BS: Is tiscali any good ?

Subject: BS: Are tiscali/tesco any good ?
From: GUEST,hal
Date: 14 Feb 06 - 06:12 PM

hello all,

I'm moving soon (in the UK) & will be setting up with a new ISP & looking to minimise costs where I can.

A couple of lower cost options are Tiscali & Tesco.

Does anyone here have experience of the phone + broadband packages they offer ? The price is good, but are they reliable?

I'm a bit worried about the 'fair usage clause' with Tiscali & can't find a definition. Do you yet kicked off at peak times ?

I used tiscali dial-up until 2 years ago, & it was fine (as far as a dial-up could be.)

Any experience of people using these, or the other lower cost packages would be much appreciated.

Hal

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: Dead Horse
Date: 14 Feb 06 - 07:52 PM

I use Tiscali Broadband and have never been kicked off and have no complaints on reliability whatsoever.
I have no experience of Tesco other than shopping there in preference to Asda Morrisons or any other.....:-)

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: number 6
Date: 14 Feb 06 - 08:01 PM

Not as good as Sartori Amarone.

sIx

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 14 Feb 06 - 10:47 PM

Tiscali has an awful reputation.

Check with Don WYZIWIG Thompson, he used to use them before moving on.

I find F2S very satisfactory, but there are usage limits. I gather it is popular with those who know better than me.

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 04:34 AM

I'm on Tesco.net daytime, it's very good. I once signed up for Tiscali and after they took my bank details I was immeadiately refused access, when I phoned the help line I was put through to a call center in India, no disrespect to Indian people but the operator I got could barely speak English and I couldn't understand his accent and it was costing me 50 pnce a feckin minute. I cancelled straight away and they harrassed me for 9 months for payments I did not owe them, wankers.

eric

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: gnomad
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 06:20 AM

Press over here has published some horror stories re Tiscali, mostly regarding failure to stop collecting payment when service ended IIRC. As I remember them these cases were eventually resolved so that no customer loss arose, if not necessarily to the customers' satisfaction.

Tiscali are one of the bigger players in the ISP market, so if say 0.1 percent of their customers are unhappy then their name will come up more often than Sid's, even if 10 percent of Sid's Corner ISP and Delicatessen customers are furious. My own experience of them as a dial-up provider was a good one, but I cannot speak for their broadband service.

Tiscali Fair Useage Policy doesn't sound unreasonable to me.

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: Rasener
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 06:55 AM

Be careful with F2S. They were an excellent ISP. However they have been taken over by Pipex and performance and customer support has dipped dramatically. BT are interested in buying out Pipex.
It is quite common to wait 1 hour on the support line to speak to somebody. Support is not available through the weekend.
Since Pipex took over, they have introduced Traffic Shaping and on unlimited ADSL, have in actual fact brought a 100gb barrier in without informing customers.
I am also an F2S user, but will wait andf see what happens over the next 3 months, to see if things settle down a bit.

Best thing to do is go to ADSLGuide http://www.adslguide.org.uk/isps/compare.asp

You can compare 6 companies at a time to see how they have been performing. F2S used to be tops, but it has declined dramatically.
The compare button is at ther bottom of the page.
You will get a graphical representation of various performance from these companies.

When you have done that and think you have a couple of ISP's that might be interesting, come back here and see if any mudcatters can advise you on those.

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: pixieofdoom
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 07:18 AM

I use Tiscali broadband and find that it's ok on the whole but does have a tendency to randomly disconnect itself which is frustrating.

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: Mr Red
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 07:49 AM

I use Waitrose for the free 10meg webspace (on dial-up) plus a safe e-mail address, they have broadband and their help line is free.

I also use UK2.net which tries hard to not tell you they are actually Tiscali. Their dial-up service is serviceable but help is all none-existant even at a price. To transfer my domain name would cost £90 so I don't bother and all the domain name e-mails come via UK2 (and Tiscali). There are better deals elsewhere but they look like the other man's grass at times.

If the help-line is not free I would look around first.

A friend used AOL broadband on a Mac and bought his own modem for it - they were no help at all - suggesting he bought their modem without guarantee of working on an older Mac and a much impoverished feature list. They wouldn't release the codes he needed to compare modems! He knew exactly what he needed and they had it (allegedly). So be wary of AOL.

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: The PA
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 07:51 AM

Been on Tiscali for ages, now on Tiscali Broadband, so are my friends, absolutely no problems so far.

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: GUEST,Hal
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 08:17 AM

Thanks, gnomad, for the link to fair usage policy - does sound fair to me.

Good point about the help line costs Mr Red, definitely summat to factor in.

Thanks for the ADSL comparison site, The Villan, lots of useful info.

Looking at Theregister.co.uk (must learn to to blickies), it seems most ISPs have their downtimes.

Thanks for your experiences of tiscali, The PA, pixieof doom, eric.

Lots of other good points to think about, all your input much appreciated.

Hal

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 01:31 PM

Thank you villan - I guess that tells you how often I need to use the helpline - but when I was setting up F2S were first class.

Are they likely (if BT takes over) to introduce cleanfeed? I object to it on political (not sexual) grounds and it was why I left BT.

Subject: RE: BS: Is tiscali any good ?
From: Rasener
Date: 15 Feb 06 - 03:13 PM

Hi Richard
I am not sure. I used to be with BT and left them. You are so right about F2S - they were first class.
See PM
Les