cyber_abdullah
13-05-07, 06:03 PM
Salaam,
I want to know your bad experiences with your ISP broadband service. Let's make this a thread where we can share our experiences so that we may be warned about choosing the wrong ISP. I'll start with my experience with the dreadful Tiscali Broadband.
I am on a "2mb unlimited" account and my download speed was 254kbs and upload was 243 kbs today. I warn anyone never get Tiscali broadband.
It's crap, I spent five minutes today just trying to connect to the server. These cheapskates throttle your bandwidth in peak times and the only times you will get anything even close to 2MB speeds is after 11PM during off-peak hours.
Several times yesterday I noticed my downloads were as slow as a 56kbs dialup modem.
When I used to use their supplied modem which was a sagem f@st800 usb modem, the line would frequently disconnect about 5-6 times a day, and most annoyingly when you are in the middle of downloading something. The only way I could deal with these frequent disconnections was to purchase an ethernet modem which does not suffer from line instability.
Never get Tiscali. They're CRAP.
I just did another speedtest with http://speedcheck.ispconnect.co.uk/ and this time I get an even lower 156kbs.
Here are some links exposing this trash isp.
http://tiscalisucks.blogspot.com/
http://www.the-scream.co.uk/forums/t18538.html
http://forums.gumtree.com/about592.html
http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=tiscali+sucks&btnG=Google+Search&meta=
I was looking forward to getting BE Broadband, but they don't provide their service in my city and I live in a major city!
cyber_abdullah
13-05-07, 06:06 PM
Here is the tragic story of another poor soul who was unfortunate to have got Tiscali Broadband. As you can see from his account, it is a story of incompetance, deception, lies, obfuscation, anger and frustration.
http://tiscalisucks.blogspot.com/
Who are we and why have we set this blog up?
Ah, a good question! Well, the easy answer is we are ex-Tiscali customers, yes EX-TISCALI, having finally escaped the horror of this terrible ISP and why have we set this blog up? Well, I guess the answer is in the very title of this blog. Want to know more? Well let me give you a potted history...
(NOTE: This is a long story and is being written today 13 April 2007, it may take a while to read. If you don't want to read it all, just head to the conclusion at the bottom of the page. Also note that Tiscali is an ISP in the United Kingdom, and to our knowledge, they are not in USA/Canada, but Europe is definatly a possibility!)
1st Broadband Experience
We're sure many people will remember the day that they first got Broadband, either like us, moving from Dial-Up to Broadband, or you may have had Broadband from the very start of your internet experience. Our Broadband experience started about 4 years ago, when we moved over to a Tiscali 512Kb Broadband and later onto their Anytime Phone package. Over the years, we slowly upgraded with Tiscali as they gave us new offers, going from 512Kb, to 1Mb, and then to 2Mb. As the years went by, we started to become more and more interested in online gaming. However, with online gaming, comes a lot of downloading and connection speed comparisons and such... By now, the date is late 2006...
On-line game problems
It was around this time that we were starting to get fed up with online games. We couldn't understand why we had to wait for ages (and when we say "ages", we're talking up to an hour of watching files download on Unreal Tournament 2004!) to get into our favourite game servers. By this point, we were talking to alot of other players on forums, in-game and on voice applications like TeamSpeak. People often asked us: "Are you on 56k Dial-Up or something!?" or "Do you live in the middle of nowhere!?". They couldn't understand why we were downloading files so slowly, even when we lived close to our local exchange (1 mile) and supposedly had 2Mb broadband. Also, you have to remember this is the only experience of Broadband we had at this point, so we thought the speed we had was very normal! Finally, we decided to investigate what was going on, and what we found out came as a big shock...
Investigating broadband speeds
We decided to have a look at a site that many people had recommended to us: internetfrog.com The Broadband speed test was an excellent starting point to the investigation. By the end of the speed test, we knew something was wrong, and had probably been wrong for a VERY long time.
The speeds we were getting were actually 240-250Kbps, around 8% of the actual advertised speed! We quickly went onto Tiscali's own speed test on their site, which gave us the exact same results! We sent them an email telling them about our speed issue, which they replied with a very long list of things to do, which had just been copied and pasted from help topics off their site (which we had already been advised to do before sending the email...) most of which blamed OUR computer for the speeds (which was only 6 months old at the time, and we had specially built!) After 3 days had passed, we automatically got an email telling us that because we hadn't responded, the status of our problem had been changed to SOLVED! Which is quite an asumption seeing as our problem was far from solved! On 27th January, we were proudly told that our network had been rebuilt and everything would be fine - There was no change. After several "Your status has been changed to SOLVED!" emails, we rang through to Tiscali Customer Support... This is where the real "fun" starts...
