Tiscali Broadband - Where to complain

Hi - There's absolutely no point ringing the 50p a minute helpline in India. Email replies (when you can get them) fob you off with requests for speed tests, config changes, etc, which won't work.

The problem is with Tiscali, not their customers. Tiscali are not prepared to admit this and seem deaf to the complaints of hunfreds of dissatisfied users.

I suggest everyone who has a Tiscali horror story writes to all of the contacts below. Perhaps we can shame this bunch of crooks into fixing their appalling service.

Ofcom (you'll need to tell them Tiscali doesn't give details of their ADR procedure) :
http://www.ofcom.org.uk/contact_ofcom/tel_issues/

BBC Watchdog:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/watchdog/

ISPA:
http://www.ispa.org.uk/

Trading standards:
/

BBC Working Lunch (did an expose on Tiscali in 2002)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/programmes/w...ch/default.stm

.net magazine:
http://www.netmag.co.uk/

How to complain:
/

You and Yours:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/youandyo..._contact.shtml

Your MP:
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/

Which?:


Anticap:
http://www.anticap.co.uk/contacts.php

ISP review:


The Scream forum:
https://the-scream.co.uk/forums/index.php?s=

thanks!

I have made an updated thread which outlines one course of action that has proved useful, >>Tiscali Problems Resolved

Sil

I agree. I've wasted hours trying to find what the real problem was. Tiscali knew all along but were obviously quite happy to waste my time, money, and patience.

They do not give a damn about us, the paying customer!!

I will copy my letter of complaint to Tiscali, to all of the mentioned contacts. including any local and national newspapers.
They do not deserve customers.

I cannot emphasise enough the dismal, appalling service given by this lamentable organisation, who recently, and proudly announced a record number of new subscribers to their broadband service.

What their new customers don't know yet but soon will is the utter contempt with which they are treated once they have signed up and committed themselves to a yearly contract.

In 40 years of dealing with companies, some dodgy, some reasonable, Tiscali is my number one for total disregard for its customers.

In fact their service is fraudulent. They quite happily continue to advertise rapid connection rates but the reality is dreadfully slow, in fact at peak times and other times too, their broadband connection is SLOWER than dial up, and is often three times slower.

Just so you can check I am not fibbing, simply go to the Tiscali "support" forums and see hundreds of complaints and not one verifiable satisfied customer.

By the way if you are not already a "member" of Tiscali you cannot see these complaints. But you can always take a temporary dial up account just to access these forums.

I appeal to fellow frustrated customers to do all they can to dissuade others from subscribing to this disgrace of an ISP.

Be warned, once you sign they will not let you escape no matter how bad the service. Any e-mails are ignored. Telephone calls are fobbed off.

If anyone knows Mary Turner's (managing director) e-mail address please post it publicly so we can all complain to her directly.

Thanks,

Leonardo

Tiscali also should prominently display the details of their ADR provider but they simply will not give out this information.
So I'll do it for them:



edit sil - removed email addy

Whats an ADR provider and how are they useful ?

Sil

ADR stands for "Alternative Dispute Resolution". UK ISP's are supposed to provide details of their service provider in this respect.
If you have exhausted the companies complaints proceedure, which is not difficult in tiscalis case , the matter should be referred to an independent arbitrator.
OTELO is the arbitrator in this case. More details here.

Is anyone aware of tiscalis internal complaints proceedure anyway?

thanks, sounds handy

Is anyone aware of tiscalis internal complaints proceedure anyway?

didn't know they had one ?

Sil

I notice that tiscali are complaining about the issuing of their ceo's email address and threatening to use the Data Protection Act.
It's all cobblers..... The DPA doesn't cover corporate addresses and OFTEL will gladly give you that information anyway. In fact, tiscali should be making all this information clearly available in their disputes proceedure document.

For the princely sum of around £7.50, the tiscali ceo's personal home address can be retrieved from the Companies House website.
Tiscali seem to think that disseminating this information this is also a breach of the DPA; their legal department must be almost as competent as their support department!

Zer0 2004,
Thats brilliant thanks!!
My letter to them follows:
All are welcome to extract and use any phrases.

Dear Ms Turner.

I ordered a 150kbps connection on 4th Dec 2003 and received my Alcatel Speedtouch 330 ADSL modem on 15th Dec 2003.
The modem driver supplied on CD did not work and despite several calls to your almost unintelligible “help line”, who suggested among other things that my computer registry was corrupt, I was unable to resolve this problem for several days.
I eventually resolved the problem myself by downloading the correct driver from the Alcatel website on my existing dialup connection. A solution not suggested by your “help service”.

