The disc went in fine and ran through its checks but the modem did not have the ADSL light lit. The program stalled there saying there was something wrong. And ever since then, four months of technical support hell, it has not worked. I said it was the provisioning, something on Tiscali’s side, but they have done everything under the sun to try to avoid doing anything about it.

They blamed BT, they blamed us, they blamed the very equipment they sent us. Not once have they checked the account to check provisioning was correct, they have never done anything except point the finger elsewhere. They really do have an abysmal technical support division. You name it, it’s happened. They’ve scheduled callbacks and never called. They’ve scheduled callbacks then when we call them they say the callback was at a different time (ask yourself: why would you come in with a hired computer professional at the wrong time?). They’ve put us on hold when contacting a supervisor, never to find one. They’ve said a supervisor will call back immediately, and didn’t. They’ve taken another phone number down (to call me at home) and never called it, calling us liars by saying we never gave them the other phone number.

The BT technical people checked the line, found a minor fault, fixed it, and told Tiscali they’d fixed it, and the next time we called Tiscali they blamed BT again saying they were fixing a fault. Again. When we insisted it had been fixed they suddenly noticed it was fixed. Clearly they can’t read what’s on the screens in front of them.

Worse still, a letter was written to Tiscali who wrote back (a month later) that our complaint was being forwarded to a special division. When we called technical support we were supposed to go straight to that division because we were a special case, yet have never been contacted by this special division, or talked to anyone from it.

Not being racist or anything, but I think that this farming of support services to other countries (read: India) is a bad idea. It’s difficult to talk to them, and to understand what they’re saying, and they don’t understand english colloquialisms. Furthermore they seem to think that we sit at home or at our businesses waiting for phone calls from them. When we say that we can’t be there at 3pm because of work, they repeat it, as if repeating 3pm is going to make us relent or remember that we suddenly can be around waiting for them to call us.

From my own personal view, Tiscali has been good, but for the bowling club, for my next door neighbour (whose own problems with them took 3 months+ to fix), they have been atrocious. Taking 4 months so far, the bowling club’s problem has always been the same and we keep on saying it, the modem does not had the ADSL light lit – that seems to indicate one or two things to me – that there isn’t an ADSL signal on the line (provisioning problem with Tiscali, or a line fault with BT) or that the modem is malfunctioning (which Tiscali should replace anyway).

A large internet service provider here that I won’t mention (begins with ‘T‘, sounds italian) has been messing a client of mine around for three weeks now. They have a telephone line, got a combined telephone/broadband package ordered with them. They got the modem in the post, we hooked the line up to the filter, plugged the telephone and the modem in, and nothing.

When I say ‘nothing’ here, I mean, the telephone didn’t even work. Take the filter out, plug the telephone line back in, and it works fine. We call them up, several times, and get the usual bullshit answers, ‘have you installed the software’, ‘is the modem hooked up’, ‘is the modem on’ blah blah. Finally I get a bit tired of this, ask for a supervisor.

I wait around for 30 minutes for this supervisor to call, no-one calls. We have to now wait for new filters to arrive to “fix” the problem. It won’t, I know it. It’s a line provisioning issue, as it was with my neighbour who had the same problem.

The problem is, that this phone company, beginning with T, won’t listen and insists we install the new filters first before helping us (my client) any further. How stupid is that? So when we get the filters, install them, and they don’t work, then they’ll be forced to actually do some real work on the line, look a bit deeper on the account and figure out that ahhhh, yes there’s something wrong with the line provisioning.

I can’t wait to say, ‘I told you so’. It’s cases like this that I live for that.

Let me tell you about my experience. You’ll hopefully be as angry as I was.

I ordered a 2Mb line about hmm, 2 years ago, from Tiscali. I got it, and have been happy with it.

Last autumn time, around September I think, I got a call from an Indian a call centre. I would almost go so far as to say a boiler room. They were selling a package of telephone line with internet, for Tiscali. I had my telephone line with BT at the time.

I said I wasn’t interested but he said (to clinch the deal, I now find out) that he would up my line to a 10Mb line, plus the telephone package, for a reasonable sum. It was actually quite good.

A friend of mine locally just got a 10Mb line with Tiscali. I still did not have mine from Tiscali, so I wrote and complained, asking where my 10Mb line was. I got jerked around by the usual email back-and-forth nonsense, did I read the FAQ, did I want to order an internet line, blah blah.

Finally I got an answer from Tiscali. Apparently my line is not capable of receiving a 10Mb capacity. I am stuck at 2Mb. But they would give me a £30 rebate for my trouble. Wow. £30. When all I wanted was 8Mb more. Thanks Tiscali, you’re amazing. Let me repay you by writing this wonderful article about how sleazy your selling tactics are, how dismal your technical support is, and how stunningly fast your billing department was to start charging me for my “upgrade” to telephone+10Mb internet.

A broadband review for the UK could not come fast enough, believe me.