Cable TV/ Broadband providers - or how I ended up wanting to firebomb Tiscali HQ

[23 Daves]

Jesus wept, I feel as if I want to kill somebody here...

Tiscali took over Homechoice who we originally had our cable TV and broadband service from.  I never invited Tiscali into my life, they just entered it with a cheery wave, or at the very least a letter saying "We are now taking over your service, and nothing's going to change, but it's going to be even better, because we're rebadging it as ours!  As you will no doubt know from the damp and creamy sensation you are already getting in your trousers just thinking about this, this means that broadband and cable just got a bit sexier!"  Words to that effect, anyway.  You know the kind of marketing guff these gonks spout.  It's meaningless.

Lo and behold, our Homechoice set-top box starting playing up three weeks ago, at which point I rang the Tiscali helpline to describe the symptoms - that the screen was freezing and going green or producing random stripey patterns like an eight bit computer game loading.  I was originally told it was due to server problems at their end.  Fair enough, I thought.  Except this wasn't the case, as was apparent 24 hours later when the problem was still ongoing. 

I rang back again, and persuaded them to get an engineer out.  Again, I described the problem, and was told somebody would be around to look at it in one week's time.  The man came, looked at it for two seconds, said "Yeah, you'll need a new box, those are the symptoms.  I don't have any on me, and I don't know when we'll be getting any - I'll have to get someone else round to sort you out"

One hour on the customer service helpline later, and we finally got somebody else to agree to come by to get us a new set-top box "by the morning of Thursday 20th - don't worry, you won't be without television over Christmas".  Fast forward to today, and I've just been told by an engineer on the phone that they won't have any new set-top boxes until January. 

"Yeah, er... it's... their old boxes see, and we're changing the system over, but we don't have the new ones ready yet... won't be 'til January at least... I don't know who told you you could get this sorted out now... Probably they just said that to make you feel better, we've always known that they won't be coming until January."

We don't have an outdoor aerial, so that means no TV over Christmas, and a sporadic Internet service which cuts out frequently.

I'm about to cancel my contract with them, but what are the alternatives?  In my area, to get a fully integrated package with both cable and broadband, you can only really go to Sky, Tiscali or NTL (rebadged as Virgin).  I have moral issues with using Sky, and we've actually subscribed to NTL at another place and found them to be just as bad as Tiscali.  So the choice (in East London at least) seems to be between Murdoch or two of the most clownish arseholes I've ever had the misfortune to encounter.  I'm tempted to just say bugger it and buy an outdoor aerial and get that installed, and buy a digital box from Argos, but I was wondering what experiences everyone else has had, or what people would recommend.  What do you actually have to do to subscribe to this kind of thing and get a decent working service?  Does it involve hiring thugs to threaten them every time something goes wrong?

[sirhenry]

To answer your last question first - from years of experience the only way I can see you getting a reasonable connection is to get a job with your provider as an engineer. We had one on our street who would disconnect or loosen the connection for all the other subscribers so that his took priority. After 2 years of monthly call-outs by us and the neighbours I think he was fired as the problem stopped. At one point a particularly sympathetic engineer glued our connector in place and it worked brilliantly for 3 month - till a stolen car plowed into the server.

My complaint with Tiscali is more basic - when I gave them my address they immediately sold/gave/lost it to spammers and I've been getting dozens of emails to that address a day for the last few years. And of course they refuse to acknowledge it at all. Bastards!

Good luck.

[Spang!]

I was with Tiscali (against my better judgement) for about a year and they proved themselves to be incompetent tosspots at every turn.

When I moved house about a year ago, I moved to Virgin. I was quite wary of them as I had NTL as a student many moons ago and they were awful.

Still, I like to pride myself on never learning from my mistakes, so went with Virgin....and they have been really good so far. Easy to get connected, a chap came round within a week of my initial call to install the cable and the modem and the whole lot was up and running within an hour. Since then we have had no loss of service on either the internet or the telly and on the occassions I have had to call customer services, they have answered promptly and been helpful.

