how to cancell tiscali?

[binkhus]

i got tiscali broadband installed in june, the service was always disconnecting and sometimes not connecting at all. the speed was slower than most dial up serrvices i have used and i had to ring up and complain over and over again. the tech help was abismal they obviously just has a sheet to run off.
eventually i upgraded to 2mg to try and get a good service but after about a week i noticed that i was still connected at 1mg and rang up again. the call centre said that the bt line i have would only support 1 mg in my area.
i wrote in to canccel and sighned up with ntl.who are great in comparrison.
now tiscali wrote back (2 letters from different people in one day) 1st letter said that they would not canccel cos i sighed up for one year second saying i could cancell and pay the rest of the year because they had provided the 1mg i originally sighed for.
i have written back quoting section 14 of the sale of goods act which says a product must be good for use and said that the service they provided me was not and that they broke the conract by not providing a satisfactory service .
does anyone have any advise? i know tiscali are the hardest comp to get out of a contract with so any other acts would be greatfully recieved

[Whisperwolf]

Originally Posted by binkhus

i got tiscali broadband installed in june, the service was always disconnecting and sometimes not connecting at all. the speed was slower than most dial up serrvices i have used and i had to ring up and complain over and over again. the tech help was abismal they obviously just has a sheet to run off.
eventually i upgraded to 2mg to try and get a good service but after about a week i noticed that i was still connected at 1mg and rang up again. the call centre said that the bt line i have would only support 1 mg in my area.
i wrote in to canccel and sighned up with ntl.who are great in comparrison.
now tiscali wrote back (2 letters from different people in one day) 1st letter said that they would not canccel cos i sighed up for one year second saying i could cancell and pay the rest of the year because they had provided the 1mg i originally sighed for.
i have written back quoting section 14 of the sale of goods act which says a product must be good for use and said that the service they provided me was not and that they broke the conract by not providing a satisfactory service .
does anyone have any advise? i know tiscali are the hardest comp to get out of a contract with so any other acts would be greatfully recieved

Personally I would cc a letter both to your bank and to Tiscali, instructing your bank not to make further payments to Tiscali since they have not fulfilled the original contract. They cannot hold you to a contract they don't deliver on, and if they haven't successfully delivered an upgraded service they have breached their own contract. The key here is to be proactive; address the main copy of the letter to your bank, and the carbon copy to Tiscali. If they protest about it, then you can get heavier by warning them that you had already told them they hadn't provided, and also if they claim the money off your bank (and the bank pays, which some might) you can demand a refund off your bank.

From what you're saying, it's a pretty open and shut case. They promised 1Mb, and failed to deliver a consistant 1Mb. They promised 2Mb and failed to deliver at all. They are in breach of a contract to supply a service, so the contract does not hold you to a minimum term. They will probably send you to a debt collector, many companies do even though they know they'll never stand a cat in hell's chance of being granted the money if it goes to court. Stick by your guns, tell them you're cancelling because they can't or haven't provided, tell your bank not to pay and regard the case as closed.

[bigjimlad]

I am making it my business to steer as many people away from tiscali as possible, and have been doing so in about half a dozen forums. They're a bunch of thieving bastards.

I signed up for a 2 meg connection and have got download speeds of 30kb/s- dial up speeds- from day one. I emailed them to complain and after about 20 pre-written largely irrelevant responses I finally got them to admit they cap download speeds, and I'll only receive 2meg speeds when I'm surfing the web. Of course this was never mentioned in the terms and conditions when I signed up.

What the ****'s the point of being able to load google at 2meg? Now they're offering 8Meg, but again, these speeds won't apply to downloads. Complete crap, when casually surfing the web there's no real difference between 512k, 750k, 1meg, 2 meg, 8 meg... The only reason to give a range of broadband speeds is for people who want to do a bit of downloading.

They're selling 1, 2 and 8 meg broadband lines with "unlimited downloads", then capping everyone's speeds to dial up.I finally got sick of it and cancelled my DD this week. They ain't getting another penny from me. They can whistle for it.

[patdavies]

Originally Posted by bigjimlad

What the ****'s the point of being able to load google at 2meg? Now they're offering 8Meg, but again, these speeds won't apply to downloads. Complete crap, when casually surfing the web there's no real difference between 512k, 750k, 1meg, 2 meg, 8 meg... The only reason to give a range of broadband speeds is for people who want to do a bit of downloading.

Not to dismiss your argument in anyway, but we have 10 Mb and use this even when surfing as there are several computers in the home sharing the link and thus each is absorbing some of the bandwidth.

[bigjimlad]

Our's is a shared connection too Pat, this is the third ISP I've been with and although this is the only one with unlimited bandwidth, and the highest speeds, it's been the slowest of all of the ones I've used.

The first connection I had was NTL, a 750k line- a third of the speed I'm paying for with tiscali. My average download speeds with that connection were 120kb/s.

With tiscali, a line where I'm paying for 2Meg, I'm getting speeds of 30kb/s.

It's just plain false advertising. They've lied to get me into a contract, then threatened legal action any time I've tried to leave. Ar$eholes.