Phone calls to Tiscali Customer Support - Feb 2007
Our first phonecall to Tiscali was in early February 2007. It was a relatively quick call, Tiscali's first response was to tell us that it was a problem with our computer, but when we told them we had already checked everything out at our end the guy admitted, "There is a problem with your line, but we are sorting out the issue". He also told us, "It will only take 72 hours to fix and Tiscali would text us every 24 hours with updates on progress". 24 hours came and went, as did 48 and 72. We received no text messages, no emails and no phone calls.
2 weeks passed and still nothing: no change to connection speed.
20th Feb 2007
So we rung again on 20th Feb and talked to a Mr. Gupreet. Here's a little taste of how the conversation went:
Mr Gurpreet (Tiscali) “Yes your case has already escalated”
Pete “Well what does that mean?”
G “There is a fault between the Exchange and your house”
P “ Well when was that discovered?”
G “There is a fault in the cables”
P “Well when was that discovered?”
G “Er 2-3 days ago”
P “So when were Tiscali gonna let me know about this?”
G Silence
P “People only get fed up when they are not in the loop. All Tiscali have to do is communicate and tell us what the problem is and when they think it might be fixed. A reduction in the fee should be made as recompense for the lack of service”
G “Yes I understand Mr ----, I’ll arrange for the fee to be refunded for this period and I’ll arrange for you to get a call”
P “Well what is the call gonna be about? Is this to tell me what you’ve already told me or is it gonna be with a solution?”
G “Well I’ll arrange a call”
P “I’d like an email explaining what the problem is and how and when it’s gonna be fixed and confirmation of my refund”
G “Well we can call you”
P “When would that be then?”
G “Within the next 24 hours”
P “And that’s likely to be when I’m at work. It would be better to send me an email, you’ve got my email address and they can leave a telephone number if they want me to call them”
G "Okay Mr ----"
And 24 hours came and went...
Yes, 24 hours came and went, no phone call, no email, no change to our problem.
Next phone call, 22nd Feb 2007
We made yet another phone call on 22nd Feb and this time spoke to Mr. Atul. He told us they had no problems their end and it "must be something to do with your computer". We told Mr. Atul again and again "No this is not the case, Tiscali have already established that the problem is at your end and not at ours", but he was having none of it and demanded that we opened up internet explorer to clear our cache! (The irony is we don't even use IE, we use Firefox, and clear cache every week. What difference he thought it was going to make anyway, we have no idea!?) He was patronising, rude and very unhelpful. He put us on hold for 10 minutes and came back a changed man, telling us with great pride that "Your problem has now been escalated to Milton Keynes!" We asked "Okay, but what is in Milton Keynes"? He seemed to have great difficulty answering this question. We were later to find out that their engineers are there. Once again, he promised to ring us back, putting us on "High Priority Basis": we got no phonecall!
Next phone call 24th Feb 2007
Another phonecall on the 24th Feb told us that the Tiscali servers were in Milton Keynes, yet still nothing had happened! We were then also told that we weren't on a 2Mb package at all, and that the package we were using was on an old price scheme, so we could actually get 8Mb Broadband from Tiscali for a lower price!!! We were very angry that Tiscali had been charging us for an out-of-date package, and that they never informed us that we could get a better deal at all (We suppose that wouldn't be good business sense, giving someone a better deal!)
MegaBit or MegaByte?
We became even more confused when we talked to Tiscali Billing, who didn't seem to recognise the difference between a MegaBit and a MegaByte (for those who don't know, 1 MegaBit (Mb) = 0.125 MegaByte (MB) : quite a big difference!) and told us that all Tiscali's speeds were in MegaBytes, which would technically make their speed even worse than we previously thought! We told them to change us to their "8 MB" package, this they said they would do, but could they do that properly? You've guessed the answer haven't you, you're right, the answer is 'NO'!
Instead of changing us to the 8MB package, they changed us to the 2MB package (which we already had... or didn't have... we don't even know anymore!) By this point, enough was enough. Tiscali didn't have to carry out a difficult task, all they had to do was ring us back and tell us what was going on, but they couldn't even do that!
Next phone call 6th March 2007 - MAC CODE
On the 6th March, we requested a MAC Code, to which the Tiscali employee asked in a surprised tone of voice, "Oh! Is there any specific reason why you want to leave Tiscali?" to which we replied, "Awful Customer Service, Awful Technical Support, Awful Connection Speeds, Awful Reliability: Just the tip of the iceberg". He quickly gave us our MAC Code and within a couple of weeks, we were free from the grasp of Tiscali.....OR WERE WE?
Promise from Billing dept of £10.00 credit
On the 13th March, we were promised a £10 credit to our final bill (£10.00!!! hardly recompense for all the aggravation they had caused!!!) which would be appear on our next bill on the 5th April. Did this happen?...Damn it you've guessed right AGAIN!....of COURSE it didn't!!