After going on line the connection performed reasonably well albeit generally slower than I expected, at an average 110 kbps.
On17th Feb 2004 I decided to upgrade my service to 250kbs, at which point the connection speeds fell almost immediately to 15- 20kbps with occasional bursts of 100 – 500kbps.

Several long calls to your “help service” which invoked the checking of all my connection settings, and which were actually exactly as they should be, failed to improve the situation. Your obviously baffled “help line” then came up with a number of suggestions including that my antivirus software or my firewall were the problem and that I should disable or “uninstall” them. Another suggestion was that I download a “network optimiser” patch.
I did all of these to no avail !

In an attempt to solve the problem by a process of elimination I set up another machine with a clean install of “Windows 98”, and no other software other than IE6 and the Alcatel modem driver. I also connected directly to the incoming telephone line with no telephone connected.

The problem as described above was found to be exhibited on this machine just as before. After yet further calls to your exasperating “help service” the operator eventually conceded that there was indeed “network problems” but that this would be cleared within 48 hours.
I called again 72 hours later as there was no change to the service and was then told that “nothing would have been done as it was the weekend” but that it “would definitely be sorted out within a week”!) - Now three weeks later on 12th March the service is still not working properly with speeds usually about 20 – 60 kbps (slower than my dialup connection) and constant total stops.
I have had one response to three e-mails to the “help service” in which they requested that I check the speed over a period of a day. I actually checked it over two days from 06:00 to 12:00.
I have still not had a response to my last two e-mails.

I am completely dismayed by your appalling service and hereby give you 28 days, from the date of this letter, in which to resolve this issue.

If this is not resolved within 28 days I consider that the contract with yourselves is nulled due to “breach of contract” as you have not provided me with the service promised.

I also reclaim the total cost of the telephone calls to your “help service” and all charges that you have made to me to date.

I estimate that I have spent a total of 15 hours of unnecessary time trying to resolve these issues due to the incompetence of your “help service” for which I also seek reimbursement.

Please respond to this letter within 7 days.



Yours sincerely

Neither of the e-mail addresses for Mary Turner is now not recognised by the server.
(They can obviously do some things quickly!)

xxx at uk.tiscali.com

lower case buisness, mine managed to get thorugh, you can fx thier office 0870 745 7384. My plan is to send one, wait a day send two wait a day send three wait a day, on and on and on.
The tunnel must be dug under the guards noses.

edit sil - removed email addy

the_big_fella

xxx at uk.tiscali.com

Thanks,
I tried again but it still gets rejected by the server.
I will try to FAX it

edit sil - removed email addy

Jody Haskayne is the main PR contact. She has a direct relationship with Mary Turner

xxx at uk.tiscali.com

edit sil - removed email addy

I contacted Jody Haskayne thanks to the preceeding post, with a carefully worded and thorough e-mail which did not pull punches.

I gave her not 7 days but THREE DAYS to act on my declaration of a void contract due to Tiscali's failure to provide a service of merchantable quality, failing which I suggested Tiscali was commiting theft in continuing to take funds from my bank account.

Quoting an Ofcom case number I think also helped.

I received a reply within 24 hours confirming my contract has ceased and that I would not be charged for any access since the first month (December 2003).

I also demanded a letter suitable to show to my bank confirming that Tiscali has no further rights to cash from my account and that was also agreed upon.

Furthermore I insisted that my dial up account would continue as a reserve until my BB line ceased and I was able to seek another provider. This was also agreed to.

BT confirms that my line is due for cut off within 7 days and instructions from Tiscali were received.

I cannot guarantee that this will work for other users, but an intelligently laid out letter with dire warnings of what will happen to Tiscali if they do not co-operate is probably more effective than peppering their forums or un-manned e-mail addresses with irate posts.

It is ESSENTIAL to head your e-mail or letter with a prominent heading stating the consequences of not agreeing to the request, which in my case was to sue them, seek police involvement for fraud and theft, contact the BBC, and vigorously press ahead with an existing Ofcom case on my behalf.

Ofcom confirmed to me that in the light of my letter, I was elevated from a position several thousand down the long ladder of complaints to numero uno, hence the immediate reaction. Of course this is quite unfair to everyone else for which I apologise, but all I can say is that if enough people kept up the pressure they would force a radical change in the rules at Ofcom and by popular uprising rid us of all the rogue ISP's in this very dodgy industry.

Good Luck.

as well as complaining to the places above, the thread >>Tiscali Problems Resolved<< has helped a lot of people

Sil

Tiscali have now switched off my line.
I actually received a telephone call to acknowledge my complaints- two months too late!
As Leonardo and myself have discovered, the only way to get a response is to let them know that you are serious about your complaint and that you are not going to go away until you are provided with a satisfactory solution !!!

