I READ with interest your report (LET, April 4) on shopkeeper Mohammed Nawaz's claims that cable TV company Nynex kept him waiting on the telephone for ages on each of nearly a dozen attempts to get his broken service fixed.

It reminded me of a reader's letter some time ago in which a Nynex customer wrote that he had had the service disconnected for some time but was still waiting for the cable boxes to be collected.

Never slow to prove their worth, Nynex replied that the boxes had been collected, but your correspondent wrote back to say that the boxes were still sitting in his house.

Some 15 months ago, I became so appalled at the poor level of customer service that I wrote to Nynex. I felt it wise to keep a copy of the letter.

I instructed them to disconnect the service, remove their cable from the exterior of my property, and collect the cable boxes. I am still waiting! I then contacted Nynex by telephone. It took the usual eternity to get connected.

I explained the situation. The operator did not express the least surprise, let alone give any apology.

I asked them to give me a time when they could collect the boxes. Oh no, they couldn't do that.

They could, perhaps, specify a day or a morning or afternoon and I would have to hang around while they shuffled to Feniscowles. In the past, I have hung around for Nynex in vain and I was not going to do it again.

At this point, not unreasonably I felt, my cool departed and I intimated that if Nynex could not give me a time when the boxes would be collected, they would shortly be despatched to the wheelie bin.

Response? "In that case, we'll send you the bill!"

Nice one, Nynex. I look forward to receiving it.

B KIERNAN, St Martin's Drive, Feniscowles, Blackburn.

FOOTNOTE: A Nynex spokesman said: "We are surprised to hear of Mr Kiernan's difficulty in contacting our customer service centre because at the time he refers to we were answering 95 per cent of all calls received in 15 seconds.

"With regard to an appointment time for the collection of the cable boxes, we do try wherever possible to fit in with the customer's preferred time."

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