[blitz]

Remember when looking at download speeds and advertised speeds, all internet provides list the about of bits it downloads a second, where as you will see how many bytes you download.

8 bits = 1 bytes

2Mbit/s line = 250KByte/s line.

Still doesn't make it look any better.

[bigjimlad]

Maybe I haven't been explaining myself too well. In the past I've had 750k, 1Mbit, and 2Mbit lines, before I joined tiscali, a service that was advertised as unlimited 2Mbit.

All those lines were quicker than tiscali's, and none ever complained about how much I was using. tiscali capped my download speed to 30k/s FROM THE OUTSET- this was not a question of punishing a heavy user.

As I say, my 750k line with NTL, theoretically should be a third as quick as my tiscali line. It wasn't, it was 4 times faster. My bulldog 2Mb line was 7 or 8 times faster, even though it was technically the same speed.

tiscali are con artists, pure and simple.

[binkhus]

i may have found something. the unfair terms in consumer contract act 1999. it says that its unfair to tie somebody into a contract if they are not going to use the product.
i had to ring to cancell the contract because apparently tiscali dont accept cancellation in writting and when i got on the phone after being on hold for about 15 minutes a young kid comes on and says that they will now offer me specialised technical assistance! i said this should have been offered at the beining and i still want to cancel.... then he says i ahev to verbally agree to pay the whole of the bill before he will cancell!! i said no and told him i planned on taking them to court over the remainder of the contract. the kid said he wouldnt cancel my contract then ! i asked to speak to his supervisor and the boy said he was on his lunch (10am) and they dont operate a ring back service!!!
i have written off to request a copy of the tape and have reported them to trading standards and e-mailed watch dog about them, they are absolute crap

[bigjimlad]

My connection died completely last wednesday. I'm not a computer whizz but I do know a bit, I tinkered with every computer on the network (some using different OS's), tried with my router as well as their modem, tried changing the DNS, and finally gave up.

After half an hour on hold an Indian at tech support answered. He talked me through a process to set up a new connection I'd tried a dozen times already but I humoured him because I know he has to work to a script. When he was finished and we were getting no where I explained I'd already tried this approach and it hadn't worked.

His reply was a classic- "Your computer must be broken, you need to get a technician out to look at it."

"The computer's not broken, I have three computers on the network, are they all supposed to have broken, with the exact same error message, at the exact same time?"


"Your computers are all broken, you need to get a technician out to look at them."


I rang tech support the next day, they told me their servers are f**ked and they'll have someone to look at them... In the meantime I'll have no service indefinitely.

When I tried to cancel, they gave me a great choice:
"You must give us 28 days to try to resolve this before you can cancel for free" OR

"You can cancel now, but you must pay the next month's fee"

In other words, catch 22: I must pay for a month's service I am not recieving, no matter what. Daylight robbery.

[bidstermeister]

Going slightly technical, but what are the signal levels like on your phone line ? Do you have a LAN Modem/Router with a web-browser config page ? They'll have a signal level on them... If you have a poor signal, the speed/performance could also be down to that.

What does a postcode/telephone-number checker say about how fast your area/address can get ? There is also the issue of contention ratio - The amount of users in your area who are on the same "pipe". Sometimes, it's as much as 50:1, others it could only be 20:1.

Just a warning, it's not always the ISP - I left my ADSL service about a year ago, and went to (duh-duh-duhhhh) Telewest, simply because they office a really fast service, and I didn't want the fact that they uprouted our brand new dropped kerb (10yrs ago, to lay their cables) to be in vein

[binkhus]

tiscali are just the worst provider i have heard of. the tech support is rubbish and they tye you into a very unfair contract.
i will go to court if i have to i wont pay the rest of my contract! lets all take a stand against them?

[rosiecotton]

Okay, first of all let me say that I'm not very technical when it comes to computers and the Internet and I don't have expertise in that area. However, I do know that Internet service can depend on how many people are using a "server" (again, don't know the tech terms) and a 1mb service does not necessarily mean you always get 1mb speeds connecting to the Internet - it depends how many other users are online at that time.

Gah, I'll look into this a bit more, it's hard to describe if you're not overly technical!

(Edit: It's called contention, see this link: Kencomp Internet Glossary - Contention)


However it's still reasonable for you to expect a decent broadband service from them, it certainly shouldn't be slower than dial up in my opinion! The law that would cover you here isn't the Sale of Goods Act as a service is involved, so take a look instead at the Supply of Goods and Services Act 1982 and also basic contract law (common law, not statute). The Supply of Goods and Services Act says that all services should be supplied with reasonable care and skill - strange words to apply to a contract like this, but basically it implies that all services should be of a satisfactory standard. Basic contract law would state that you have a contract with Tiscali to supply you with reasonable access to the Internet and if they are failing to do so, you can hold them in breach of contract and rescind the contract, making no further payments and claiming a refund for anything you have paid for and not been able to use (if applicable).

I'd also advise that you check out any other possible reasons for this problem, though, as there may be other issues not related to the ISP which is causing your problems - again, I'm no expert but others have mentioned other possible causes so it's worth looking into this before you get firm with Tiscali. This way, you'll be fully armed if you do go into battle.