We should have the legal right to simply stop payments and ISP's should not have the right to demand 12 month contracts, the equipment should be costed with the right to buy or use your own from the start and the connection costs should not be allowed to rise beyond what is advertised ( I was charged £50 for a 5x connection that slows to zero on occasions).I still after complaining have not got a decent well laid out and costed bill, they do not bill me regularly as per contract and i havent had my 25 quid back yet!!!!

Anyone tried the address shown at the linked posts HERE ?

Tony, have you tried tiscali's ADR provider:
https://the-scream.co.uk/forums/t13164.html?

I've been browsing the OFT'S website, they have a leaflet on unfair terms in contracts. It could be argued that tiscali are providing an entertainment service to home pc users in which case this is an interesting clip from the leaflet

They won’t give you a refund - An entertainment service cannot deny you a refund if they have not delivered to you what was agreed. But if you cancel without justification, you cannot expect a full refund.

The full text isHERE
and the full consumer section is HERE
with all the evidence of poor service and breach of contract on this site and adslguide.org there has got to be a case for the OFT or trading standards to look at. I think it will just need all those who are posting on here about tiscali to complain en masse for someone to pay attention.

E-mails to Jody Haskayne (xxx at uk.tiscali.com) work. An extremely frustrated rant got a very prompt reply, with what appears to be a genuine attempt to pacify me by actually resolving my problems. This has been followed up with a mail from Chris Larkin (xxx at uk.tiscali.com), addressing specific technical issues. The best bit is that he can be reached direct on a real, proper uk number!!

I now have 2 months in which to rate Tiscali's performance with the option to have my line restored should the survice still not be up to scratch. Speeds seem to be ok but connection can still be a little patchy. NB has just disconnected while I was typing this...

Does anyone know how to get back control of my homepage? Changed it in the registry but it would be nice to have full functionality of MY computer back!!!

edit sil - removed email addy

Regarding the homepage, make a post in the PC Security forum.

Do you have to pay for the two months that you are "beta testing" their service?

I should think the 2 months are free, as I got their attention by cancelling my direct debit and then mailing them to say that I would reinstate it when they got their act together. I was lucky enough to start finding problems within a few days of starting with Tiscali, and a quick check with OTELO confirmed that I could get away with this under the remote selling regs. Mind you this was only after I had exhausted all patience (and a small fortune on phone calls) trying to cancel my subscription!!

NB I'm only writing this having just spent 2 hours getting the modem to respond after installing the 'latest' drivers (2.0.3) from the Tiscali website! Does anyone know of any issues with the 2.0.18 drivers from Sagem?

Hi Guys

I had been with Ticali for a month and they we're terrible for speed, service - you know the rest.

I sent countless emails and in the end I sent a forceful letter showing them I meant business. I got a result - 2 months in they cancelled my account and Im signing up with Firefly (who I must say have been superb so far).

If anyone wants to use this letter just send me an email and I'll happy be happy to send it along to help other customers get rid of this joke of an ISP. All you need to do is just change the name etc. of the letter.

Hi All,

I think that someone is having a joke, here we are give Tiscali a hiding for their poor service and support and what do I see at the top of this page but an advert for 'Tiscali Internet Services' lol. I bet they dont get too many click throughs from this page.

I wonder if it is set up as a pay per click type, I'd click on it just to waste some of their money for a change.

Jim

^^^

I was double (and treble charged) from the time I moved last August to March this year. After endless calls, emails and letters, I finally spoke to Keith Gregory 0870 744 6740 (complaints)
PO Box 7206, Milton Keynes, MK14 6XG. He seemed to take the complaint seriously. His boss is Ms D Clark. However still not sorted and have involved Otelo the Ombudsman, PO Box 730 Warrington, WA4 6WU.

nice1 tinkerbell...

i used the number above... unfortunately the nice keith gregory doesn't work there anymore, but he has been replaced by the equally nice (can you all believe this... 2 nice people working at toss-cali, in one sentance!) caroline.

after threatening them with an exposé on 'tonight with trevor mcdonald', i was told the 30 day 'cooling off' period would be waived, and my connection was terminated within the hour!

unfortunately, there really seems to be nothing they can do about the 10 - 14 days 'switch off' period (grrrrrrr), and it looks like i'll just have to grin and bear the next 2 weeks without broadband... i send this to you via glorious (sic) dial-up i'm afraid!

so league of fellow toss-cali haters... hope is out there if ya prepared to battle for it, kak thing is, they won't make it an easy one!

cheers again m8's, and good luck

shredder

hey - let us know when you get reconnected

which isp you going for ?

Sil