Plus, I get the smug satisfaction of convincing myself that because I have signed up with Virgin, I am some kind of cable tv freedom fighter, sticking it to the Sky TV 'man'.

[Ambient Sheep]

I'd say go (back) to NTL/Virgin.  Yes, when things go wrong they can be a nightmare to sort out, but not always, and once it's up and running it's generally the fastest internet out there.  (I'm still gutted that we're stuck out on an estate on the end of a three or four mile length of ADSL that gives us 2Mb/s at best, when the next estate down has Telewest/Virgin at the full 20Mb/s.)

That's only talking about internet, mind.  I haven't seen one of their new V+ boxes, but I've been utterly unimpressed by the Virgin set-top TV boxes I've seen so far (one each of NTL & Telewest flavours).  The user interface looks disgusting, the response time to button presses is horribly slow, and the boxes seem pretty crash-prone.  Back in Swansea, my ex- had a Murdoch+ box, and it was joy, deep deep joy, to use.  Fast, snappy, gorgeous-looking, and once they finally got the dual-record software sorted out properly, pretty damn reliable.  Not that I was about to tell her to rip down her satellite dish, but part of the reasons I had to swallow my moral objections was because the bastard's just done a very good job of providing a nice clean reliable fully-featured service.

Until recently my recommendation (moral objections aside) would have been to get Virgin for internet, and Sky+ for TV.  However as noted above I don't know how good the new V+ boxes are, plus Virgin have this new On Demand services, although some of that needs paying for.  Knowing your history as I do, I can't see you going with Sky for your TV service, but if it's any consolation, Murdoch now only owns 39.14% of BSkyB.

If you do decide to go the Freeview route for your telly, do get a proper external aerial fitted.  A lot of the cheap set-top boxes you buy will just repeatedly crash and/or lockup if you can't give them a decent signal.  As the owner of a £20 Maplin Freeview STB that ended up in a cupboard in favour of a second-hand ancient ("ONDigital"!) Pace box on the end of our shitty internal aerial, I can attest to this.

[23 Daves]

Thanks so far, everyone.

I think I'll ring Virgin/NTL to have a word in a minute to see what they can do - ultimately we'd like an installation before Christmas, though, and I think that's going to be a total no-go for anyone. 

Meanwhile, in what can only be described as a laughable move, somebody who works for Tiscali has replied to one of my blog entries about the situation to say:

They had intended to get the new boxes out in December, but they needed to enable exchanges first and it's apparently taking much longer to do than anyone had planned.
I'm in the test group for the new boxes and am still waiting for my own exchange to be switched over to allow the new box to work. I was told December, but time seems to be ticking.

What Tiscali may not have told you about the new box is that it's a PVR as well as a receiver. Essentially, you'll be getting a Sky+ service and ability to record across all channels. This service would be included with your general subscription cost so there shouldn't be a top up fee.

Irritating as it is, I'd hang in there. Tiscali's TV service is probably the best around and has more video on-demand than any other TV platform.

I think we can safely say it wasn't an engineer or a call centre worker who wrote the above, eh readers?  Still, it's nice to know that they can respond to my blog entries far quicker than my phone calls or emails.  Perhaps if I just write "Oi, Tiscali!" on livejournal every time there's a problem, then I'll actually get a proper answer about what's wrong.

As for digital set-top boxes, I can only pick up a very fuzzy BBC1 on an indoor aerial as it stands at the moment, so I presume that's an absolute, total no-go.  I know another Verbwhore had endless problems when she tried to use a cheap digital set-top box without an outdoor aerial, so I don't think we'll be going down that route.

[Ambient Sheep]

Thanks for the update.

As for digital set-top boxes, I can only pick up a very fuzzy BBC1 on an indoor aerial as it stands at the moment, so I presume that's an absolute, total no-go.

