Thread: Tiscali - billing problems again???

Are Tiscali having general billing problems at the moment?

I have paid for my service by direct debit since November 2006 with no problem and yet today (2 December) I receive a letter saying that I owe them £14.99 !!! I have changed nothing. I note in the Tiscali forums that several people were billed twice so wondered if there is a general problem.

I have had a whole series of technical problems with this wunch of bankers - inability to get connected, slow speeds, etc. - but counted myself fortunate that billing had been OK until now !!!

Tiscali really are a shoddy outfit.

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there is a saying "Buy cheep, buy twice" I guess thats true

If its a one off and gets sorted quickly enough, no biggie. If you don't get any joy, go to Tiscali - Code of practice check out section 9 which shows you how to complain and how they handle complaints... If you follow that procedure you're likely to get things sorted fast.

Thanks for the reply, Locutus ... the trouble is that Tiscali ain't always all that cheap by today's standards!

Thanks for the link to the code of practice ... I believe in the scattergun approach to complaining and you have given me a couple more avenues to fire down ...

Paul

Originally Posted by locutus

there is a saying "Buy cheep, buy twice" I guess thats true

If its a one off and gets sorted quickly enough, no biggie. If you don't get any joy, go to Tiscali - Code of practice check out section 9 which shows you how to complain and how they handle complaints... If you follow that procedure you're likely to get things sorted fast.

I had logged a query with the billing department from two separate directions and even got an acknowledgment e-mail back from someone called:-
"Maybelline Villan
General Correspondence Team".

I had also lodged a complaint twice by 'phone and by letter with Kevin Brannigan in the High Level Complaints Team. Suffice it to say I have had no response at all.

... and yet I arrived home this lunchtime to find that my service had been disconnected.

It's time to go and leave this shower to it, isn't it?

I had the same problem, was billed double for a month, I have never had one bill that was right since being with them, Virgin was the same too. Are there any BB companies out there that are any good. Must say this though, have had a really good connection with tiscali and when it went down for a week I was compensated for it, but you have to fight for it though and talk to some one in this country, not one of their call centers out side of the UK.

... so I rang the billing number to query the problem ... some unintelligble person at the other end couldn't give me any answers but just kept parroting "your bill is outstanding ... I can't give you any answers". What kind of people do they employ to try to deal with problems like this?

I paid the amount outstanding by credit card and fired off another letter to Kevin Brannigan in High Level Complaints who hasn't even had the decency to acknowledge either letter. In fact no-one has come back to me about my complaint at all, despite the acknowledgment e-mail from this Maybelline Villan person. Is that an anagram for "don't ask me, I haven't a clue what's going on"?

... and today I get a letter from Tiscali. I thought it might be a letter of apology. Oh no! ... it is dated 6 December - three whole days after I paid the outstanding amount - and is headed "Notice of Suspension" and claims that I have a totally different amount outstanding.

So I rang billing again. "Oh yes, we know you have paid" ... so why the f*ck send me a notice of suspension three whole days after I have paid???

Jeez ... this shower of useless individuals is unbelievable.

Hi pfc,
I had problems too with Tiscali, there are 2 places to go one is The Scream! - Powered by vBulletin they have some good contacts for tiscali, so you don't have to call India....{tiscalis help centre!!} or go on tiscali s own site find, the forums, find the tech question area, not easy to find. Usually some of tiscali s UK based techs will/may help you. worth a try good luck. Don't even bother with the India call centre. try not to use any of their 0870 or 0845 numbers. use this SAYNOTO0870.COM - Non-Geographical Alternative Telephone Numbers

Hi Phantom76

Thanks for reply and for the excellent suggestions ...

Unfortunately SAYNOT0870 didn't list a suitable number for billing queries. The only one that looked appropriate informed me that "this number has been discontinued, please ring 0871" ... etc., so that we have to pay the 10p per minute! SAYNOTO0870 has been very useful to me in the past though.

I have started a thread on The Scream and, using the scattergun approach, I have also fired off e-mails in various directions, one of which I copied to Trading Standard and BBC Watchdog. I am doing it with the hope that any bad publicity - even that which I am, in my small way, generating - may encourage this shower to get their act together.

Mind you, shoddy business practices aren't confined to Tiscali. It seems as if most large companies are using tactics which would not be out of place on a back-street market-stall to improve their profitability. We live in rip-off Britain.

Well ... I did make contact with Tiscali High Level Complaints and they are going to give me 2 months free service, which kind of mollifies me for now.

What mystifies me though is why they fail to get the basics right so often. To me, the balance of our expectations of businesses is all wrong nowadays. We have been so ground down by poor service that we congratulate companies when they manage to provide the bare minimum! ... in this case, providing internet access and billing customers!! Surely we should only be praising them when they provide over and above the basics. Some hopes in rip-off Britain!

I tried to connect to my Tiscali service this morning (17/12/08 @ 10:30) and found that I cannot connect.

There is a DSL signal but no authentication ... "error 691 - Access was denied because the username and/or password was invalid for the domain" ... so someone has invalidated my user access.

Am I being victimised for complaining or am I getting paranoid? ... LOL

An update ...

Well, I fired off my usual salvo of e-mails to all and sundry, including Trading Standard and Watchdog ...

so ... a Stuart?/Stewart? Anderson of High Level Complaints rang
yesterday (Thursday) morning and said that a lot of people had
experienced similar problems. After some moaning on my part he said
he will arrange for another £10 to be credited to my account.

I await the next failure with bated breath

Paul

Tiscali are the most arrogant of all, they treat anyone who complains like sxxt.They discontinued my service without any warning after about 3 months of hassle so I sued them in the small claims court, it cost me £60 initially to set it up, which I got back when I won my case--I got £400.Their legal suit actually turned up to the court-they would prefer to payout than get into the papers about their rubbish after service.
I was promised lots of £10 and £20 credits but none of them materialised.
They don't seem to have a company secretary that you can write to, so I send a registered letter to the CEO Mary Turner giving them 2 weeks to pay my claim, of course Tiscali being 'on the ball' didn't answer, so another was sent saying 'or else small claims court', again no reply, so I went ahead.
I've learnt through this forum a few others have done the same.
If you fancy the challenge, don't try going for loss of business or communication or similar, they've got that sewn up in the small print.
I claimed for the 9 months outstanding service they failed to provide when they discontinued the supply (a contract works both ways)
The work hours it took me to get online again ( they cut off the service late on a Friday night so I had the weekend and finally the Monday to get a supply buying a dongle)
The cost of the dongle and costs for all the time, letters and phonecalls to them-- think of a number and double it!!
Only communicate with letters or e-mails, keep all the copies, any offers they make, before accepting, ask them to put in writing, they won't because they can't write!
If your 12 months contract is up,get out, but an alternative????
Happy New Year to All
Gloater