I can confrm the miserable experiences that you and others on this board have with Tiscali's "rascally " customer services.
I attempted back on 21st NovemberNovember to upgrade my package from 2 to 8 Gb on line but received an on-screen message to say that that because " I had moved house or changed my phone number", ( which was not true anyway), the system could not upgrade me, and that "I would be contacted within 48 hours".
Of course this did not happen, and it was not until 28 th November that I actually managed to get through to an "agent", who said he would get the Technical Team to sort it out.
By 16th December still nothing had happened, the Customer Services agent said, "we cannot deal with technical problems, they will call you when it is sorted".
So after reading all the other shameful experiences I will be cancelling, hopefully, and moving to an alternative provider.
Oh for the good old days of SCREAMING.NET before Tiscali's takeover.

Jason,

Yeah, agreed. As for the personal details - I wasn't suggesting MS publish those, just highlight the technique of where to find the information - ie Companies House. I certainly wasn't aware of this until I read it on this forum - anything that empowers the consumer is worth a bit of effort

Cheers.

Vic

I agree that there is a lot of sharp practise from several ISP's in relation to how they deal with their customers which would not be acceptable in other industries.

A lot of the problems associated with the communcations industry are largely down to how the industry itself is structured. Ofcom are trying to make changes to protect the consumer and change the structure of the industry itself - I don't know if you're aware but compulsory MAC codes are due to be rolled out in Mid-Feb 2007 - this means ISP's MUST issue MAC codes to consumers within 5 working days.

Creating compulsion to enable switching is a small first step but it's progress. The more Ofcom can move towards making regulatory changes to protect the consumer the better.

In relation to ms.com listing company director names and addresses - from a legal perspective we can't do this because it contravenes privacy laws, (i.e. disclosing personal information without the consent of the person is an offence) this is why we could never do this and is also the reason why we have to remove personal details of staff from ISP's off the site.

That doesn't stop user's exchanging this information personally via email or private messaging but it just means we can't list it in our forum.

I hope you understand the rationale for this?

Cheers

Jason

Having recently left Tiscali after 3 years of dial up and then broadband, I can also offer some reasons to be wary of getting involved with them:

1. Incompetence: On upgrading to the 1Mb broadband service they failed to provide the promised installation disk for the modem which was, fortunately, supplied. No problem, dial-up, download the appropriate drivers from the manufacturer's website, install them and benefit from the (then) unrestricted /double speed of 2Mbps. Shame about that that one hee hee.

2. Incompetence: Asian 'helpdesk' staff, who although they speak English, cannot understand simple problems when expressed in the same language. Compound this with an inability to actually solve said problems - Customer Service?? I think not.

3. Incompetence: On responding initially with a cheery, promising (ie lying) email along the lines of 'thanks for telling us you're moving, we'll soon have you up and running in your new address within 10 days' they then did NOTHING. No transfer of service, no response to emails asking why we were still waiting, lots of frustrating (expensive) conversations with the aforementioned heldesk dipsticks by telephone. However, their accounts section VERY QUICKLY got the message when we cancelled our direct debit after one month of no service. They still failed to appreciate WHY we weren't paying though - despite many referrals to the 'complaints' thread. Bless 'em, poor souls, they are still chasing me for an unpaid £40-odd for a service I did not receive, therefore am not prepared to pay for. Their response? They suspended all access to the email account associated with the broadband account - guess where copies of the complaints were??

Tiscali, in common with other 'electronic organizations' feel secure behind the multi-layers of helpdesk, automated response, foreign incompetents at the end of a telephone call you are forced to pay for. You cannot get hold of anybody in actual authority to sort the problem.

Come on Moneysupermarket! Give more exposure to the EXCELLENT suggestion in another part of this forum - get hold of the personal details of the company directors and give THEM some well-deserved grief - you know, the sort meted out to poor saps like us - the ONES WHO PAY FOR ALL THIS!!!!

As for Tiscali - it's the old 'caveat emptor' again. When they perform well, when you don't need help/support, they are fine. But beware - there WILL come a time when you have a problem - and you WILL experience difficulty in getting it sorted.

But whatever you do - don't touch that Badly Transferred, Broken Telecommunications company mentioned elsewhere with a long bargepole!

Linford

I have to point out that we guarantee a 24 hour response in the Ask The Experts section which is outside of the Broadband Forum. In the Broadband Forum we respond to queries if necessary.

The £20 Orange issue was brought up in the media, obviously I cannot say for certain this is why they've taken it off but tactics like this can make providers look silly when highlighted in the media.

Regards

Jason

Linford

We try to answer posts within 24 hours if we think a user needs one. Invariably the odd one or two slip though the net and we miss them but we try to answer them later on.

I get the impression from this and an earlier post that you believe that we cannot be truly impartial or 'experts' since the way we work with providers is that we advertise their products on our site and are paid a commission for a sale. This means that we cannot be negative about providers because it may jeapordise our commercial relationships.

I can assure you that this could not be further from the truth.

Through our relationships in the industry we aim to drive change, improve customer service, encourage transparency, highlight bad practice and force providers to offer better products.

We use the media to highlight sharp practice by providers, (the issue around Orange charging £20 is a good example, the media got wind of this and it was dropped) and there are other policies from other providers which will fall under media scrutiny very soon.

I hope this answers some of your questions in relation to how we work.

Regards

Jason Lloyd

I've been with Tiscali for around 4 years, from dial-up to Tiscali Max 8meg and it seems that as time as gone on, the faster my upgrade, the bigger the problems i've been faced with.
Dial up was slow, but you expect that. Never dropped out though.
512k Broadband was the first high speed package I had and after a few teething troubles, performed about as well as you could expect.
When 2meg became available I tried to upgrade; called customer services and they told me that I was an old customer and an upgrade to a faster speed was simply not possible with my connection, advising me to cancel my contract and re-apply when the line was de-provisioned for broadband. I lost my connection within 12 hours of that phone call and waited a further 7 weeks to get back online (high speed); 4 weeks for my line to be de-provisioned and another 3 weeks before my new 2meg package would work. The speed increase was less than dramatic and at certain times of day seemed no faster than my old 512k connection. Repeated calls to customer services did little or nothing for me. After around 2 months trying to get it sorted, I decided to put up and shut up, wait for 12 months and cancel.
Stupidly, when they made Tiscali Max 8meg available, I went for that. Sure, 8meg is a maximum but the email confirming my upgrade said that 4-6meg would be realistic for my line. No probs, that'll still be a noticeable increase. Sadly not...I gave them 14 days for the ten day stabilisation period, but now suffer from dropped connections every half an hour, day or night and NO SPEED INCREASE WHATSOEVER, for an extra £3 a month. After weeks of putting up with it, i read a bit and decided to go back to a stable 2meg
connection (please note, for 1 year prior to upgrading to 8meg, I had a decent service at a new address) as it seemed better to have consistency, and as i'd seen no speed benefits from the supposed 8meg package, i'd save a few quid as well as get a solid service back....guess what....i can't downgrade. Despite the option, despite clicking the right buttons, my confirmation email said "thank you for choosing Tiscali Max 8meg"...AAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I'm going to try to downgrade again....doubtless i'll get a similar reply. If I knew for sure they would be quick to get BT to de-provision my line, i'd cancel my contract tomorrow.

I know they get out of it with (up to) 8 meg broadband, but really, they are fraudsters...4-6meg they promised me...2 meg i get only it drops out and at times is so painfully slow it's no different to dial-up.

Do NOT join Tiscali...under any circumstances.

you have been warned...