Tiscali the Turd of the Web

You’re the second person who I’ve spoke to this week about poor service from Tiscali. I’ve got to admit I’ve never had a problem them in the last two years of being their customer. In fact, they are the only internet supplier I’ve not had a problem with in my experience.

I’m afraid I can’t help though. I’m just getting worried about the day I do decide to change from Tiscali to someone else… it doesn’t sound like an easy process!

Oh dear, this is not helpful is it. I’m not sure what advice I can give you. Is there a trade association for broadband providers/ISPs? What about Trading Standards. If not, give Nicky Campbell a call!

To be fair, once you finally get hooked up, at least you’ll have continual service. When I was at home (as the other week gently reminded me) not a day would pass with something knocking out the internet connection.

If it isn’t some kids setting fire to the exchange on the common, my Dad ‘upgrading’ (translation: f**king) the router, or better still, getting a lorry to reverse into our telephone cable. Also having an ex-BT engineer (pre-internet) as a father is a dangerous prospect I can tell you!!

Best of luck getting connected mate.

I find that the best way to get your point across is to fire-bomb the head office while wearing a kilt and a pink bikini top and waving a Mcdonalds ‘I’m Lovin It’ flag!
That will get you noticed mate!

Just tell them you are going to contact ofcom, then see how long it takes to get it sorted.

On a practical level…

I’d start by getting a new phoneline
and possibly follow on by cancelling the old one.
Then I’d order broadband on the new phoneline,
which theoretically should be TAG-free right?

Also, if you need broadband in the meantime, all of us caring friends should link your laptop to our wireless connections and so turn your car into an office…
BTW I think I’ve figured how to allow you onto my network!

I too am suffering at the poor service of my ISP - Virgin Media. The area is suffering from high utilisation at peak times which is causing download speeds to be not much better than dial up. Virgin Media can offer no advice as to when this problem will be sorted. And considering I am paying for the top package of 10mbps, I am thinking of moving to another ISP.

OMG! Get out now. I am afraid to say I had the WORST experience with Tiscali. I had no Internet for 5 months because of their poor customer service.

I moved house and asked Tiscali to transfer my internet to the new place and they constantly kept giving me new dates for the line to be activated. They said BT were the ones who had me in a queue and I had to wait my turn. After the date being moved more than 3 times (this is after waiting 4 weeks) they said there was a problem with a tag on the line. They could not explain this further and refused to call BT on my behalf to enquire further. Tiscali were so poor at chasing this up for me and I had no way of contacting BT wholesale and dealing with it myself. And boy did I try! I called BT wholesale and they said they only deal with business customer’s not home accounts… Any way to cut a long story short, I tried to get a MAC code from them and they said it was impossible because the order had already been placed and I should have done this first. This went on for 5 months and this is no exaggeration. I ended up going to OfCom… (http://www.ofcom.org.uk)

They were really helpful and they gave me a direct line to BT wholesale. OfCom said: “BT Wholesale is not usually a customer facing division within BT; however, Ofcom has recently agreed a process so that customers in your position can speak directly with them.”

So if you really get nowhere with Tiscali… I suggest going to OfCom, they are fast and very helpful.

Good luck. I really feel for you.

On a positive note, I am now with Nildram, (http://www.nildram.net/) they are excellent and have real humans you can talk to and they even tell you their name so you can call back and speak to the same person! Amazing concept.

Alright Geezer,

Youve made all the right steps so far. You’ve spoke to them and psoke to them some more, you’ve even journalled your problems. Good Work!!!!!

Now get your ass on the phone to the auohories in charge of them scutters, think its ofcom. They should kick their asses into submission,

Peace Bruv

Hey dudes, thanks for all your comments.. Here’s the latest. Tiscali are officially a pile of turd, as the tag is still on my line. I’m gonna follow Kemp’s (and others, but he picked up the phone and kicked my ass into doing so) advice and call OfCom.

I wrote to the complaints department (huh, bet they’re busy!) but to no avail, well at least I haven’t heard anything back from them as yet.

I’ll tip you the wink when it all gets sorted.

Tiscali are a joke - they provide a poor service and then charge you national rate to call their call centre in India.

Half the representatives cant speak english and the ones that do keep you on the phone for as long as possible.

