We were appalled to read our e-mails this morning and find that Tiscali had been telling its customers that we posted FALSE information about their future "support" for ADSL Migration. This despite the fact that it came from their own OFFICIAL statement. Today we bring you the full story.

Firstly some history. This all started on 30th July 2003 when we sourced an article from The Scream that bit into said ISP as an example of poor migration support - HERE.

The following day we posted THIS follow-up, which includes an official statement from Tiscali UKs PR & Communications Manager, Jody Haskayne. The key part reads:

We are currently developing a more effective automated migration that will make it even easier for customers to migrate with minimum disruption to (or from) Tiscali and we will be piloting this next month.

Note that at this point in time we'd been communicating with Haskayne quite well following the Unreal-ISP fraud incident (something our readers at that time will remember) and found her by contacting Tiscali directly. Here's the response in its entirety:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jody Haskayne"
To: "'ISPr - Editor-in-Chief'"
Sent: Wednesday, July 30, 2003 3:26 PM
Subject: Re Article today - our response


Mark - re your article below, the piece you have run today is not altogether correct -

Tiscali has had very few requests from our customer to migrate to another supplier because most of them are still within their 1 year contract with us and are happy with their Tiscali broadband (one of the cheapest on the market).

We are currently developing a more effective automated migration that will make it even easier for customers to migrate with minimum disruption to (or from) Tiscali and we will be piloting this next month.

For your information the current BT process is not instantaneous because the 'new or gaining' provider has to apply to BT for connection to the customer. BT then emails the 'existing or losing' provider and allows 10 working days for them to respond. Only then, if the 'existing or losing' supplier agrees will the migration take place without a cease order.

Hope this helps clarify

Jody

Sadly it wasn't long being a number of our readers started complaining to us that Tiscali's customer support staff were saying something different. One of our readers sent in this example of a support quote:

"All ADSL accounts are assigned a unique CBUK number that can be referenced by BT. When you open an account, BT will give this number to Tiscali as the Service provider. I have had queries like this before and as far as BT Wholesale are concerned when I last checked with them ISP's may give out this CBUK number to customers.

However the CBUK is only useful to the customer if both parties (existing ISP and the new ISP) are part of the BT Migration Scheme.

I have confirmed that at this moment in time Tiscali are not part of the Migration Scheme and are not planning as such at this point time" - Customer Service 2

OFFICIAL SUPPORT FORUM LINK (Not sure if this still works, was in the original e-mail; you must me a member)

Consequently we contacted Haskayne regarding both the migration issue and an update on the Unreal-ISP investigation - no response. We tried a second time roughly one month later and had the following reply:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Jody Haskayne"
To: "'ISPr - Editor-in-Chief'"
Sent: Friday, September 12, 2003 6:08 PM
Subject: RE: Still No Reply


Mark

will come backto on monday with this.

It's now mid-October and Haskayne has failed to respond, yet this morning we've been informed by readers that Tiscali has claimed that all of the above is false and NOT from Tiscali. Here's a quote from their official support forum response:

Hi again!

I have spoken to the relevant team.

They have advised me that the statements produced on the ISP Preview website which you have reffered to have not been issued by Tiscali UK Ltd.

Sorry for the confusion! Our Product Management Team are currently investigating the information which has been published.

__________________
Kind Regards
Tiscali UK Ltd

Well that's funny because..:

Jody Haskayne
PR & Communications Manager

Tiscali UK Ltd
20 Broadwick Street
Soho
London
W1F 8HT
DDI +44 (0) 20 70** ****
Fax +44 (0) 20 70** ****
Sw +44 (0) 20 70** ****
Mob +44 (0) 7710 7** ***

We're quite sure it says "Tiscali UK Ltd.", so perhaps after several months of trying, would Tiscali now finally like to clear this up?

It's hardly fair to blame us and confuse their customers for a mistake they clearly made and it's a big one if it is a mistake because migration is a HOT issue right now.