As I may have mentioned I recently moved house to le château de grenouille. Part of the harrowing experience that is moving house involves sorting out all the utilities and services that we, as consumers, have bought into. Most companies have excellent and efficient procedures in place to ensure that the process of moving house is straightforward and efficient.
For example:
- The Hung Council credited my Council Tax to the new address and sent me a bill that arrived the day after I moved in;
- Gritish Bas sorted out my bills, transferred credits and sent me a lovely “Welcome to your new home” pack..which was dull so I threw it away..but that’s beside the point;
- Both water companies just changed the address on the bill and reissued it to the new address.
Why then can’t BT and Tiscali be as efficient.
Tiscali cut my broadband connection off on 6th September when they should have cut it off on the 17th. This was irritating but I figure that you’re allowed one mistake as long as you say sorry. The call centre didn’t say sorry, in fact I’m not certain what they said as the call centre staff had such thick accents that I had trouble understanding them.
Worse than cutting me off early they have so far failed utterly to reconnect me. I’ve had to endure six long weeks without a broadband connection at home. I’m reminded of poor Drunken Spaniel and how she endured a similar issue.
BT have also failed to live up to their part of the contract to supply me with a telephone service. On Monday 8th my phone mysteriously stopped working. I rang the free phone number from my mobile (which I’m now told isn’t actually free) for an hour in order to report the fault. They told me that it would be fixed within 24 hours. Fair enough, thought I, sometimes things break. 24 hours later I rang them back, the phone is still as dead as a dodo. Every day for the past week has had me calling back to query why my phone still isn’t working. Apparently it’ll only take another 24 hours.
Well I’ve watched 24 and if Jack Bauer can do all the things he does in that show then BT can certainly fix one little fault. It’s hardly too much to ask is it?
Anyway, I lost my rag at them both on Friday and cancelled them both. I’m going with Virgin and a cable service for my phone and broadband and I’m getting some TV chucked in for the same price.
If you have my Tiscali email address please delete it. I’ll get a new one next week and will probably let you know what it is eventually.
/
The Magnificent Frog 
24. I want to watch that now. But Sybil ate the power cable to my external hard drive so I can’t.
Well done, Mr Frog. Tiscali are bastards. I’m still waiting for them to tell me they’re happy to accept the £6.99 I offered them in my last letter. I doubt they’ll bother.
I should say something supportive and encouraging here but the sister-in-law (http://midwifemuse.wordpress.com) has just non-stop grief for the past week when she rashly decided to upgrade her PCs to something sensible and then, foolishly, wanting her NTL, I mean, Virgin cable broadband to work properly with it. To be fair, after 5 days they did bend over backwards to fix it but to be accurate they are a bunch of poor-service monkeys.
Tiscali – TERRIBLE customer service – via personal experience of the mother-in-law.
I’ve never had any problems with BT – perhaps I’m lucky.
BT suck.
Just returning the visit! 🙂
So THAT explains your antagonism on FC 😉
Having turned into a alien monster from hell and biting the heads off little baby seals and litlle baby babies myself when i was without a pc for three weeks out of August, owing to a slight ‘disagreement’ between my old 20 Gig hard-drive and Windows XP’s reinstallation disc/procedure I can sympathise somewhat with your broadband/telephone service/ lack of service difficulties.
Hope the new system works out a little better than my new pc did at first – lost six years worth of hard-drive data thanks to never backing up anything valuable/ Windows Vista BASIC ed (AVOID at all costs!)/ stupid techies who don’t read customer instructions on the work sheet!!!
Hope to learn and share more in future!
LWBUT !
Soupus, naughty Sybil. I hope you withheld pizza as punishment.
Spaniel, indeed they are. In fact this very morning I have discovered that they are responsible for ballsing up my telephone line as well. I may have to enter a letter writing war with them. That’s always fun.
Pun, you’re related to midwifemuse? She was one of the very first blogs I commented on back in the olden days when t’internet worked on steam and poorly secured cables. As for NTL I must say that I’m quite a fan of Dicky Branson who seems to have a policy of putting competent people in charge and then leaving them to it. Hopefully Cable & Wireless\NTL will be a thing of the past and Virgin will be spiffy and excellent. *fingers crossed*
LWBUT, welcome. Antagonism? Me? OK, my first rule of IT is to avoid Vista at all costs. It narrowly pushed licking power leads to see if they are connected off the top spot.
Where were you when i needed advice on operating system choice???? 🙂
Mmmmmmmmmm… power leads – (drool)
touchwood – no problems with BT; NTL screwed me over payments when I divorced (having to pay for £60 or more-ish worth of phone calls that I wasn’t making (I didn’t even have a phone connected to the line) but they refused to investigate if I didn’t pay the bill; plus I had to pay 3-4 months broadband despite no-longer having anything connected to the connection at the time (the ex-wife taking the pc with her when she left); now they’re virgin… I’m not sure I’d risk … just in case. But then again, I’m happy with what I have, and I’m happy loosing all tv when they switch off the analogue – I hardly watch any of it anyway. Can’t miss what isn’t there.
Oh, I’m rambling on one and having a moan. Same as usual then I guess 🙂
catch you later
M
Ah Mr Frog I was, in another life, IanB of 20six fame… 🙂
LWBUT, I’d normally charge.
Mas, I know what you mean about the amount of telly. I’m really after it for t’Internet.
Pun, good grief, 20sixers get about don’t we.
I’ve mentioned this post in my latest about bloody Tiscali.
Spaniel xx
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I find tiscali are a grand ISP…as long as you never need tech support. And I tried Vista Home Premium when it came with my laptop. Within 10 minutes I had downloaded Linux and installed it…