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Dismay at inadequacy of service
waallen
25-03-2008
Hello, this is my first post.

I am posting because I wanted to share what I have been told by Tiscali over the last few days in the hope that some of it isn't accurate or that someone could suggest a way out of my dilemma.

I've been a Homechoice customer for a number of years. My silver Homechoice box stopped working on Friday morning. Technical support was friendly and took me through a process but confirmed that the box is dead.

I was told that the only solution would be to migrate me to the Tiscali service which would require a new box and that an engineer would have to visit. The next available date offered for an engineer was in about 2 weeks and the next date on which I would be able to be at home in order to meet an engineer was in about a month.

I was told that there was no possibility of sending me a new or temporary box in the post and that although I have a spare ADSL modem that wouldn't work as a temporary measure because of the nature of the Homechoice / Tiscali broadband service.

Worst of all I was told that at the point of migration (or "maybe a couple of days afterwards") I would lose my homechoice.co.uk email address.

So in summary no internet (or TV) for a month, no possibility of a stop gap solution, and then no way of keeping my email address (which means a very tedious process of informing friends, family, banks etc).

To add insult to injury I called customer support today (which had been closed for the 4 day Easter holiday) to get a MAC in order to transfer to another ISP and was informed by a recorded message that I wouldn't be able to get through because of technical difficulties.

Can this be correct? I feel trapped. I'd be grateful for any thought or help.
DrinkingBuddy
25-03-2008
You'll need to check the T&Cs in the Customer Agreement you signed, but I very much doubt they mention the level of service they will provide other than some rather arbitrary nonsense of aiming to provide the highest levels of service.

If you are not happy with what they are offering and especially if you would like to get some kind of compensation for the time you are left without service you need to first raise an official complaint with HC. I'd always suggest following up any and all calls regarding a complaint with a written letter and ask for a reference number of some sort, their systems must create some king of communication reference.

Once you have officially lodged your complaint the following organisations are potential avenues to help you get resolution:

1. CISAS (http://www.cisas.org.uk/)
These guys are the independent arbiter of ISPs (self governed) of which Tiscali is a member (as was HomeChoice before). These are your most likely source of any meaningful pressure.

2. ATVOD (http://www.atvod.org.uk/)
The Association for TV On-Demand; more likely to help with complaints about content being delivered by VOD, but you never know.

3. OFCOM (http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumeradvice/internet/)
This page will be most relevent to you - http://www.ofcom.org.uk/consumeradvi...rvice/quality/. They will actually get CISAS (above) involved ultimately, but could be worth including them to oversee the process. There is also useful info on their site regarding levels of service, etc.

Good luck!
waallen
26-03-2008
Thank you for that - very useful.

I did eventually get the MAC yesterday afternoon after a long wait.

Everyone I spoke to on the telephone was polite but bizzarely demoralised. I got the impression that I wasn't the only person who had had these problems.
blake1974
28-03-2008
This is very similar to what recently happened to me,
The old silver homechoice box stopped working at the beginning of February.
I had to wait a couple of weeks for a engineer to confirm it was dead, however there were no boxes to replace it as they were starting to use the new boxes. So I was advised to wait until march/april for the upgrade and new box.
This meant no internet or sky sports etc in the meanwhile, if they could have given me a precise date I would have put up with this for a while but not with no idea of when the new box would be installed.
So I decided to migrate and another customer lost.
QQuaver
28-03-2008
What Tiscali ought to do, is to collect the old Homechoice boxes when they migrate customers onto Tiscali. Then they'll have a stopgap solution to the problem
stud u like
28-03-2008
Nothing seems to change with Tiscali. I got rid of them in 2001.
Anniel
29-03-2008
I am still thinking about migrating to Sky. Obviously, some of you have left Tiscali/Homechoice.

So please tell us where you went to and if you are satisfied?
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