Tiscali - At the peak of shambles!! (Tiscali (Lineone))

Member Name: vascha

Product:	Tiscali (Lineone)
Date:	25/01/09 (80 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: None

Disadvantages: Their existence!

Tiscali Internet...well, well, well....where do I begin!! When I was a student, I was on a really low budget as you can imagine, but I could not imagine working without the internet. So I decided to go for the cheapest available at that time - Tiscali. It was all quite a smooth transaction and all worked well. The connectivity was good, the price not too expensive, the bills were paid by direct debit and I faced no real issues!

In about 2 months, I finished university and got a full time job and moved to another property! I requested my internet to be transferred over and this is where it all began!

They said that it would take about 2 weeks for me to be up and running on broadband. As I said that this was a bit too long to be without an internet connection, they offered me a "perfect" solution. They recommended that I can go on Tiscali Pay as you go dial up broadband. They warned me that this is quite slow but good be a decent replacement for 2 weeks. They said that it was absolutely free because I was paying for my broadband anyway!

Very excited about the offer, I accepted it straight away. It worked well for 2 weeks and in this time I got my broadband connected and stopped using the pay as you go dial up! Still going well.

A further 2 weeks later, I got my BT bill for about £158 (usually about £11-£12). I was shocked and went online to get a call history. There was some premium rate number everyday and I did not know who this was. I called BT to enquire and they did some research and told me that it was a dial up internet number! Thats when I worked out that the number that the internet was using was not a free-phone number!

I called Tiscali and waited on hold for about 45 minutes (another 0870 number) and they confirmed to me that it must be a free phone number and BT must have made a mistake. I persuaded them that this could not be true and I was expecting re-imbursement of my phone bill. They finally agreed after I called them about 10 times and wasting my time and paying for the premium rate phone calls! In the final call, I emailed them copies of my BT bill, I also sent it by recorded delivery by post and overall, I spent easily another £50 on trying to reach a solution.

They finally agreed to reimburse me for all the charges including my long calls to customer service and finally agreed a sum of £200 to be paid back to me! The manager took my credit card details to put the money into my account! 3 years from there...still no sign of the money! I only gave up as my phone bills were unaffordable!

Lastly, I knew the names of everyone I spoke to, but they would never pass the phone back to the same person! They also had 2 offices meaning you could go through to either one!

I was in such high stress levels during this time and will never ever go back to Tiscali!

I would also recommend the same for the rest of you!

Summary: Run the other way, if you care about your money!!