Tiscali Billing Problem - Sorry long!

peachyprice

Hi Folks,

I wonder if anyone can offer some words of wisdom:
In April this year we changed bank accounts, our Tiscali bill of £25.20 fell in the change over period on 6th April, so DD didn't get paid, I phoned 4 days later and paid it manually, no problem, showed as paid on our online statement, checked the new DD was set up for the following month, all hunkydory.

2 weeks later they disconnected our broadband, saying we hadn't paid, despite the manual payment showing on our statement. Needless to say Mr.PP (account is his name) who was very displeased, phoned them and wanted to know what they were playing at, he was told that it was there mistake, we never should have been disconnected, etc, etc, grovel grovel, and they said they would credit out account as a goodwill gesture, they didn't say how much by.

On 6th May when DD was due to be taken, they didn't take it so Mr. PP called them to check everything was OK, they said there was nothing outstanding, so no DD needed to be taken, when we checked our online statement it said payment received £49.98, balance £0.00, which was the £25.20 I'd paid manually and we assumed the rest was the credit they'd put on our account as goodwill gesture.

Roll on Friday 18th July in the post we got a reminder from the collections department saying we owe £ 24.98 nad to pay it immediatley. When we checked our line statement they've just added this to this months bill, but with no details, we assume they've reversed the credit they did back in May.

Mr PP phoned them Friday evening and got through to Bangalore, and wanted an explanation as to where this extra charge came from and wanted to know how they could send a reminder for something we haven't been billed for, was told they didn't need to explain, we just had to pay it, it was our fault there was money outstanding, (even though we queried back in May why they hadn't taken a payment) tough t1tty basically.

So my question is, can they reverse a credit they made as a goodwill gesture without notifying us and can they just send a reminder without actually sending us a bill?

pennyweyes

After a long, long run-in with Tiscali, we have emerged older but wiser and my advice would be as follows:

NEVER phone them - you are paying and you don't have a record of what has been said. (Yes, I know it's possible to record calls but we decided against this option) We have also had problems with the accents of some 'customer support team members', and I don't usually have a problem understanding people, no matter what their accent. You have to explain the problem afresh every time and often get a less-than-sympathetic response. If you do have to phone, make a note of the time of your call (including any time spent waiting - we once waited 34 minutes!), ask for a call log number and get the name of the person you're speaking to.

USE EMAIL FOR ALL COMMUNICATIONS and keep copies. As you've already tried to sort this out, to no avail, email their complaints department

[EMAIL="complaints@uk.tiscali.com"]complaints@uk.tiscali.com[/EMAIL]

Give them a deadline for sorting out your complaint e.g. 7 working days and tell them that if they don't provide you with a satisfactory and timely response you will be making a formal complaint to OfCom.

Good luck!