Man receives NTL bill for £0.00

WHEN LUTON RESIDENT Alex Hough received a bill for his telephone and Internet services from NTL demanding £0.00, he quite reasonably ignored it.

But when a reminder tipped up saying NTL did not "appear to have received your payment of £0.00 for the above account," he thought he'd better ring them up. He was warned, after all, that he might be "subject to a restoration of service charge" if any of his services were "affected due to late payment".

Hough told local rag, Luton On Sunday that the girl he spoke to did not know what to do because her supervisors had gone home. "So she suggested I write out a cheque for nothing. That way the computer would accept the payment and the account would be cleared," he said.

Somewhat confused, he tried to pay the cheque into his bank, but was told it was "pointless" as the bank's computer wouldn't accept it.

NTL subsequently apologised to Mr Hough for the error and any inconvenience. "I have never known this to happen before," said an NTL spokesperson. µ