Complaining about Tiscali (regarding the service formerly known as Pipex) is normally T_W’s realm but I’m wading in, on the basis of an article in the Register.

(I can be detached, as well as moderately smug, here. Despite my initial annoyance when Virgin took over the previous Telewest service, of blessed memory, the worst you can say about Virgin broadband is that it seems to have outsourced its tech support and started charging 25p a minute for it.

I found this out when I made a tech support call about a friend’s broken cable broadband service. It was impossible to understand the woman on the other end, who was reading from a pre-set list of actions and made me go through every one at 25p a minute, despite my telling her repeatedly that I had already tried each one of her suggestions several times. In fairness, she only let this farce run for 15 minutes then she called back. So it stopped running up a pound every 4 minutes but the issue was no nearer resolution.

In contrast, Telewest tech support used to be brilliant. The tech support staff understood what you said, took on board your level of knowledge and responded accordingly with suggestions based on their expertise rather than a list of preset steps that only apply if you use Internet Explorer and Windows ffs – the current 25p a minute support.

Anyway, back to Tiscali…..)

Thousands of ex-Pipex customers have been suffering unexplained interruptions in their broadband service in recent weeks, as their new provider Tiscali stealthily works to cut costs.
People suffering a broadband outage as a result of the work are told by customer services, recently outsourced overseas, that their line is undergoing “essential engineering work”. One Reg reader was initially told the downtime was BT’s fault. (from The Register)

This “essential engineering work” seems to involve cutting speeds and service quality, in pursuit of a first-time ever profit for the noxiously-named Tiscali.

Their activities have previously been reported, by the Register, as involving making hundreds of Pipex staff redundant and outsourcing customer care in a bid to make the newly created company saleable in the near future..

There’s a good range of comments on the Register post. Here’s Luke Wells’s comment.

From Pipex to ….. errr … Tiscali
Now it has been a few years since I was a Pipex customer, but when I was a customer, Pipex were known for its rock solid reliable network and high speeds with no limits or throttling.
Tiscali are pretty much well known as a cheap “cut corners” isp with near zero customer service and poor speeds.
You’d think people would notice the change quite quickly.

I suspect they have.