Next phone call 7th April 2007 to Billing dept re:£10.00 credit
No adjustment made to FINAL bill, so rang Tiscali AGAIN, this time spoke to a guy called Craig at Selairk office in Scotland. He couldn't understand why the credit hadn't been actioned as it clearly stated on the account that it was due. He said....wait for it....he said "I'll escalate this to Milton Keynes to request credit by cheque or re-credit your bank account"
Next phone call 13 April 2007 to Billing dept re: £10.00 credit
Rang and spoke to a girl called Ashlee. She rolled out an excuse as to why the credit hadn't been actioned. Just another of the many lame excuses Tiscali roll out with alarming regularity. Their excuses create barriers by which 'action' seems unable to break through. We followed up this phone call with an email confirming the contents of our phone call. See copy of email below explaining all. This was sent on 13th April 2007 at 10.55am.
I am still awaiting a credit of £10.00 which I was promised on 13.03.07, which I was told would be adjusted on my final bill, on 05 April. Did it happen? No. I rang Tiscali on 7 April, spoke to Craig, who confirmed that on your computer system, my account showed that a £10.00 credit is due and that he couldn't understand why it hadn't been adjusted on my final account. He said he would 'escalate this to Milton Keynes, to request the credit either by cheque or by re-crediting my bank account. 13 April arrived and nothing materialised, I rang Tiscali Billing, spoke with Ashley, explained the situation, and was advised that the £10.00 wouldn't have appeared on the bill that appeared on 05 April when it was agreed on 13 March because that was too late for the next bill, it would have hd to have been done by 07 March. Strange that this was NOT what I was told on 13 March, and funny how Craig didn't say what Ashley had said. So the upshot of all of this is that Ashley promises me faithfully that I will be getting a cheque within the next 28 days. Why 28 days? A £10.00 credit was agreed on 13 March, how come I couldn't have been sent a cheque then? So you can handle debits that occur in the period up to the bill on 05 April but surprise, surprise, NOT a credit! All of this completely re-affirms my decision to move from Tiscali was the right one. From ridiculously poor internet speed to even worse customer service in which no-one, and I mean NO-ONE ever, ever, EVER does what they say they are going to do! Tiscali must be the worst company I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. If you really care about your customers, you will look at my case, the notes you have, the promises made, the inaction and ask yourselves whether you are REALLY doing a good job. I look forward to hearing from you.
Tiscali respond by email shock!! 13th April 2007 - Resolved? Not on your life!! See below: -
Dear Customer Recently you requested personal assistance from our on-line support center. Below is a summary of your request and our response.
Subject Credit to account
Discussion Thread Response (Drew Calder) 13/04/2007 01.52 PM Dear -------,
Thank you for contacting Tiscali Customer Support.
I regret that I am unable to process your request based on the information that you have provided.
Would you please supply us with your customer account code, post code and home telephone number so that we can process your query.
I have read this and will be happy to look into this further upon the receipt of further information that would provide me access to your account.
Kind regards,
Drew Calder
Tiscali Billing and Customer Care
Tiscali UK Limited
Registered in England and Wales No. 3408171
Registered Address: 20 Broadwick Street, London W1F 8HT
Our Response to Tiscali's latest evasion sent 13th April 2007
Dear Drew Calder,
Oh my God!! How much worse can you lot get?!! You have ALL this information, how many more times do you want it? Tiscali have caused me so much grief I am beginning to wonder whether you are part of some massive conspiracy to drive everyone who is unfortunate enough to come into contact with you completely bloody insane!!! For the last time (GOD I PRAY THIS IS THE LAST TIME...AND I'M NOT EVEN RELIGIOUS!!)
Customer Account Code
-----------------
Post Code
-----------------
Home Telephone Number
----------------
AND BEFORE YOU ASK.....
Date of Birth
-------------------
Town of Residence
-------------------
Favourite Colour
Blue (but seeing red right now!!)
Inside leg measurement
36"
Please put me out of my misery and send me the miserly £10.00....hardly representative of compensation!!! and hopefully I will never ever have to have contact with Tiscali EVER AGAIN!!!!
I look forward to hearing from you.
Argh....!!!!!!1
And so we STILL wait for our tiny little £10 refund, a tiny little compensation for what we have gone through...
Be - Our 2nd Broadband provider
We are now with an ISP called BeThere and the difference in service has to date been incredible! Every single deadline they set, they kept, whenever anything important happened, they sent us an email And sent us Text Messages to mobiles. Set up was simple and Customer Service/Technical Support is fast and efficient.
Conclusion
To conclude: Tiscali suck! They are unbelievably bad in every department. They never deliver what they promise and if our experience is anything to go by, the customer always comes last. Ours does not seem to be an isolated incident: any ISP forums will reveal much of the same and more (a quick visit to this link: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/new/complain/complain.shtml probably tells you all you need to know!) But one comment on a forum spoke volumes, it simply said - "Tiscali are not as bad as everyone says... they're worse!"