” Try and change the filter” - ” I will just check that for you, i will be 3 minutes” -” Do you have a sky box sir” etc etc

They read the same information from the screen and are pretty much useless. I did have reasonable speeds on my ” 8mb service” and yes, i know its “up to 8mb” however, 1mb speeds are simply not acceptable. The only time i do get close to 8mb is 6am or after 12 at night.

Rubbish Rubbish Rubbish! Seriously avoid tiscali like the plague if not for the awful service but simply for having call centers in India. Any company that does this is sending out the signal that they are maximizing profits before putting their customers first.

Put simply, tiscali couldnt give a shit about their customers.

Sorry to hear you are having problems mate. I have just received a cheque for 130.00 from Tiscali as compensation for the 6 months they f-cked me about. I spoke to OFcom (my issue was that they were billing me for time that I had stopped being a customer) and they told me that Tiscali’s Dispute Resolution Service is CISAS.

You need to have been having the issue for a set amount of time, or Tiscali have to issue a deadlock letter, but it may be worth contacting them. The fact that you have journalled events certainly helps.

A word of warning, and this goes to anyone thinking of leaving Tiscali - Keep any mail they support you that is relevant to the issue you are having. I spoke to someone recently who had Tiscali write off her charges (incorrect charges) and she recycled the letter. Tiscali then billed her for the whole amount and claimed they could find no record of the previous letter. One slippery customer.

When I spoke to BT 2 hours after leaving Tiscali (Tiscali never actually took up my new line when I moved house) I asked about when Tiscali would have disconnected my old line, and was told that BT does not deal with Tiscali’s equipment, they do that.

i am with tiscali in the day no speed at all 6am thats the olny time for speed i get and they say do not use it after 6pm tell 11pm and i am on 8 m but get 4m ! in day 1 m if iam lucky

On moving house I arranged everything in plenty of time, following the rules laid down by tiscali. The date for the transfer was my moving date. New phone number required at new address. New phone number started the day I moved in. The geniuses at tiscali ordered the transfer the day before I moved, therefore it did not work. Nothing to connect to.

I spent 58 minutes on hold and was then cut off by a phone lifter / dropper. After a month of promising to have the new connection within 2 weeks (including my 2 weeks holiday abroad) still no broadband. Being a bit of a techi I asked BT’s broadband people to ping the line and they confirmed everything was ready, they could see and address my router. Thanks again good old BT. The problem was the non activity at tiscali. Another hour on hold ….. NO !

Eventually I contacted Tiscali accounts department and threatened to take action over there breach of contract to supply my service. Taking money from my bank in breach of banking code etc. etc. Accounts were brilliant, gave me a months refund and a week later I got my broadband - upgraded from 2 to 8 meg (sometimes)!

Conclusion, if you are with tiscali, do not move home!
If you do move leave tiscali first. Or,
If you do move tell them you are moving the day after you are actually moving!
Perhaps house sellers should be made to include a mac code in the new UK house selling pack. Or a years subscription to another supplier as part of the deal.

It as taken me 8 months and over 250 pages of emails to get a simple ‘yes or ‘no’ answer from Tiscali. Not only that they ‘lost’ my original email addres when I changed to broadband and couldn’t/wouldn’t get it back. Consquently I have emails in that account I can’t access. I also have my address book lost forever.
Yes call centre people charming, but can’t understand the nuance of my questions and keep answer the question I am not asking!
Email message page now not working properly and I can’t access my mail. I’ve wasted hours with this company.
Anyone know what ‘Fast UK’ is like?
Trading standards need to get onto this, but who’s got the time to follow it through? I think it’s best if we all depart Tiscali in droves. Maybe they’ll get the message (as long as it’s not email).

Hey,

Sorry to hear about your probs with Tiscali. I actually work for one of their offices, and although im not 100% proud of it, I dont like to see customers, even ex customers with problems like yours. Im assuming by now its been fixed, but if it hasnt you should direct a letter to HQ, sorry it seems like a long way about, but trust me, it is the quickest way. The letter should go to their MK address, and be directed to HLC (High Level Complaints) and mention the words OFCOM and CISAS. Even just saying that youve spoken to them gets the letter flagged, and you WILL have a reply within 7 days.

