Tiscali Broadband Bast*rds

Yogibear

Customer services are non-existant dont be swayed by their offers its only for some people.

we got a new pc in early March we misplaced the disk to set it up on new pc,rang their 0871 number spoke to lady in India explained the situation she said she could do it over the phone I explained I needed a disk after 30 mins f*rting about she said I`ll send you a disk 10p a min=£3 supposed to get it in 3/4 days never came rang again 0871 ,7 days later asked to speak to supervisor was told as I`ve NOT got a contract it would be a courtesy to send me a disk[4 years with them] said I would get it in 2/3 days as it was coming from another country I said India she said no England and you live in Scotland they gave me an other number to ring 870 I said do you mean 0870 no,so I rang the first number got some lady out of her bed:mad:wrong numberI asked to be put through to cancellations the office was closed over the weekend,on the Monday I rang cancellations to get my MAC code male told me that the disk was no good as I needed a new modem was supposed to get it by royal mail within 2/3 days he was going to put £30 on my account,after a week over easter no modem arrived but a disk arrived,rang cancellations again spoke to another male ,who said he would re-imburse me for my calls to the 0871 numbers and put me through to the Billing dept to claim a refund for the time I was offline 35 mins later they hung up asked me to ring back:mad: a modem arrived 3 days later then another disk 4 days after that,the last straw I rang cancellations determined not to be swayed by their patter,another male charming guy said if I rang back in two weeks today he gave me his name extension number he would give me 8megs for £10.99,I rang today asked for the guy by name M*hamme* male said there is no extension number in that dept:mad: he offered me 2megs for what I`m paying at the moment I have asked for my MAC code.We wrote to them on the 25th March still awaiting a reply.they are just a bunch of manipulating B*stards,btw after 8 emails to their complaints dept my account was NOT credited with any money .


DO NOT GO NEAR THEM WHEN YOU SIGN UP IT`S A FREEPHONE NUMBER,AFTER THAT 0870,0871,0845 rip off merchants.

chipmunk

Phew .... that might have been a little easier to read if you'd put a few full stops in here and there. I'm out of breath reading that

Agree with what you say though, what a bunch of incompetents. We use Tiscali at work and (touch wood) thank God we've not had any problems 'cos I'm dreading having to contact them by phone.

They are in breach of OFCOM's regulation that states communications providers have to advise you of the MAC in writing by letter and/or e-mail within five working days of receipt of your request. I would contact them again and remind them of this as, if reported, they can face huge fines from OFCOM because of this.

Good luck

Ben84

Tiscali are terrible. Had nothing but problems with them myself. I was sold and billed for services I never received, and their customer service is really bad and seemed unable to fix anything. Very long waiting times (at least 30 minutes), and all based in India with the usual problems like poor english and very faint crackling sound quality. If/when you get through, expect to be fobbed off with nonsense and have your call sent through every department in aimless circles. You will have to wait in a queue for every department too. Emails are replied to with unhelpful template letters that have nothing to do with your question.

There was however one department who proved to be quite capable, organised and efficient. The billing department. They did however suffer from selective hearing when we discussed the fact they were billing me for something I hadn't been receiving.

Kelticfox

I'm an ex Tiscali diagnostics engineer (as of 1st April 2008). I'm currently in the process of taking them to an employment tribunal for various breaches of contract.

Another part of the reason I left was due to the diablicol management.

There are some great people who work there that actually do care about the customers however we were told time and time again to concentrate on Volume (and not Quality)....... something which I personally never did.

I would rather get under the daily call target (40 calls per day) and have a high 1st time fix rate (Where you fix the problem from the word go).


If you have any problems give me a shout as I may be able to shed some light on the issue before ringing their exorbanant 0871 Number.

Land based numbers for Tiscali are:

0207 998 5101 - Tech Support
01438 363171 - High Level Complaints
01787 884256 - Sales
0207 981 3040 - OfCom ( ;-) )


Also to save yourself a lot of time and hassle do these tests first before ringing Tech Support:

1. Test with alternative Microfilter (Small white box that hooks into Phone Socket)
2. Test from the Test Socket (You will find the test socket BEHIND the face plate of the master socket)
3. Test with an alternative router.

