Tiscali

[Purp]

Ok, so I was warned before I signed up to Tiscali last summer that it was a pile of bullshit, but I didn't listen because the only other broadband service, available in the UK at the time, that was as cheap was AOL and I'm obviously not gonna go with them.

Damn, I wish I'd just paid more. TISCALI REALLY ARE BOLLOCKS!! They are supposed to give a 24/7 service so that I can run my web server constantly, without any problems. Nope. When my computer is working and has no virus and doesn't just crash for no reason in the night, Tiscali decides it hates me too and disconnects me for no reason. So, I come in in the morning to find that apparently there is no dial tone coming from my modem and I have to reboot to make it work again, and my server is probably down for like 10 hours sometimes.

That's not enough though. When I wanna play online games (mainly Doom, obviously), sometimes it's fine so I know my server isn't interfering or anything, but then other times, it's like "Oh, there's some newbie . . . FIRE! . . . Hang on, I pressed fire 10 seconds ago, why am I still standing here facing some stationary Doom Guy even though I haven't let go of strafe at all . . . WTF, why am I outside now - I never walked here . . . why the fuck is my ping like 10 million? Oh yeah, I'm with TiscaSHITaly!"

So I rang them a couple of weeks ago. The bloke said they'd been doing some technical maintenance in the area and that's why I'd been disconnected several times (have they been doing it constantly for the last year?!) and when I have a high ping I should go to some website which tells me my current connection speed and ring them when it's less than like 2-300 even though I'm paying for 512 kbps (and the fact that my ping is sometimes worse than when I had 56k, it must be getting much lower than 200). Well, at least that's what I think he said - he could hardly speak English, even though he was an operator on the UK Tiscali Tech Support line. He guided me through the whole Control Panel - Internet Options (even though I told him I'd checked everything), checking things like whether my computer was actually set to dial at all, which it obviously was since I could connect.

Today, the bastard kept disconnecting me again when I was trying to test parts of my web server that I'm updating/adding, so I rang up again and asked for my CBUK and MAC references so I could transfer to Freeola (which are a small, unheard-of company that I've had a dial-up account with in the past and still use for certain e-mail stuff and have never had any problems with them). Same retarded bastard that couldn't speak English answered, asked me if I was Mrs Bernice Wood even though I'd already told him I was her son, and said he could only tell my CBUK number to my mum and he couldn't tell me my MAC reference because Tiscali don't allow migration. I just said "Forget it then, you're a shit service, bye!" and hung up.

Anyway, I know there's nothing I can do about it really. Just thought I'd post this to warn others not to go with Tiscali. They should be shut down. The fucking shit bollocks cuntish dick-up-arse "service" they provide should actually be illegal. And they're a bunch of fucking brats! "No, we're not gonna let you migrate away from us for free - you'll have to cancel with us and pay someone else £20 (if you're lucky) to reactivate you, cos we really know how to do business!" FUCK SAKE!!! Fucking bunch of cock-sucking, uncle-fucking, sheep-shagging paedophiles!!

Anyone else had problems with them?

[exl]

You payed for the cheap service, you got the cheap service, so live with it. It was also most likely in the small print that you just can't migrate whenever you want.

[DooMAD]

If you do ever manage to migrate from Tiscali, I would recommend Zen. I know it's got a stupid name and it's not the cheapest service, but it is the best. The 512Kbps connection is £27.99 a month.

According to adsl guide, you really couldn't have picked a worse ISP. Here's some nice shiny Bar Charts to show the difference.

[Sephiroth]

heh AOL even ranked higher! AOL now there is an american joke!

[deathbringer]

Surely you can sign up with another service and just use them, you dont need to 'leave' tiscali at all, just dont use their service and dont pay for it until you are disconnected. If you want extra security, format your C drive and get a new ISP, and dont pay tiscali, and if they ask why, just act all ignorant and say "well i had a crash and re-installed, and my mate set me up this ISP and i stopped paying for tiscali cause i thought you would detect that i deleted you"

[Goat]

i have aol. mines better than yours lolz

[wildweasel]

Holy cow, I didn't think there was anything worse than Adelphia Cable. I guess I was wrong.

[Purp]

DooMAD said:

If you do ever manage to migrate from Tiscali, I would recommend Zen. I know it's got a stupid name and it's not the cheapest service, but it is the best. The 512Kbps connection is £27.99 a month.

According to adsl guide, you really couldn't have picked a worse ISP. Here's some nice shiny Bar Charts to show the difference.

