Tiscali Broadband www.tiscali.co.uk Review

Overall Rating

Service started well, then declined big time

The worst ISP in the world

I signed up to Tiscali Broadband in December 2003. The first two months were fine. Since then the connections have slowed to a point where they are useless, in fact much slower than a dial up connection.

But much worse than this, complaints from hundreds of customers in a similar position are unanswered on the Tiscali "support" forums. E-mails are never answered - you just get an auto-reply which promises action within 5 days but nothing happens. If you e-mail again you are ignored.

The telephone support staff are clearly under pressure and have no idea how to help.

The fact is that Tiscali have spent the last year signing up as many people as possible but do not have the hardware, staff or bandwidth to service the customers they have signed up. Consequently everyone's connection speeds grind to a halt.

This is the very worst ISP service I have ever had, and I would caution anyone from committing to a year's contract for Broadband, which Tiscali insists upon. Once you sign your contract you lose control over everything, cannot withdraw from the agreement, cannot solve your poor connection and in a nutshell you are powerless to do anything about it.

I cannot emphasise enough how appalling this service is.

Members' Comments onLeonard's Review

• str8jackit on 28th Apr 2004

  There is one thing you can do about this. You contact the accounts department and tell them that you refuse to pay them another penny and that they can take you to court for it. They can then explain to a judge why they think you should pay for a service that you are not getting. By the way, any contract is no longer valid as Tiscali themselves have not upheld their end of the so called contract.

• puretoon on 28th Jun 2004

  I WAS thinking of moving my ISP to Tiscali and changing to broadband -- I'm with AOL dial up now-but after reading all the negative reports I think I'll stick to 'the devil I know' and will probably use their broadband (AOLs) thank you!

• bharatmistry on 30th Jun 2004

  Please, please, please do not use Tiscali. You will be sorry. They are the worst bunch of imcompetent people I ever had the misfortune to get involved with. The call centres are useless when you have a problem and all the negative reviews are correct, they are very polite, etc., etc., but are absolutely useless. Worse than a script from Eastenders. Don't use them unless you are a NASA astronaut and can figure out on your own what to do if things go wrong.

• northstander on 27th Oct 2004

  I entirely agree with all that's been said about this truly dreadful Company.
  
  After 10 months of accounts problems (they've not been taking payments from me) and many phone calls to them I'm trying to extricate myself from Tiscali.
  
  They also run a loyalty scheme SurfXtra, where you pay £2.99 postage to receive old software for free. Good idea - but they take the postage and then either take months to send the goods - or don't send them at all.
  
  AVOID TISCALI AT ALL COSTS.

• derek underwood on 1st Jun 2007

  please can you get your service to work, I am sending emails for my small business and they do not arrive, you really need to get this service working as it is in a terrible mess.