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Tiscali - crap, crap, crap...

6 replies

AcademicMum · 29/04/2009 10:55

OK, I just wanted to make others aware of this since I'm banging my head against a brick wall trying to communicate with Tiscali.

So, here's the story. We had our phone line and calls with BT and happy with the service etc. Bills for phone line and calls only in my name, not dp's. DP however had an account with Tiscali for broadband. Anyway, in February, Tiscali took it upon themselves to use dp's details to transfer our phone over to them. DP got a letter from them saying "Thank you for choosing Tiscali Talk" and he phoned them up and told them that 1. he didn't choose Tiscali Talk and 2. He was not able to change the phone account as it was registered in my name. OK says Tiscali and this we thought was the last we would hear of it. A month later, DP then got a bill from Tiscali to which he called them up and told them that we didn't want our phone to be transferred to Tiscali.

Tiscali had not only taken over our line, but they had then transferred it into DP's name and as they have never had contact with me they took it out of my name, which I had no knowledge of. DP has refused to pay the bill, but then they cut off the line and it has remained this way until I transfered the account back to BT (and my name only again). Tiscali have admitted in both writting and over the phone that our line was subjected to a practice called "slamming", but refuse to discuss anything with me (even though it was my line which was stolen) as they say I am an unauthorised 3rd party .

I've tried to follow their complaints procedure but they refuse to pass my written complaint to a manager . So, I just wanted to warn others about this type of practice.

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DorisIsAPinkDragon · 29/04/2009 11:31

Take it to the regulator ( ?ofcom or oftel?) we had an absolute nightmare with Tiscali, and are now back with bt as despite the higher charges, at least we've had a (reasonable) response when problems crop up!

AcademicMum · 29/04/2009 11:35

Sent a complaint to Ofcom, but we haven't had any response from them. I'm guessing they get so many complaints though.

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potplant · 29/04/2009 11:37

No advice but a great deal of sympathy - Tiscali are ultra crap at dealing with problems and I want to kill them when they hit me with the unauthorised third party crap - The account is in DHs name but the bill is paid by direct debit from my account.

I think that you can have your DP name you on the account as an authorised party to talk to them. I did that the last time I was on a call with them, but I dont know if it will still apply if I call again.

NotPlayingAnyMore · 29/04/2009 12:01

I used to use Tiscali years ago but the service was so rubbish that I wanted to change back to BT. I did everything by the book but when the date came they claimed I hadn't given enough notice so they wouldn't couldn't surrender my line.

After weeks of excuses, one late night I wrote an e-mail telling them in no uncertain terms what to do and sent it to every address I could find on their site, including their partners.
Funnily enough, when I checked my inbox first thing in the morning, it was full of very apologetic e-mails telling me it had been done with immediate effect

I know it's not big, not clever, but hey - it worked...

branflake81 · 29/04/2009 15:18

We had such problems trying to set up our Tiscali broadhead. The guy in the call centre even hung up on me when I complained to him about how crap their service was!

AcademicMum · 29/04/2009 22:53

They phoned dp a couple of days ago and when they said "this call may be recorded" etc he said "that's fine, I would also like to record this call" at which point they refused to continue the call further in case (in their own words) "the recording of the call would be passed on to the third party" . I'm wondering if their call centre people work on commission and that's why they try to create accounts without authorisation and maybe I'm just getting old and cynical but why does service generally seem really bad these days?

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