New Line installation... tiscali best?

[Smasher]

i went through this same issue last night 67 mins on the phone to bt to get them to put a line in our new flat, they were prepared to waive the fee if we joined them for there top broadband package at about £26 a month for 8mb. which works out about £180 more than our 16mb sky package so we decided to skip that and just pay for the line.

downside is the lady said its £124.99 subject to survey and dependant on time after the £124.99 its £90 and hour if it takes him too long to do. it is bloody criminal how they can charge that much for a cable.

I know, and the annoying part is once they've installed the line, and you've moved away, BT will get further business from the next tenants, it's like WE will be subsidising the next residents!

Where's OfCON when you need them?

Smasher - Shouldn't your landlord be paying for the line connection? I've had many of these arguements in new builds I've rented!

That, is an excellent point, I shall look into that in case Tiscali decide to charge extra for a new line!

I can't actually find Tiscali's Terms and Conditions on their website to see if they can suddenly levy a charge above £30, just details about the fair use policy, etc. At least they have a 14 day cooling off period so if that happens they can cancel and argue with the uni (it's a university owned property) about there being a line in the property.

[Zadock]

I really wouldn't touch tiscali with a 10ft barge pole.

Sure they have a 14 day cooling off period but good luck if you actually get hold of them in that time... and then good luck actually cancelling your subscription! I had to phone no less than 10 times, at my own expense I might add. Absolute The same applies if you have a problem with your connection you are charged for the call.

Nothing but trouble tiscali and utterly terrible DNS servers to boot, when I was with them it go so bad i ended up using open DNS most of them time. I finally escaped to O2 about a year ago and never looked back.

They are cheap yes but... you pay peanuts and you get monkies.

(sorry rant, and this was just broad band... I wouldn't trust them for any service though)

[Will404]

DONT GET TISCALI

absolute

We have them and a Tiscali line, which broke about two mounths ago - phone all crackely, no quick internet.......

Took them two mounths to get it sorted out

Just back with propper telephone and internet last week! Custermer service is non existant, (always talking to some foreiner who does not understand English). They told us 3 times that it had been fixed when it was fine, and each time we called told us that they were just testing the line, and could not find a fault in it

Finally they got a BT technicion out to fix it for us, cos we wrote a letter to the managers of the company.

Cant stress how bad they are...

[Sacred]

Been through this before, BT said we didnt have a phone line to the property (yet have BT branded phone sockets throughout the student let). The very fact when we viewed the house their were two people playing an online match of Halo and they had Sky tv in the living room (which requires a phone line).

BT are just total scammers and they know which houses are student lets, so as soon as the previous tenants end their contract they add on the additional charges of connecting a new line even if the line is already their.

Also gotta ask yourself what student these days would live in a house for a full year without the internet??

Thankfully after a lot of messing about managed to get Virgin Media

Have you thought about looking into getting one of them USB dongles if getting a phone line is too much hassle.

[Smasher]

Thanks folks, nothing's happened yet, they were going to go with Tiscali which would have been the cheapest but nobody is prepared to put their name on it. Maybe after reading the posts above that's a good thing!!

The student house next door has blindly signed up for BT & their Broadband (that 10GB cap is going to hurt... lol), I suggested sharing with them but again there wasn't any real response.

At the moment they can get a very patchy signal from the university (it gets worse when they're all using it) so everyone's just postponing getting their own connection. I can't see anything happening so we've gone down the route of a high-gain wifi antenna which may help with picking up the uni network.

I tried to contact OfCOM about the fact there is most probably a line there but they don't want to know, they have to be the most useless regulator we have

Yeah, a mobile dongle had crossed my mind... there are some cheap deals out there though for the moment the library is just a couple of mins away so it's not like anyone is stranded