Tiscali and a lesson in contempt for the customer

Tiscali have done it again. More TV advertising, more big promises and more failure to deliver. The bulletin board is flooded with messages about how poor the service is and you will hardly find a single recommendation from ex-customers to sign up with them. And don't think “nice” companies belonging to the nice Mr Branson are any better: it currently costs you 25p per minute to ask a question if you sign up to Virgin Broadband. Consider that you might be kept on hold for 10 minutes or more and you can see why he is rich.

• We guarantee to keep you holding the line at anything from 10p to 25p a minute

• We guarantee to make it as easy as possible to sign a contract and as difficult as possible to get out of it. You the contractee will have no say whatsoever in the transaction. As soon as you sign the contract you are out of the picture and all you have to do is pay.
• We guarantee to lie to you when you do try to cancel your contract by pretending that the computer system won't allow any changes once the request for a new contract has been logged. Sorry.
• We also guarantee that we will not even send you an email confirmation of your cancellation request when asked to do so.
• We guarantee to employ the best technical support available in India, Bulgaria or wherever the cheapest labour is located. Our techncial teams are trained to read from scripts so we apologise if you think you are talking to a robot.
• We guarantee not to keep you informed about any changes to your terms of contract which we can change at at any time although you cannot make any changes or negotiate with us about any of the changes. In fact we guarantee that your opinions and interests will not be considered at all.
• We guarantee to keep important additional charges that you might incur, such as the cost of fixing a fault, well hidden when you sign your contract.
• We do not guarantee a quality of service.