You presume correctly.  We get all five analogue channels beautifully with just a cheap indoor aerial stuck upside-down from the ceiling by the living-room window, but only about half of the digital multiplexes, e.g. annoyingly we get BBC3 but not BBC4, and some of the ones we DO get are blocky, depending on the weather.  Ironically the only ones we seem to always get perfectly are the first four that you can get on analogue anyway...and The Hits.

I wouldn't mind so much, but we can almost see the transmitter from here (it's about five miles away on a big hill), and in our previous accomodation we COULD see the transmitter, we had clear line of sight to it from just over two miles away.  I find it quite puzzling as the biggest screwer-upper of digital signals is ghosting, and our analogue pictures seem pretty ghost-free. 

At least ye olde Pace box doesn't crash with the crappy signal, unlike the cheapy Maplin one (and they're not alone, a mate has a cheapy Asda one that does the same thing...same old story, arseholes who can't write firmware properly), even if it takes ages to respond to button presses.

[Marv Orange]

23 Daves if you dont chooose to go down the set top box route checkout bethere https://www.bethere.co.uk/.  £14 per month unmetered (no really no shaping capping or imposed limits) its adsl and the connection does sometimes drop but I'm much happier than using Virgin/Blueyonder.

[23 Daves]

You presume correctly.  We get all five analogue channels beautifully with just a cheap indoor aerial stuck upside-down from the ceiling by the living-room window, but only about half of the digital multiplexes, e.g. annoyingly we get BBC3 but not BBC4, and some of the ones we DO get are blocky, depending on the weather.  Ironically the only ones we seem to always get perfectly are the first four that you can get on analogue anyway...and The Hits.

Mrs Daves has suggested to me that somebody she knows at work isn't able to pick up an indoor aerial signal from the television, but can pick up a very good one from a digital set top box.  Is this possible?  I've told her not, at which point she got huffy and told me to go out and buy one anyway.

Anyhow, in yet another update, the blog commenter from Tiscali sent me a very huffy message to say that they were very much for real, not doing viral marketing, did work for the company but had no vested interest, but genuinely believed that their television service will outperform all rivals.  Which is fine, but not much consolation if you're sat on your arse without any service at all in the meantime until they can give a definite date when they're likely to provide you with something to watch.  What was she trying to do?  Cheer me up?

The engineer who was due to call around between 7am-9am (who I was staying at home for) still hasn't showed, and now Tiscali won't talk to me on the phone to even confirm a possible time because "You're not the account holder and it's against the data protection act to give out any information".  They really are a bunch of stars, aren't they?  All I want to know is if I can actually go out somewhere and get on with life.  It's hardly confidential information if an engineer is going to call around at 7am or fucking midnight, I just want to make sure I'm here when they arrive.

[Spang!]

The engineer who was due to call around between 7am-9am (who I was staying at home for) still hasn't showed

When the Virgin guy was coming round between 7-9, he gave me a call about half an hour before he arrived. Now, it's just a little thing, but it's stuff like that which makes you feel like you are getting some customer service. I hope you don't have a shitty experience with Virgin now.

In the past I tried several freeview boxes hooked up to a roof aerial and they were all crap. A quirk of one of them was that the signal would be bad, unless I pressed down hard on the top of the box, near the front. Why on earth would that be?

[sirhenry]

Mrs Daves has suggested to me that somebody she knows at work isn't able to pick up an indoor aerial signal from the television, but can pick up a very good one from a digital set top box.  Is this possible?

It can happen if the signal is just below usable by the tv, because the set-top box has software that is slightly better at reading and cleaning up the signal.
I think.

[Lfbarfe]

It's possible, but Daves, if you've got a spare £100 just get the roof aerial and a cheap Freeview box, as even if you get sorted with Tiscali, you've then got backup. Alternatively, B&Q are doing the full satellite kit - dish, box, cables and brackets - for £79, but I wouldn't recommend installing it yourself unless you've got a decent compass and a signal meter. Also, you wouldn't get Channel 4 or 5. Where do you live, just out of interest? I'll find out what your reception situation is.

