So I guess it’s just as well that I our plans to be in South America meant that I wasn’t trying for a Glastonbury ticket this year (although, unbelievably, tickets appear to still be available 24 hours after going on sale, so I guess all that rain last year and Jay-Z must really have scared people away). I couldn’t have bought one from home on Sunday morning if I had wanted to, though, because we’ve had no internets or TV service from our wonderful provider Tiscali since last Thursday.
It’s quite a dull story, really (if you care, you can read my angry post on their support forum about it here, and my reply to someone else’s angry forum post here), but the abbreviated story is that… I used to be a Homechoice customer. Tiscali bought Homechoice, and after running both sets of equipment in the phone exchanges for a bit have started moving Homechoice customers over to the Tiscali network. Last Wednesday was my turn, and since then, I’ve had no service.
Perhaps I’ve been switched to their special “No Service” internet plan: it’s a snip at £24.99 a month, and it’s great so long as you never want to watch the TV channels or use the internet. Ideal for the busy young professional who’s hardly in anyway…
Although I haven’t had any service from them, I have got to listen a lot of Leona Lewis while waiting on hold. More Leona than anyone should ever have to listen to, really, and the only reward for this torture is that I eventually get to speak to someone utterly clueless (and apparently lacking any basic training in how their systems work) in tech support who clearly knows less about Homechoice than I do.
So anyway, if there is anyone out there considering Tiscali as an ISP, then do my a favour and don’t bother. Utter, utter rubbish.
*****
Update (07 April): I finally got my TV and internet services back yesterday, after a massively frustrating week waiting on hold, becoming intimately acquainted with the works of Leona Lewis, and speaking to poorly-trained customer service staff.
It turned out to be a problem affecting all the users who were migrated last week, but Tiscali didn’t bother communicating that to the affected users (“all aspects of our service are working correctly” said their website status page and automated fault phone line) or even their own staff. Amusingly, at one point I spoke to someone on the upgrade/migration support line who told me that everything was working fine, and then a few minutes later to someone in a different part of support who told me that there was a problem affecting all the recently migrated users. When I asked him why his colleague on the upgrade/migration support line didn’t know about a problem affecting all upgraded users, he told me that that team “isn’t kept in the loop”. Brilliant…
So anyway. This is a message to the internets: if you are considering using Tiscali’s services, please don’t. And if Tiscali purchase a company whose services you do use, please leave and go somewhere else. Thanks…