If your looking for a new ISP (Internet Service Provider) anytime soon, please take my advice and steer well clear of "Tiscali"
Although they offer a resonably priced service, i can assure you that the service they will provide is anything but resonable, i have had nothing but problems with them and have been caused so much aggrovation it's untrue.
- 1st - Customer Service / Technical Support
Dont expect them to call you back "Tommorow" even if thats what they say, (I had a call from them late one Friday night "21:00" who then said he would call me back the following day... Monday came and somebody different called, so had to explain everything all over again, he also said he would call back "Tommorow" and i am still waiting on that call 5 days later).
You can also forget about being transfered to any other department as they will just stick you back on the main que pushing buttons for the correct department.
Also on this note.. These two main offices (CustServ & TechSupp) any customer will want to use most, are based in India, although their english is reasonable, explaining your problems can take twice as long (If they understand what you mean in the first place an dont just agree with everything you say).
- 2nd - Email
If/When you do encounter problems with them/there service, Upon emailing them, forget about getting a reply within anything less than a week, possibly two weeks before you can expect any kind of responce
- 3rd - Tiscali Website
Upon logging in to Tiscali's website to view / change any account details, the site will ask you to log in again to compleate the action, but in actual fact, it takes you right back to the begining without changing a thing, so you will end up going round and round in circles not getting anywhere
- 4th - Connection Speeds
This is my current main problem with them, the speeds are up and down quicker than a hookers knickers for no reason at all, day or night it doesnt matter to them (e.g I have a "upto 8mg" service with them, on a good day/minute i can connect at around 3.4mg due to my line quality an distance from my local exchange, this doesnt stop my speeds from changing so rapidly from say 3.4mg to 0.2mg connection, yes 200+ or - Kbps, i have speed checked on several sites during times of slow speeds and have even recorded speeds slower than 56k dial up... this is all without warning, without any peer-to-peer software running & these speeds can last few hours at a time)
- 5th - Peer-To-Peer
If your into any kind of peer-to-peer software, be it DC++ (Direct Connection) or god forbid LimeWire or Kazaar, even the new BBC-Iplayer & C4OD (Channel 4 On-Demand).... forget it, you will get awful slow download speeds, that is IF you can connect at all, as
Tiscali "DO" block peer-to-peer software automatically when their servers an under high stress loads (I spoke to them recently about this and their advice to me was either to switch to a Business broadband package with them where peer-to-peer "MIGHT" not get block under these busy times OR switch to a different ISP)
I think thats enough to make you see sence an steer well clear, sorry for ranting on, but i had to get all that off my chest & to be honest, i do feel a whole lot better now, i'll be better still when i get my MAC code an switch to another provider lol