[23 Daves]

It's possible, but Daves, if you've got a spare £100 just get the roof aerial and a cheap Freeview box, as even if you get sorted with Tiscali, you've then got backup. Alternatively, B&Q are doing the full satellite kit - dish, box, cables and brackets - for £79, but I wouldn't recommend installing it yourself unless you've got a decent compass and a signal meter. Also, you wouldn't get Channel 4 or 5. Where do you live, just out of interest? I'll find out what your reception situation is.

I live right by Walthamstow Town Hall, so nearer the Epping Forest end of Walthamstow, really.  If you can find out, that would be really good.  I live in a three storey block of flats and getting access to the roof might be a bit tricky for a roof aerial, but there is an existing, long-disused satellite dish outside my window I might be able to do something with. 

[Ambient Sheep]

...there is an existing, long-disused satellite dish outside my window I might be able to do something with.

Might be worth looking at Freesat then, but I'm not sure what the current state of play is on getting cards (if you need one) to view the non-Sky channels with - the BBC Reception website might be able to help you with that.

Mrs Daves has suggested to me that somebody she knows at work isn't able to pick up an indoor aerial signal from the television, but can pick up a very good one from a digital set top box.  Is this possible?

It's *possible*, but unlikely.  It could be that the signal is very clean, but simply very weak, in which case an older steam-driven TV might struggle to lock onto it, whereas a shiny new digibox can manage it.  Where I used to live near Cambridge, quite a long way from the transmitter, I got a better analogue picture using my VCR's tuner than the one in the TV.  It's unusual though to get a very weak signal without at least some ghosting, which as I said earlier is the kiss-of-death for digital, but if the person concerned lives high up (so no buildings or trees between them and the transmitter) but a long way away, it's a possibility.  UHF reception is a funny business.

However, what's far more likely is that the UHF tuner section in the TV is actually broken, so that they couldn't get an analogue signal with the best aerial in the world, but it will quite happily display the set-top-box's output via its unbroken SCART input.  I once had a portable with that problem; I just watched everything via the VCR's tuner (again!).  That's the theory that I'd suggest to Mrs Daves anyway.  :-)

[Wilbur]

23 Daves if you dont chooose to go down the set top box route checkout bethere https://www.bethere.co.uk/.  £14 per month unmetered (no really no shaping capping or imposed limits) its adsl and the connection does sometimes drop but I'm much happier than using Virgin/Blueyonder.

Shush dont tell anyone its all going great at BE* Only been with them a week but pleased. I was with Pipex until they sold out.

[Wilbur]

Might be worth looking at Freesat then, but I'm not sure what the current state of play is on getting cards (if you need one) to view the non-Sky channels with - the BBC Reception website might be able to help you with that.

http://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk/ has details of their offering which I use (spit) the BBC ITV version is due to luanch in the Spring I assume you'd rather not wait that long.

[Lfbarfe]

I live right by Walthamstow Town Hall, so nearer the Epping Forest end of Walthamstow, really.  If you can find out, that would be really good.  I live in a three storey block of flats and getting access to the roof might be a bit tricky for a roof aerial, but there is an existing, long-disused satellite dish outside my window I might be able to do something with. 

Assuming you're on or near Forest Road (where I bought my drums), here's your options. http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe?DX=L&HT=10&OS=E17+5JN

However, as you're in flats, that makes life more complicated. If you've already got a dish, use it. You can pick up reconditioned Sky boxes for a few quid, and you can get Freesat cards for £20 allowing access to C4 and 5. How long have you been there and what shape is the dish? If it's oval rather than round, chances are it's a Sky digital job and already positioned. If it's round, it'll more likely be for Sky analogue, which was on a different satellite.