Best of luck,

“Joe”

Tiscali HLC
PO BOX 7206
Kiln Farm
Milton Keynes
MK14 6XG

i had a similar problem with a tag/marker on my line. i tried to go to another ISP but my application was always blocked because of the marker. tiscali assured me there was no marker. bt assured me there was. tiscali re-assured me there wasn’t. anyway, i rang tiscali to threaten them with offcom action and got put through to the wrong department by mistake. this was the tiscali talk dept. my previous package was a broadband and phone call combi package. the very helpful ENGLISH (yeah, i couldn’t believe it either) lady told me that the technical department (india) didn’t have a clue. they should have realised that the marker was from the tiscali talk i’d had. she removed the marker and within an hour it was all over. i changed my ISP.

I AGREE WITH EVERYONE WHO SAYS TISCALI IS CRAP!!!

the only reason people go with tiscali is because they have heard of them and they are cheap. but the only reason they are cheap is because they are so shit and don’t care about their customers, and this is why so many people hear of tiscali. not for their great service, but the ability to be the biggest bunch of useless, robbing, poor english speaking excuse of an ISP!!!

ok, rant over!! lol

I have been having the same problem since April 2007, it’s now the last day of July and the tags are still on my line; following call after call, week after week I have been told constantly that there is a problem with my account and that the order to remove he tags had been sent to BT; In total Tiscali have allegedly sent five orders to BT to remove the tags, however I have contacted BT and it has been confirmed that no order had ever been made; Tiscali have no interest in keeping check on there tag removal system, when the request to remove the tags has been made no one seems to monitor the request to make sure the order is carried out, they wait for the customer to contact them before they check the system.
I have never had a problem with Tiscali whilst they provided the system, but wait until you try and cancel, no chance! I have just contacted Ofcom and watch dog so I am in hope that i will be sorted soon and I will get my internet back which has been gone for three months.

Advice; if you have cancelled your Tiscali and have had the same problem, don’t wait like I did, as soon as you find that the tags are still there, contact Ofcom.

Tiscali are probably the worst company in the world for customer services.
its helpdesk is so bad that it makes the taliban look good!
complained regarding my service keep dropping and since july 07 it is still not working!
spoken to practiclly everyone in the company and they still don’t understand or know what the problem is.

Complained to Ofcom about them and was told that they don’t investigate personal complaints!
is there no one that can manage these idiots?

Hey Amrit

My advice would be to try OfCom again, it worked for me and by the sounds of it, a lot of other people. Good luck!

I’ve had so many problems with Virgin Media, ongoing since I first joined them in September 2006.

My problems go on so long with them I ended up being so frustrated that I set up a website for other people to make there complaints about Virgin Media.

The website address is www.myvirginmediahell.co.uk come along and tell us your stroies as well.

I email Virgin Media on a regular basis to show them new stories and complaints that have been posted on the website.

I had the misfortune to sign up with Tiscali. Let me tell you this, I have NEVER NEVER EVER experienced such pathetic support ANYWHERE.

Im not going to bore you with all the details, suffice to say that one of the people on the cancellation team “Johnathon” Told me I was irrational, I should call OFFCOM if I wasnt happy, Told me there was nothing wrong with my broadband ( Even though their engineers had been dealing with the problem alledgedly for over a month ), refused to allow me to speak to his supervisor, then and told me that there was no supervisor there ( Short term memory perhaps ? )

Eventually, I called back and spoke with someone who was willing to at least give me a MAC code ( Knowing my luck they will still bill me for the entire year ) but you know what, it will be worth it. Jonathon was rude, spoke over me all the time, and presumed I knew nothing. What Jonathon doesent know, is that I work in IT for a living and understand networks very well. Anyway, I will be saying goodbye to Tiscali now and will make it a point during any discussions which I have with potential customers of this company to ensure that the “Possible New Client” is well away of my story, and hopefully ensure they dont fall into the same sorry trap I did.

TISCALI, Listen to your customers, do something about the complaints, employ people who have some semblence of civility and at least modest customer facing skills and a smattering of empathy for the plight you put the customer through and hey, you might just win some support, otherwise you will ultimately get the reputation you currently have and so richly deserve.

I am an employee of Tiscali. Recently i have realised the ever grown problems occuring. I am in a department that has communications to all others. As i work for Tiscali leave a message and i will give you advise outside of the recorded calls. I would like you to know i take my job seriously any calls i recieve i will follow up against my contract.