Posted: 28th Dec, 2007 By: MarkJ
ISP Tiscali UK has yet again managed to top our '
ISP Complaints' page for the fourth year running, nudging past the 400 figure mark just this morning. Poor support continues to be the providers greatest weakness, becoming the common dominator in most of our weekly complaints.
Connection problems and an inability to get Tiscali to cancel accounts, leading to incorrect billing and later problems with debt collection agencies, have also been big among user gripes. Two samples of this weeks complaints have been posted below:
I used the Tiscali site to request an upgrade to my existing broadband package (2Mbs, line rental and free calls at weekend) to 8Mbs, line rental and free calls every day of the week). I received an email indicating that the service would be switched over in 15 days. That was 5th November.
As nothing has happened yet I phoned to cancel the upgrade (0871 222 3311) and after about 5 minutes on the line was redirected to the cancellations dept (0845 077 4488). After several more minutes I was told that it is not possible to cancel the upgrade - I have to wait for the upgrade to happen and then cancel it within 10 days.
By - Dave
Our new package with Tiscali was supposed to commence on 12th December but on that date we discovered that we could not make or receive calls and our Broadband connection had stopped. I have made numerous calls to your helpline and I have even tried to cancel my Tiscali package without success.
By - Alan
However, since October 2007, Tiscali has shown signs of improvement. Complaints about them have begun to fall and 2008 may well become the first year that Tiscali is able to turn this trend around for the better, we hope.
Meanwhile Tiscali has not been without competition, with the final quarter of 2007 seeing complaints about
Virgin Media's ADSL broadband (Virgin.net) services utterly eclipse that of its rivals. The situation has now improved but suffering customers are unlikely to forget this period.
The collapse of Biscit Internet during early 2007 was also a major talking point, as were the serious performance and connection problems suffered by Fast4's users over the mid-year gap. BT,
Orange and
Pipex (Tiscali) were also hit by complaints at various points in the year.