Hi there
This is my first post to this very useful site and no doubt will cover several issues with which you will already be familiar and, dare I say it, sick to the back teeth. It concerns the abysmal service currently provided by Tiscali to my parents and requires some much appreciated advice as to what we can do to extricate ourselves from this position.
In fairness to Tiscali, I took out a 512kbps (unlimited) contract with them nearly 4 years ago and this has proved to be pretty much trouble-free. At the time I was not especially ADSL-savvy (not that I necessarily am
now), and simply used Tiscali as their prices seemed very competitive. The connection speed was raised to 1mbps some months back and has more recently been upped to around 4mbps (though the Tiscali graphic does show this as 7 – 7.5mbps). Both of these upgrades came from Tiscali unrequested from myself and without any increase in the £14.99 monthly fee. As a user who does very little downloading this is not a big issue, in fact the difference between the original 512kbps and the current 4mbps is not especially noticeable. I understand that connection speeds are influenced by distance to the exchange and I am only about 300 metres away so I guess that providing a reasonable connection is not unduly difficult?
To move on, my folks purchased a laptop (their first computer) just prior to last Christmas (2006). I suggested that they use Tiscali as their ISP, not so much because I was unaware of their well documented delivery issues, but more because there is very little choice in this part of East Anglia. The alternatives would have been BT (already providing the telephone service), Talk Talk and Orange – all outfits with unenviable reputations. Though the package they chose was the 1mbps, the existing cabling in this area only allowed for 512kbps. The true speed was actually substantially less than 512k, more like 256, or indeed, 128kbps. This, though, was not impossible to work with given their required usage was only for occasional internet browsing. I should add here that they are about 2.75km from their exchange.
So the folks were connected via this package for the year (Dec ’06 – Dec ’07). During last December they received a telephone call from Tiscali offering them the chance to have their telephone connection provided as well as the broadband all for the same monthly rental £14.99. Calls would be charged for on top of this though there is no intended call charge for weekend use. This of course would eliminate the cost of the quarterly line rental. So on the face of it not a bad deal. They were told that there would be a ten day ‘bedding-in’ period, resulting in a few connection inconsistencies etc. This package is referred to as the Tiscali Max Unlimited. Clearly the timing of the offer refected that the existing contract was due to expire.
The date of the upgrade commenced on the 11th January 2008. The telephone seemed to work fine but broadband connection was very difficult. It often took up to 1 hour before the two green modem lights would stop blinking. Surprisingly, sometimes this condition could be achieved by lifting the telephone receiver to make a call – very odd. Given that we had been told to expect a reduced service for ten days this performance did not seem unacceptable to begin with.
The problem was that by the 19th January it was totally impossible to make a connection to broadband. This abysmal situation has continued to date. I should mention that on the 11th January a Tiscali Talk Welcome pack was received. This consisted of a Netgear DG834G (54 mbps adsl2+) modem router and a couple of filters. We have never tried to connect this item as my understanding is that a wireless router will not run properly at the connection speeds previously available. So to some extent it was a red herring. Am I correct in this assumption?
Repeated calls to the customer services are totally futile. Getting through 0871 333 22 11 are to India generally results in a polite, but ineffective individual confirming that he has no authority to make any changes to the current situation. Given that the current situation is one of on-going disconnection such a response seems incredible. On the other hand contact with the UK counterparts usually results in a recommendation that we should try to determine whether the filters are up to standard. This is fine, but why should any of the equipment that has been in use for the previous year now fail to function? Additionally, suggestions about hooking-up via the Netgear router are made but this does not seem to be based on any discernible technical proficiency, more a suck-it-and-see test. Furthermore, a good deal of ‘blame’ is shipped BT’s way, as it is they that handle some part of the switchover. So overall contact with Tiscali results in becoming entangled in a futile communications loop. In the light of this a stiff email contact was sent a week ago but has resulted in no reply as yet.
Also my folks have never received any form of contract regarding this upgrade other than two very non-specific emails. Interestingly. because I had originally specified that all email contact from Tiscali be duplicated to my hotmail account I was able to read the contents of one of these messages. Amazingly the same message could not be viewed via my parents Tiscali email.
Frankly, I am unsure what to do at this stage. Is it best to just demand the MAC codes and withdraw from Tiscali altogether? I could do this in addition re my own contract in order to add a bit of leverage to the issue. Is it worth contacting OFFCOM? I have heard that they are a pretty toothless body who are unlikely to represent much of an obstacle for the ISP. Where do we stand regarding paying the bill? This is currently to be paid via direct debit but as only a telephone connection is available for what should we be liable?
Any advice very much appreciated.
