Back around June 2009, Tiscali took over the running of my old Pipex network. And whereas before I was averaging around 2400Kbps, it all suddenly went pear shaped and dropped to less than 600Kbps for a few days.
It did recover later that day, but ever since Tiscali took over the routing of my data, both the upload and download speeds have steadily decreased until yesterday, they nose dived to below 750Kbps. Pipex insist they do no traffic shaping, no bandwidth throttling on my connection, but I beg to differ!
I contacted support to see if any work was going on. “Absolutely none sir, nothing has changed this end”.
So I sent them a copy of the above data and rang them back. There response was “Have you changed your phone sir?” to which I replied “What everyday since June 2009 !”
He assured me nothing had changed and that there were no problems his end. I then asked them to sort out my Mac code as I had enough and I would be transferring away ASAP.
Funnily enough, within 30mins, my upload speed has shot up above 2000Kpbs for the first time since June 2009.
Pipex/Tiscali/Talk Talk absolutely suck and are to be avoided like the plague regardless of how cheap they are.
You are much better taking a look at Plus Net (although now they come under BT, I’d be weary of that). My top suggestion at the moment is believe it or not, O2 Broadband. Yes, they are a big corporate group, but their customer service is first rate. If you tell them there is a problem, they actually listen to you. They don’t treat you like some half witted idiot, but they actually listen to what you have to say.
So why am I still with Pipex? Because the buggers owe me over £400 in over payments and the instant I leave them, I face a long haul through the courts to try and claim it back. As for Ofcom? Forget it. They know who pays their wages and are about as effective as a chocolate fireguard.
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And if you wanted further proof of just how bad Pipex/Tiscali can be, just take a look above.
They insisted absolutely nothing was wrong at their end. It took 30mins of ranting at their support guy for them to go actually get off their arse and take a look. And finally, after 8am, things magically get a whole lot better.
Be warned… stay clear of Pipex and Tiscali…
