I have been using Tiscali (now TalkTalk) broadband services for more than 4 months. At the beginning everything was fine - I even was quite pleased with them, since they promised to connect me within 10 business days, but in fact I was on the Internet after just one week.

But 2 and a half weeks ago the nightmare began. For whatever reason my Internet connection disappeared. I called the technical support line straight away. Of course, their call centre is somewhere in Bangalore, so it was rather hard to communicate with the help persons. Soon enough it became obvious, that they technical knowledge was limited to whatever was on their script. For instance, the fact that I used a simple ADSL modem-router got them startled. They said, that non-Tiscali equipment was not supported and no fault report will be filed.

So I had to try connecting with the dumb USB modem they originally supplied in order to get them looking into the problem. From that moment on I called them every day, and every day got the same response - "Don't worry, sir, we are looking into your problem and you will get a call back from us within next 24-48 hours".

So yesterday I got really frustrated and called their cancellation department. I would have done it before, but unfortunately I have a 12-months contract with them, so if I cancel the subscription before the end of it, I have to pay full amount for the rest of the period. Anyway, this had somehow caused them to move and yesterday in the evening I had my Internet back.

Conclusion - Tiscali are OK, when everything is working fine, but if there is a problem - you have no one to talk to. Look somewhere else for an ISP.