Here is a warning to anyone considering joining Tiscali, hoping to take advantage of their low priced Broadband/Phone/TV packages!

I was approached a few years ago by a Tiscali Network Business Associate, with a view to becoming an Independent Business Associate myself . This was my first dally into affiliate marketing really & obviously, it was advisable to sign up to Tiscali myself; how do you promote a product if you don’t use it yourself?!

Tiscali seem to offer very good value, they are usually the cheapest deal on the market, but are they really?

I was originally on the Broadband package, but when Tiscali bought Homechoice, they offered me a free trial of the new, on demand, iptv system. This is when the mess started!!!!

The digital tv service itself is ok; the signal is compressed & really needs a 4Mb line to get a decent picture, without the occasional break up & stuttering I was getting on my 2Mb line to start with. The on-demand & catch up TV elements are good – a bit like iPlayer but for more channels & because it was free, it was great having the music & film channels too.

The problems with Tiscali are always when something goes wrong however; it seems very difficult to either get the right department, for the problem, or anyone to admit they know what is going on. Because the digital tv was really Homechoice, the staff that were working for Tiscali were ex Homechoice & I think the two factions weren’t connected properly, using entirely different systems to deal with customers. I was often told, sorry but we’re Homechoice & you need to speak to Tiscali.

Eventually, the free trial ended & I had to pay for the service…..this was when the REAL problems started!!!!

On the TV/Broadband/Talk bundle & received a letter from you in January 2008, which offered me a FREE broadband speed upgrade, or an upgrade to one of the new FREE line rental packages. I chose the free line rental & waited for this to become active on my line. However, I subsequently paid two quarterly bills to BT for line rental & decided to query what had happened to the upgrade.

I was told that I had to sign up to a new package online, which wasn’t what I had been offered, but I tried anyway. However, their system kept saying that the package couldn’t be upgraded, even though I tried repeatedly over a period of a few weeks to change it. When I raised the issue with the Customer Support Team, I was passed from one department to another & was eventually put on the “TV, Broadband & Weekend Calls” package at £19.99 a month. This supposedly includes the line rental & I received a letter from BT saying that my line rental would be transferred in June 2008.

I assumed that would be the end of the problems, but every bill I received after that, had the line rental added to it. I’raised a number of support tickets to get this resolved, but all I was told was that there was something wrong with the system & my package could not be up or down graded in any way. Apparently, I was using their latest technology & the system doesn’t allow any changes on this!!!! At least, this is what I was told a number of times.

So effectively, it seems I was paying for what was offered as a FREE upgrade and couldn’t do anything to change this because there was something wrong in THEIR system. The billing department seemed to agree as they refunded me the line rental for about 4 months & told me that the free line rental would be applied to my account as soon as the system allowed it. However, once again line rental was charged on my account in December & so I queried it again. Again, I was passed from one department to another, all of whom said they couldn’t help me. Eventually, I was told once more that because I’m on the latest technology, the free line rental can’t be put on to my account.

Eventually, I said that I had had enough of this & couldn’t ring every month to get the line rental refunded & maybe I should cancel my account! I was then telephoned by the provisioning team (a gentleman based in India), who told me that he had looked it up on his website & free line rental was not available in my area. I asked him why he was  telling me this, when I had never been told this before & in fact, had been told it was a problem in THEIR system. I also asked him why I had received a letter offering me free line rental, when it had never been available at my address! I was not rude to him, but did state that I felt Tiscali Customer Service was the worst I had ever experienced & he hung up on me; rather proving my point!

I mentioned this again to the billing department, who said that was ridiculous; being based in London, OF COURSE I should be able to get free line rental. I then received two further responses via e-mail, stating that free line rental was NOT available in my area because Tiscali piggy back on BT’s exchange rather than use their own, but I could get 25% off my line rental by calling the sales team & asking for it!! Why had I been told completely incorrect information for the previous year?!

Tiscali’s customer service teams don’t seem to be able to communicate with each other; each department gives a different explanation & passes you from an 0871 number, then an 0845 number & then an 0800 number. Then you get calls from people who you can hardly understand, who don’t seem able to deal with any query that isn’t covered by the list of 20 questions/answers they have on the sheet in front of them & so they hang up on you instead!!

When I made an official complaint, I received a letter from a Customer Relations officer addressed to Mr Stuart Court at a different address! I’m amazed I even got the letter, bearing in mind I LIVE at Stuart Court, rather than being called this by name!!! It’s interesting to see that when a “valued” customer writes with a complaint about a long term ongoing failure of customer services, they don’t even manage to actually reply to the person with the correct name & completely cock that up too!

In 23 years of being a UK consumer, I have never encountered customer service as poor, inefficient, slipshod & generally unable to resolve a customer’s problem as Tiscali. Nobody seems to know what is going on between the various departments & the training in their own products seems woefully inadequate.

As I was paying nearly £40 a month for a supposed £19.99 per month service, I decided to cancel my account & switch to Sky – I got the Sky+HD service, with 8Mb broadband, line rental & free weekend calls for the same price……..

Tiscali seem to offer great value, but it appears that this comes at a cost (assuming you get the cheap prices)!

It therefore comes as no surprise to hear about the company’s financial problems on Watchdog this week, where they say Tiscali is a company teetering on the edge, crippled with debt and fighting for its life despite having 3 million customers in the UK! The report says their experts were surprised and disappointed by the tales they’d heard of Tiscali’s poor service.

I’m not!!!!

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