Cheers. I'll look into Zen a bit more. Oh, what a fool I've been :( Heh.

deathbringer said:

Surely you can sign up with another service and just use them, you dont need to 'leave' tiscali at all, just dont use their service and dont pay for it until you are disconnected. If you want extra security, format your C drive and get a new ISP, and dont pay tiscali, and if they ask why, just act all ignorant and say "well i had a crash and re-installed, and my mate set me up this ISP and i stopped paying for tiscali cause i thought you would detect that i deleted you"

Yeah, but the point is that it costs nothing to "migrate" from any other ISP to Freeola cos they don't have to enable the line or anything, whereas it costs £20 to make a Freeola account if you're not migrating. Which is cheap compared to some but I'd prefer to pay nothing than 20 quid.

[Purp]

Ok, changed my mind, I'm now gonna go with Zen. Thanks for that recommendation, DooMAD.

[DooMer87]

hahaha uncle-fucking. That's funny.

[Mivalekan]

Sephiroth said:

heh AOL even ranked higher! AOL now there is an american joke!

wtf u fgt AOL is #1 dont u watch the commercial!!/1/!?1?!?!?

[wildweasel]

It's only Number 1 because the American people don't know any better, on average.

[Mivalekan]

WildWeasel said:

It's only Number 1 because the American people don't know any better, on average.

[/SARCASM]
No shit. AOL is good if you don't have a lot of money and you need internet though. Other than that it sux teh nut.

[Dr. Zin]

actually, AOL costs over twice as much as the dialup im using now.

[Purp]

Mivalekan said:

wtf u fgt AOL is #1 dont u watch the commercial!!/1/!?1?!?!?

Oh my Goddess! You broke English!

Yeah, I think AOL's supposed to be number one here too. Like WildWeasel said, it's only no 1 cos your average person who wants to use the internet doesn't realise how shite it is. Anyone who is slightly computer-literate, e.g. all Doomers, knows not to use AOL.

Dr. Zin said:

actually, AOL costs over twice as much as the dialup im using now.

There used to be one in the UK (which no-one ever really heard about - it was never on TV and I only knew one other person that used it - the person that told me) called X-Stream, which was a freefone dial-up service and you didn't have to pay any kind of subscription charge or anything - 100% FREE! It was, of course, rubbish service though (you get disconnected every five minutes or so, probably cos they couldn't handle the amount of people using it), but can you blame them? The only catch was that you had a thick ad bar at the top of your screen when connected, but you could get around that if you had a brain, just by using dial-up networking instead of the special X-Stream program.

[pritch]

I've had blueyonder for over a year now and it's been fraggin' great.

[deathbringer]

Yeah i remember X-Stream, i used to get this "Anarchy magazine" full of bomb-making instructions called SWAT, and they often had stuff about how to filter out X-stream. As for AOL, They get you to pay to use thier service AND pay for your phone calls too (note, they may have FINALLY stopped this, still a good 2 years after everyone else though)..most other ISP's use a freefone number and charge you for the service, or the other way round.

[Purp]

pritch said:

I've had blueyonder for over a year now and it's been fraggin' great.

Yeah, I wanted to get blueyonder in the first place, cos you told me in IRC that it was good. I can't remember why I didn't now - I think it was to do with setup charges.

[Job]

Charter Communications cable connection's working just fine for me.

[Purp]

I've decided I wanna go with Zen and I'm gonna use a proper Ethernet router/modem rather than this shitty system I have at the moment (USB modem and USB LAN cable). I noticed Zen give a choice of having either one or eight IP addresses for free. I'd like the 8-option so each of my networked computers can have a different IP. Thing is, all the router/modems say they are for sharing one IP amongst several computers. How does the 8-IP-thing work then?

[DooMAD]

The only reason you would need 8 static IPs is if you wanted to use each of your computers as a web server, so you probably only need 1. Your PCs would still have their individual network IPs, and access the internet through the router/modem.

[Goat]

nice bump lol

[Purp]

Heh, yeah, sorry about the bump. But yeah, that's the point, each of my computers will be running servers at various times. The one will be permanently running my web server, another may be running my MUD server when it's finished and I might have others running Doom servers, etc., so I need to know how to set it up really. Thinking about it, doesn't the fact that it's a router mean that I should be able to set that sort of thing up? And if not, am I right in thinking I would just need to run a DNS server on the main one?

I tried to ask Zen this before I posted it here, but their contact form isn't working.