ISP Tiscali UK has yet again managed to top our 'ISP Complaints' page for the fourth year running, nudging past the 400 figure mark just this morning. Poor support continues to be the provider’s greatest weakness, becoming the common dominator in most of our weekly complaints.
Connection problems and an inability to get Tiscali to cancel accounts, leading to incorrect billing and later problems with debt collection agencies, have also been big among user gripes. However, since October 2007, Tiscali has shown signs of improvement. Complaints about them have begun to fall and 2008 may well become the first year that Tiscali is able to turn this trend around for the better, we hope.
Meanwhile Tiscali has not been without competition, with the final quarter of 2007 seeing complaints about Virgin Media's ADSL broadband (Virgin.net) services utterly eclipse that of its rivals. The situation has now improved but suffering customers are unlikely to forget the period.
The collapse of Biscit Internet during early 2007 was also a major talking point, as were the serious performance and connection problems suffered by Fast4's users over the mid-year gap. BT, Orange and Pipex (Tiscali) were also hit by complaints at various points in the year relating to a mix of speed, connectivity and support problems.
Meanwhile a survey of 753 ISPreview UK readers during December has revealed that 46% rated their ISP’s "value for money" as being 'Good' to 'Very Good'. Unfortunately 37% were somewhat less kind, rating their ISP’s value for money as being 'Poor' to 'Very Poor' with 17% merely stating it as ‘Average’.
Mark Jackson, Editor of ISPreview.co.uk, said, “Though it's good to see the satisfied side of users nudging out on top by a margin of 9%, it's clear that a significant number of people still feel as though their ISP is not good value for money. This trend will need to be reversed lest providers lose more customers to churn, which will become increasingly important as the market begins to slow.”
