this problem. After investigation it admitted that the problem existed because of account information that hadn't been wiped from these people's old set-top boxes.

Basically, when the new TV Drive set-top box is installed, the old set-top box is then usually re-used with a new TV customer. But it should first be completely clean of its MAC ID.

However because of an administrative error which Telewest said was very rare, some of the old boxes were still linked to the original customer's billing account when sent on to new customers.

Telewest said it had only found ten people who could potentially have this problem. But others found by Computeractive should contact the company so the matter can be rectified.

It said it has also put in measures to ensure the set top boxes are correctly wiped of the original owner's account information.

"We regret that a handful of our customers have received bills for movies they haven't ordered, due to a rare administration error. Any inaccurate charges will be credited back.

"We have conducted a thorough review and put processes in place to ensure this doesn't happen again," a Telewest representative told us.