I (unfortunatly) do have to contact NTL from time to time, and obviously I was not that happy when they moved to 0845 numbers, however, I have just tried the old 0800 052 2000 Diamond Cable number (NTL Midlands) and yes I got the recorded voice of a man who appears his life has ended and telling me the number has changed, so I waited to be cut off and........

I went straight into the customer service menu.... yippee, okay might be a temporary fault, or someone has not been pushing the right button at NTL (which seems to happen very regular) but I'm happy as my call was free, so it is worth using the old number just in case