Tiscali TV's Italian cousin gets whacked Tiscali has told subscribers it will close its Italian IPTV service, raising questions over the future of its apparently unpopular UK equivalent. The firm told its about 50,000 Italian TV customers in a letter that broadband channels will go blank at the end of December and the final month's subscription refunded. No reason …
I hope to hell they don't go titsup here anytime soon. I like TiscaliTV (even if the STB's are shithouse and cook themselves regularly) it has a good choice of channels and the price is reasonable. My broadband isn't the fastest, greatest, bestest but it does what I need it to do, works well for gaming and downloading software/patches even the odd iso.
The terrifying alternative would be Virgin Media and I don't think anybody wants to see that, now, do they?
So I was a very happy Homechoice customer for almost as long as the service existed.
Then Tiscali bought the operation and it feel apart...
I personally had no TV service at all for two months as a result of 'upgrades' then followed by the new STB and utterly shit modem combination which was as stable as a dog stading on it's hind legs whilst balancing several revolving plates on its nose with a tazer up its arse!
To compound matters the customer service totally fell apart...
I know I am in a HUGE silent majority of Homechoice customers who got screwed. It went from been a very good service to a very shit one.
Thank god I left!
it works for gaming? just out of interest what kind of games do you play online? The reason I ask if that I've had to get several friends out of their tiscali contracts (gotta love knowing how to complain), due to the fact they block their online gaming on peak times (the times they wanted to play).
If this has changed id love to know :) The game in question was EVE Online, funnily their tech support suggested it was being blocked because all the games graphics were transmitted over the connection for each frame rather laughable really given that it runs even on a dial up modem.
The problem is that they grew too fast in too many ways and, despite the fact that some folk are quite happy with the service, too many people (myself included) have been treated like shit by the parent company, especially those of us that were part of companies that Tiscali took over. What doesn't help, as the original story implies, is that any effort to sort things out is on hold until the future of the company is secure in somebody else's hands.
As for Yonder Blue Virgin, I doubt that you'll see that much difference in the hardware, though it has been a while since I last had any dealings on that side. The only worry I'd have about Tiscali dropping out would be that Virgin would effectively have too much of the marketplace.
There is always Talk-Talk who in my experience don't Talk-Talk to the different parts of their organisation.
With more severe capping and throttling of ADSL likely things like IPTV and even BBC iPlayer streaming are going to be fondly remembered things of the past very soon.
There are still plenty of smaller ADSL suppliers out there who don't throttly you like some of the big ones in the evening. Give them a try. You might be pleasantly surprised.
Mine's the one with a WIMAX kit in the pocket.
Tiscali's user base is shrinking because they offer an appalling level of service, a technical help desk manned by retards and the world's worst billing department; OH!! and the fact they have not been able to buy any more ISP's over the last year; buying up companies like Pipex has been the only reason they have managed to keep customer numbers steady for many years.
Paris, cos she's the only one capable of going down faster!! although she is still too intelligent to be used on their Techical Help Desk!!!!!!!!
Great news!
Tiscali is, without a doubt, the worst company on the planet. We were customers of homechoice (fantastic company), which unfortunately was taken over by Tiscali.
Some of the problems we had:
- 4 migration appointments 'dissapeared' due to teething problems
- STB fried - twice
- Non-existing account - our account dissapeared from their database for a week
- Appaling customer service in their call centres, one based in the Philippines (Account issues) and the IT call centre in India.
- PVR service didn't work at all for the first two months we were migrated to Tiscali
- Account suspended for two weeks for no apparent reason (we left for this). Spoke to both call centres (Philippines-Accounts and India-IT support) for several times... they both stated it was the others responsibility. They couldn't determine what the fault was.
- After the account was credited £20 pounds (as compensation for the above) and after it was unresolved for a couple of weeks, the £20 pound credit dissapeared. The cheque would have been issued (they said) after we canceled the account, and their system wasn't designed to do that.
We had so many problems with them we had them on speed dial. :-(
Hope they go under. Good riddance. If you work for them, run for your life.... they won't be able to sell, look for something else before they go under. Their proposed sale price has dropped by more than half since they started looking for a buyer.
Homechoice was fantastic. Never spoke to them after they installed the STB.
I was happy with Homechoice but Tiscali have just been a nightmare. Our internet connection went down for weeks and therir customer "service" representatives just kept lying to us. We still have Tiscalil, mostly because I can't be bothered to change and I don't want Sky, but when we move house I will probably go with Virgin.
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