[23 Daves]

Assuming you're on or near Forest Road (where I bought my drums), here's your options. http://www.wolfbane.com/cgi-bin/tvd.exe?DX=L&HT=10&OS=E17+5JN

However, as you're in flats, that makes life more complicated. If you've already got a dish, use it. You can pick up reconditioned Sky boxes for a few quid, and you can get Freesat cards for £20 allowing access to C4 and 5. How long have you been there and what shape is the dish? If it's oval rather than round, chances are it's a Sky digital job and already positioned. If it's round, it'll more likely be for Sky analogue, which was on a different satellite.

It's a round grey dish, which I would imagine makes life more difficult.  There's two attached to the block which are completely abandoned.  Probably analogue, then, which makes life a bit complicated.  Arse.

Mrs Daves isn't listening to me and is coming home with an expensive Freeview box.  I've told her it will probably be a waste of time, but she just tutted - apparently she has a business deal with Maplin in her area and they let her take things back the next day all the time, so we can always dump it back on them tomorrow if we get no joy.

[Santa's Boyfriend]

I was with Bulldog for about a year, and in that time the internet and phoneline became almost unuseable twice, each time for about a month.  Even when it was working quite well the internet would always seem to drop ten minutes after I'd gone out, meaning that it was difficult to download anything.  It claimed that it had an 8meg signal, but I never got above 4.  Not only that, they stopped sending me bills, saying that they would email it to me - but after a while they even stopped doing that and simply said they would put it up online in a password protected area.  To me that's just being insultingly difficult!

In the end, I got totally fed up with them and went over to Virgin (albeit internet only).  I was up and running with them fairly quickly, but the best thing about them is that the internet hasn't dropped for the entire time I've been using it.  It's only 2 meg, but to be honest I can't tell the difference between that and the Bulldog line, so I suspect that the bulldog line was worse than I had thought.

Generally speaking all these companies are a bunch of muppets, but I find Virgin has generally less muppetry involved than most.  I haven't tried out one of their tv boxes because i've got freeview and am perfectly happy with that.

[Ginyard]

In the end, I got totally fed up with them and went over to Virgin (albeit internet only).  I was up and running with them fairly quickly, but the best thing about them is that the internet hasn't dropped for the entire time I've been using it.  It's only 2 meg, but to be honest I can't tell the difference between that and the Bulldog line, so I suspect that the bulldog line was worse than I had thought.

Virgin's setbox is painfully slow compared to SKY. Sometimes you're sat there a minute before it refreshes and I occaisionally have to restart it from the power switch. That said, the have On Demand which, quite frankly, is a fine service. It has masses of films and old comedies/dramas etc all available at the touch of a (fucking slow) button. No ordering dvds from amazon. Its put me in touch with past episodes of Peep show and Teachers...things I'd never have got round to watching otherwise.

[monkey]

Another Virgin supporter here, in terms of Broadband anyway. Have been with them for 3 years - in all that time, the Internet has not worked twice, both times for a couple of hours and then normal service resumed. I've got the 4MB line and speed tests show that's pretty much what I'm getting. Sure, I've read reports of bad customer service, but they've never been less than fantastic - cancelling late fees when the DD bounced etc etc. I've thought about changing to something cheaper, apparantly if you phone up and threaten to leave they *might* offer you a better deal, but ultimately I don't have to worry about whether or not its going to be working or if I'm actually going to be able to download torrents at a reasonable speed. (And I worry they'll call my bluff and say "OK fine. Off you go". Concerns which I think another poster voiced a while back.)

On the other hand, a friend was with them and they changed his phone number overnight, without notice, giving his number to another customer. As you can imagine, he was not best pleased......but don't let that put you off!

[Marv Orange]

Virgin is fine for people who don't use the internet to download much. I'm astonished people accept capping instead of taking their money else to a provider that can supply the service that they advertised with no caveats.

[Ambient Sheep]

Mrs Daves isn't listening to me and is coming home with an expensive Freeview box.  I've told her it will probably be a waste of time, but she just tutted - apparently she has a business deal with Maplin in her area and they let her take things back the next day all the time, so we can always dump it back on them tomorrow if we get no joy.

