So, having read this thread, I rang NTL at 15:00 on Friday. Spoke to a nice lady, who after confirming my account details, gave me my free upgrade from 1.5Mb to 3Mb. Said it should take baout 20 minutes.
1 hour later, I tried my new "Upgraded service"...nothing. I then spent three hours thinking the set-top box, router, or PC needed resetting to no avail.
There then followed repeated attempts to contact the Broadband Support helpline. When I finally got " through", I got an answereing machine message saying the service closed at 8pm.
It took until midday on Saturday to get my service back, having received an admission from tech Support that the "sales" lady had disabled my current account and had "forgotten" to enable my upgraded account.
Even when they are giving something away, these guys make a mess of it.
H