Washing the Brain

A couple of weeks ago, I was listening to an interview with Doris Lessing on Radio 4, about her Nobel Prize. She was deliciously dismissive of the whole thing (unsurprising when you hear the background), and then somehow the subject of blogging arose. When asked, Ms Lessing conceded that she didn’t know too much about it [blogging], but that she thought it must be like ‘washing the brain’. Is that what I’m doing? And if it is, is it really such a bad thing?

Tiscali - Taking the Service out of Service Provider

In this time of economic turbulence and daily news of impending doom, it seems to me that your average, law-abiding, bill-paying-on-time consumer is totally screwed when it comes to fighting for what’s right with the big companies. In essence, you CAN’T fight because they hold the trump card - they can lay a non payment order on you and bang goes your credit rating. And now, of all times, we all need to hang on to clean credit ratings if we possibly can.

I am not here to gratuitously slag off Tiscali; I’m just posting my experience in the small hope that anyone trying to decide on a broadband provider might stumble across this post and think better of a vote for Tiscali. And I can do this because I am saying nothing that isn’t true - and this is my one little area of control. This is my blog. I say what I like.

I don’t remember how long I was a Tiscali customer - a good couple of years before everyone else jumped on the happy ship and connection speeds began to dwindle. But I stuck with it because I’m not overly bothered about connection statistics, as long as I can get on the Web and do what I need to do. Then came the day that I could no longer do what I needed to do; my connection speed was worse than dial up, with websites taking stupid lengths of time to load.

I spent hours on the telephone with ‘Customer Support’ somewhere in deepest India. Well, when I say with them, I do of course mean waiting for them. After half an hour on hold, I would get through to a script reader support person who would listen to my description of the problem and then run through their get-the-customer-off-the-phone-as-fast-as-you-can things-to-try list. This is a one size fits all list. Reset your computer, reset the router, run a speed check (which couldn’t run because the speed was so rubbish), run a virus check blah blah blah. Finally, on about my sixth call, someone actually registered the fact that there was a problem, advising that they needed to switch on refresh my connection. This worked - for one day - and then the problem was back and I’m on the telephone again. This time, they are in denial. No Ma’am, we never refreshed your connection, there is a problem with your telephone line and we need to speak to BT. We will call you back within 48 hours. 48 hours - another two days with no connection.

OBVIOUSLY, nobody at Tiscali called me back 48 hours later and I called them. Again, they are in denial. No Ma’am, there is no problem with your BT line, we don’t need to contact them. By this time, my connection had been down for at least a fortnight. I gave up on Tiscali and moved to another provider.

Six months later, I receive a bill from Tiscali for a final payment of £19. If I were to invoice the hours of wasted time I spent on their so-called service, I reckon they owe me about £700, so I tear up the bill and let them whistle. Three months later, and they have called in the heavies; I have a collection agency on the telephone and as much as it pains me, I have to pay the damned bill or risk having a black mark on my credit record for the sake of £19.  I feel like I’ve been mugged.