These tests (called Customer Premises Equipment Checks or CPE Checks for short) rule out your local area as the cause of the problem and then prevents Tiscali/BT from levying a £150 CallOut charge (Which they will often do)

If you have any problems then drop me a PM and I'll go through any tests they will do before you need to ring them (thus save you money)

Bamber19

They can be quite dire, changed to them for phone line rental and calls (along with the broadband i already had) and it took 2 months and constant calls to get it sorted, transferred to complaints various times only for it to remain on hold. Just got constant excuses as to why phone wouldn't work and was told various different solutions (the best being to cancel my contract, re-join BT and quit BT for Tiscali again a month later) Eventually my complaint emails were read and i was getting the same rubbish replies and suggestions so my own words became a lot "firmer" and within a couple of days it was sorted with a sum of money added to my account for the cost of calls to their complaints and tech support. They seem like an ok company when everything is going fine but they are blatantly incapable of dealing with things when anything goes wrong, part of the issue is that some of the call centre workers are completely unintelligable.

Got a friend who works in their UK call centre (sales only, they let the foreign call centres handle tech support) and he was basically laughing when I told him about it saying "We're a terrible company, you've been sucked in by the low prices but they are constantly failing to provide. His advice was to cancel also)

They also sometimes jsut charge you a random figure for the month, last month my bill for broadband alone came to £20.84, despite none of their products costing this amount.

No need to go ito details but the worst of the whole issue was that the problem that was stopping them activating the phoneline was non-existant, by the end of it, the complaint personnel informed me that they merely hadn't taken the line over from BT for 2 months when it should have been extremely simple.

fudgeukraine

everything bar the sales is moving to the phillipines for phone calls as of june . . . enjoy

Ben84

I've had a number of very bad experieinces with companies, mostly telephone and ISP providers. Tiscali might have very bad admin and customer services, but they're unfortunately not the only ones.

These two things, admin and customer services are so important and having seen how bad things can be without them, I now check companies out before getting in to a contract with them.

The sales line will always be nice, they'll be based in the UK, answer the phones promptly and be efficient. I don't phone them first, I call customer services with a technical question. Often I have a good genuine question, but even if I don't I'll make one up. I accept it's not entirely fair to use their resources like this before I'm even a customer, but when so many companies are selling services they're clearly incapable of delivering and providing acceptable customer services, I feel I need to do this. Mistakes can be very expensive for customers, and I don't enjoy the time costs either and possible lack of service. I really need a telephone and my internet connection. When you buy and sell shares online, having your internet connection randomly break and discovering you can't contact customer services or understand what they're saying is terrible news.

If the wait time is very long and they're not based in the UK, or they can't answer simple questions, I don't buy their service. At the most extreme, I have spoken to people who I don't believe spoke English and just said the same irrelevant things over and over again, and showed little or no comprehension of what I was saying or any understanding of grammar. One man said "I cancel you, I cancel you!" over and over again before dumping me back in to the telephone waiting line. Others showed terrible lack of technical understanding. A good made up question is "will your internet work with an Apple computer?" Some of them don't even know what an Apple computer is.

Disturbingly, these companies aren't some kind of dubious sham businesses, they're big names with highstreet stores and lots of media advertising. I don't know how they're allowed to get away with such terrible service, there should be laws against selling services you're not providing. It's not a few mistakes, it's a large scale problem that they continue to ignore and keep doing. Tiscali have even cut their prices since I was a customer and increased the services they promise to deliver. I'm very sceptical that they will be delivering these seemingly cheaper and better services.

letsbehonest

TISCALI, are and always will be one of if not the worst BB company's around, they are running an annoying tv AD at he moment, do not be sucked in by it. They have the worst customer service in the known universe, they do not answer emails be they techie or user info. In reality if you do become a Tiscali customer you will only do it once, but will regret it many times. You have been WARNED.............

kenwalker

letsbehonest wrote: »

TISCALI, are and always will be one of if not the worst BB company's around, they are running an annoying tv AD at he moment, do not be sucked in by it. They have the worst customer service in the known universe, they do not answer emails be they techie or user info. In reality if you do become a Tiscali customer you will only do it once, but will regret it many times. You have been WARNED.............

Never had a problem with them personally and I've been with them since the days of Screaming Net. Recent enquiry resulted in a response without any problem.