Well I have finally done it, I've given Tiscali the boot. I have had a great many problems with them over the past year or so, but the final straw was when I contacted them to say that I was moving house (Hence the downtime) and that I would like my broadband transferred. I received a confirmation email for the cease and reprovide and was informed that it could take up to Ten working days after the new line was connected to bring my internet up. Well here I am after 14 days (minus 2 weekends = 10 working days) and still no internet. Naturally I phoned them to find out how long it would be, and they haven't even started to begin the reprovide. In fact they haven't even got as far as changing the "broadband enabled line" number on my account to the new number. I was then told that the matter would be passed onto the Technical team and that I would have to wait Ten working days to be connected. I know that these things take time to setup, but how do I know that after those ten days I won't be sat here wondering why I am not online? So I cancelled my account and phoned several ISPs looking for a quote, for just £8 a month more than Tiscali I have a faster line, free VOIP calls in the evenings (and weekends), the hardware necessary to make those calls, and a nice high bandwidth limit. I am proud to announce my new ISP is BT, I'm sorry I strayed away BT, I know your service is the best but I was drawn to the lower prices.
The extras I get with BT are impressive, and easily make the extra 8 a month worthwhile, well apart from.... Norton AV and firewall. Can't you make it optional guys? Though I guess it is allegedly free!

I'm so gald that I will no longer get emails saying "you are using to much bandwidth, please use less or we will cap you at our end". I really wouldn't have minded those emails if it wasn't for the fact that it is advertised as an Unlimited bandwidth connection!

As for customer service, the guy at the end of the call to Tiscali couldn't even get my phone number right when I was saying it to him, and then having asked me to hold for a few minutes he cut me off! I'm not impressed with the fact that Tiscali feel the need to charge their customers National Rate to contact their customer service line.
At one point my poor little server was being bombarded by the Code Red worm (Thank god I don't run IIS). I decided to block the IPs and save on some server performance 0verheads. I did a reverse lookup to find out who it was, and what do I find? Its only Tisca-bloody-li. I blocked them and sent them an email saying I think you need to a virus scan, and then explained why. 14 days later I get a reply saying that if I am worried about malware, I should buy Tiscalis Norton service. A bit besides the bloody point don't you think?

All in all I've had some very bad experiences with Tiscali (not to mention the "customer service advisor" who thought I meant the sockets on the back of the router when I phoned up to ask whether Tiscali blocked ports!) as comical as the woman was when she asked me if I could see any paper in them (I swear to god that I am not joking!) the fact I was paying National Rate to speak to her, did not give me much of a sense of humour. Their service has been very patchy at times, and I feel so relieved to have got shot of them.


So thanks BT for having such a tempting package, I hope to gain a fast, reliable service from you. Tiscali, im almost glad you haven't connected me yet, it feels good to be shot of you.

Update: Its currently the 20th of November and I have recently had to go into the bank and report Direct Debit activity as inappropriate. Despite their failure to resume service Tiscali have charged me in both October and November, to think I trusted them to delete the Direct Debit, next time I will remember and delete it myself! I'll update again when I have more information.

For the next update please go here