Our Message to any unsuspecting broadbandees...
AVOID TISCALI LIKE THE PLAGUE!! DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THEIR ADVERTS AND THEIR PROMISES!!
Would just like to say a few "thank you"s to people who helped us over these "difficult" few months:
All the users on the Unreal Tournament server we play on (I might put names and the server name up later if people agree)
Plenty of websites, including internetfrog.com, ispreview.co.uk, moneysupermarket.co.uk
All our friends and family who had to put up with all our ranting
And finally, YOU! For reading this (even if it was just the conclusion!) and becoming more aware about Tiscali! Please feel free to add a comment if you have had a run in with Tiscali, or any other ISP with similar issues, we would love to hear from you!
I had two terrible experiences, first has to do with a narrowband service provider called NetZero. basically while everyone was offering dial up for 15 to 20 bucks a month, netzero was doing it for close to 10 bucks. So I got their unlimited monthly plan for 10 bucks, and after 2 weeks, they sent me a letter saying I violated their terms of service by using up more than my allowed limit of unlimited hours. Yeah it was that stupid. I didn't bother responding and just switched back to AOL who at that time was offering AOL Broadband/DSL.
It was their very first time offering DSL and the speed was just horrible. After a month, I cancelled their service and moved to Verizon's first DSL offering. It was SUCH a difference. while AOL DSL was giving me about 12Kbps when downloading through Napster (it was when napster was huge), Verizon gave me around 50-80Kbps. It was a HUGE difference.
i had awfulll service from Tiscali.. and so resorted to nicking my neighbours Wireless now!!! :D
i do that sometimes too. here, they have free wifi from the building, well, actuallyl your supposed to pay monthly and then get access, but for some reason, they took off the wep (maybe bymistake). so whenever my bro's wifi acts up, i switch to the buildings wifi.
but that connection isonly good for surfing the web...no downloading or dailymotion :(
I concur with CyberAbdullah. Be There 24MB, best service you can imagine! No limits (seriously...my house usage is many many many GB a day and they haven't said a thing), and incredible speed.
We have AOL broadband at home and in the two or three years using it we only had a problem once when they randomly reset all our screen name passwords so our router got totally confused n went beserk.. got it sorted though - no thanks to AOL helpline who hang up on you when they run out of options or cant be bothered to listen to you anymore...
Before we got broadband my parents were against getting the internet for us n wouldnt pay for it so we used to use the free monthly trials from all the various IP's - then say silly things like -ur email/IM service doesn't provide any good smilies :D n they'd give us another month free :D
Bint Yusuf
26-05-07, 08:47 PM
OH MY GIDDY GIDDY ISP!
They sooooo STUPID!
And yes they're TERRIBLE TISCALLI!
ma bro use to d-load prison break and keep it running all day, we must not have unlimited ussage on downloads so they sent my dad an e-mail onhis ticali account which he doesn't use so we never got the 2 e-mails they then sent the 3rd warning in a letter and officially now manage the usage between the peak times of 6-11. so no downloading and if we do our internet is being shared with other heavy usage ppl and literally cannot go on the net!
they also keep taking an extra fiver out my mums account and we calle dthem several times they say they gona stop and refund us next bank statement you see they took extra fiver out again!
GRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR BOYCOTT TISCALLI!
I have tiscali and it just sooo annoying. My internet connection disconnects like so many times in few hours especially during evening hours when am back from work and trying to use the net. I have the one exactly decribed by sister cyber.
Don't know what's best though? :confused: I want to switch but which one's best? dont wanna lose internet connection for like 2 weeks either!
cyber_abdullah
25-06-07, 04:26 PM
I just have to warn you about Tiscali Broadband again. I have recently transfered to a new ISP but Tiscali are still charging me for the service even though I transferred on Friday. According to them I am still a member of Tiscali. They are making life hell for me at the moment. Their cancellation line refuses to answer even after spending 20 minutes on the phone. Their freephone numbers refuse to cancel my account and demand that I ring the national rate number which I spent 20 minutes on with no answer. Do not get Tiscali, they are thieves.
AbuMusaab
25-06-07, 04:30 PM
I have Comcast Cable Internet. A while back the internet would randomly disconnect, and my modem would start blinking. I would be forced to unplug and completely disconnect everything, and then reconnect it all just to get it to work. Then 2 minutes later...do it again.
This went on for months. When I complained to Comcast, they said it was my fault, and to check my equipment. I bought new cables, a new modem, and kept replacing things but the problem never went away.
I blamed their cable line but they insisted it was my problem.
Then one day our cable television also goes out. It turns out the line underneath our house that brings our cable and internet in had frozen from the cold, and cracked.
They came and replaced it and, all of a sudden, everything was fine. Better, stronger internet signal, and television is crystal clear.
Dishonest monopoly.
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