Yup, they have a rather nice policy where they'll take back stuff within 14 days no questions asked (with some obvious exceptions like consumables).  I wish I'd known that at the time (and I had no excuse as it's printed on the bottom of the receipt), as if I had, I'd have taken the shitty thing back...but since I didn't know that, and I couldn't face arguing with them that a Freeview box shouldn't keep crashing just 'cos of a bad signal, I didn't.

On the plus side, if it's an expensive box, it might not crash with a bad signal, and if it's that or no TV at all this Christmas, it's gotta be worth a try.  But if it doesn't work, you can always use the "colleague's TV must have had a broken tuner" explanation as to why it worked for them.

[kenneth trousers]

Another Virgin supporter here, in terms of Broadband anyway. Have been with them for 3 years - in all that time, the Internet has not worked twice, both times for a couple of hours and then normal service resumed. I've got the 4MB line and speed tests show that's pretty much what I'm getting.

I was on the same package as you and rang Virgin to cancel as BT could offer me 8 meg for less money; they immediately upgraded me to the 20 meg for no extra charge. I did a speed test last Sunday and I'm getting 19.6 down.
Also, last Wednesday a Virgin salesman phoned and offered me the top TV package (which includes 3 Setana sports channels) for an extra £1 per month. I asked about getting a V+ box and it's a one off £75 at the mo with no extra montly fee. The V+ box is also a HD receiver by the way which is extra if you go with Sky. So, I'm very happy with Virgin, £35 for TV, broadband and landline rental.

Edited...God, that sounds like an advert.

[klaatu!]

Also, last Wednesday a Virgin salesman phoned and offered me the top TV package (which includes 3 Setana sports channels) for an extra £1 per month. I asked about getting a V+ box and it's a one off £75 at the mo with no extra montly fee. The V+ box is also a HD receiver by the way which is extra if you go with Sky.

The only problem is Virgin only carry one Hi-Def channel at the moment (BBC HD). Channel 4 HD has just launched on Sky, although Virgin have no plans to carry it for the time being, and Sky are refusing to allow their HD content to be shown on other platforms. So I don't know how many more HD channels Virgin will be adding in the future. They seem to think that having On Demand content in HD makes up for a lack of HD channels when it clearly doesn't.

[kenneth trousers]

That's interesting because I'm thinking of getting a new TV for the bedroom and initially wasn't going to bother with 1080i/p until I read that the V+ box was HD. Now you are saying that there is only the one HD channel on Virgin I may just get myself a cheap(er) 768 set.

[Ambient Sheep]

Does anybody else get the feeling that, despite all the odds, Mrs Daves' expensive Freeview box might just have worked?

[Cack Hen]

Sky have fucked me over. Since 2003 we had a nice responsive box, but it broke a month ago and we had to practically beg (then threaten to leave) before they would come and replace it. And they've replaced it with a really sluggish box that takes about three seconds to change channel.

[23 Daves]

Does anybody else get the feeling that, despite all the odds, Mrs Daves' expensive Freeview box might just have worked?

You'd be wrong.  It didn't.  I just thought you all might have got bored with hearing about this.

Anyway, I've actually just purchased a replacement Tiscali box on e-bay - the trouble is, I have utterly no idea if it will work on out phone line or need to be reset in some way first, so this is very much a gamble. 

[wheatgod]

I'm about to get broadband in my flat, I was fancying Be* but their website tells me I'm out of range. I've looked around today and think I may go with Demon - £18 per month 8mb uncapped. Unless anyone has any Demon horror stories? (Yes, a pun, but also a genuine question).

[Wilbur]

I'm about to get broadband in my flat, I was fancying Be* but their website tells me I'm out of range. I've looked around today and think I may go with Demon - £18 per month 8mb uncapped. Unless anyone has any Demon horror stories? (Yes, a pun, but also a genuine question).

Check your bills. Their billing dept is rubbish. Other than that not much negative.