Plusnet and Tiscalli - are they SO bad??

lolly5648

I have been with Plusnet for a few years and have found their service to be good. If I have a problem I contact them by email or else its a local call rate. When I had problems setting up my wireless router they were very helpful and explained things very simply

JohalaReewi

ravenlooney wrote:

JohalaReewi,So, can I take it that Plusnet customer service, reliability all ok? I was kind of aware of the connection fee/ modem charge thing if I moved ISP and find that reasonable. What sort of 'limit' is on their 'unlimited' package, whats acceptable useage?
Thanks

Customer service is OK. The staff are UK based but quality varies. I think they put the new recruits on the front line so you might have to get past them to talk to the chaps who know how to sort the problem but saying that, problems are few and far between. The broadband connection is fast and reliable. The unlimited use is unlimited in the sense that you don't get cutoff if you reach a certain threshold but if you make excessive use, your connection speed drops drastically. Acceptable use is explained in their T&Cs here...

http://www.plus.net/info2/legal/index.html

See section 6 of the AUP for broadband and 6.3 for Broadband Plus.

djohn2002uk

The "Throttling Back" on PlusNet now only operates between 4pm and 8pm.

ravenlooney

Thanks for the info on Plusnet you lot!! do I take it then (yes, im just trying to get it all clear in my head before I commit to anything) that as long as im not doing p2p I shouldnt worry about the AUP? It will still be ok to download music (bought legally of course!)ocasionally and stuff like that? Thanks

paul93anderson

The more I understand about broadband the more I become aware of the limitations of Tiscali.

When you throw in a poor to almost not existent customer services team and apparently very poor billing its not a happy picture.

From my understanding of the way things are developing in the internet world with the convergence of TV/Radio, Telecoms and home entertainment: radio streaming, IPTV, internet telephones, etc the slow preformance and unreliable performance will be more than an irritant - it will be critical - things simply won't work.

Yesterday, despite ostensibly having an internet speed of 1mb, the speed of my connection was insufficient to support a 24kbs radio stream for 4 hours. Having worked fine throughout the connection has dropped to dropped to 344.9 tonight.

You have to ask what's the point of having a regulator if they can't assist with the sort of service provision and billing problems listed here. They should be heavily fined and have their licence revoked if they continue to underperform. Oftel make the FSA good. It about time they took customer service seriously - they are pathetic.

Surely there are grounds here for someone to bring a case against Tiscali through the small claims court. Tiscali may think they are covered by their terms and conditions - but there is hardly parity between the two parties. I would have thought a test case was well worth pursuing. They are clearly not providing the service they market and purport to provide. Whatever the outcome it would not do Tiscali, or Ofcom any favours. Is this feasible - its a while soince i opended my law books.

For my part, I think I shall resist the temtation of any future upgrades and shall await the anniversary of my last upgrade and spend the next 10 months looking in to the best possible ISP's. Shame we don't have cable in Northumberland.

oriental

I have had two accounts with plusnet for last 2 years or more.No problem at all any time.At one time i tried to move (due to apparently cheaper competitor)plusnet reduced their charges to what i would have paid to the other isp and was happy to stay.
Hope this helps.

JohalaReewi

ravenlooney wrote:

Thanks for the info on Plusnet you lot!! do I take it then (yes, im just trying to get it all clear in my head before I commit to anything) that as long as im not doing p2p I shouldnt worry about the AUP? It will still be ok to download music (bought legally of course!)ocasionally and stuff like that? Thanks

No problem at all. Plusnet would seem to get upset if you start downloading say 50GB a month at peak times so a few tunes isn't going to upset anybody. There is an option to check your broadband usage in your account pages on the plusnet portal if you are concerned. Plusnet reckon 95% of Broadband Plus customers use less than 10GB a month so they aren't going to be bothered if you are in the 95%.

ravenlooney

JohalaReewi wrote:

No problem at all. Plusnet would seem to get upset if you start downloading say 50GB a month at peak times so a few tunes isn't going to upset anybody. There is an option to check your broadband usage in your account pages on the plusnet portal if you are concerned. Plusnet reckon 95% of Broadband Plus customers use less than 10GB a month so they aren't going to be bothered if you are in the 95%.

Fantastic!! thats what I wanted to hear :-)) Thanks very much for your advice!

from_suffolk

cymro wrote:

Tiscali over a period of several months withdrew too much money from my bank account. When I eventually spotted it I contacted them on 29th July - I have since rang them on one further occasion - each time queueing on the phone for approximately 15 minutes and sent 15-20 Emails. Emails are answered within 7 days if you are lucky and when they are answered they are unintelligible and often completely irrelevant to the issue which is them returning the money they wrongfully withdrew from my account. Here we are on 7th Dec and still no sight nor sound of my money - and I wonder how many other people have fallen for the same trick? Apart from that no problems but honestly would you buy a 2nd hand car from this lot ? :-)

A similar thing happened to me after I cancelled my account in February. Tiscali continued taking payments from my credit card even after my credit card company LlyodsTSB re-imbursed me for these payments (well done and thank you) they harrased me for further payments for a service I was not using! After several letters and phone calls they have now written off the amount in dispute and apologised for the lengh of time it took to resolve the matter.
I think that it helped that I wrote an old fashioned letter enclosing the relevant facts and copies of documentry evidence.
Write to;
Tiscali UK ltd
PO Box 7206
Kiln Farm
MK14 6XG

Froggitt

Funny that - an Intenet Service Provider that only responds to letters, not to emails sent over the Internet.