RatherDeadThanACustomer@Tiscali.co.uk

A friend of mine who lives in London signed up for Tiscali's unlimited 2mbit broadband service in September and experienced first-hand what the reviews could have told him earlier; he'd rather be dead than a customer at Tiscali. Like many ISP's, customers are bound by contract to a Fair Use Policy. However, this specific agreement doesn't limit users' to a monthly quotum, it's a system that works with peak hours. Not such a bad idea, one might say. Well, it is. In practise, this means that users are limited to light usage such as basic browsing and e-mail services. Online gaming sites (or online gaming for that matter) are nearly impossible and download rates often come to a complete halt. Why does Tiscali 'ask' this from their users? So all consumers can experience a high quality of service all the time. To give you a little more insight into the situation, here's the correspondence between my friend and a Tiscali representative.

"I am contacting you regarding the broadband service on my telephone line (Phone Number Removed). On the 14th of February I received an email stating that my connection would be managed by Tiscali under the terms of the FUP. Around two days later I telephoned Tiscali technical support to enquire exactly (in terms of MB) how much I had broken the fair usage policy by. However they could not begin to tell me because their computer system did not say that I was on the FUP. I was informed if my usage was light, 5 to 7 days later my connection would no longer be managed by Tiscali. Today (27th of February) I telephoned technical support again and this time they did agree that my connection was being managed under the FUP and they informed me I had to contact you. My connection is still being managed by Tiscali between the hours of 6pm to 11pm (the "peak hours"). Outside this time service is fine. Since I first received the warnings about heavy usage I have endeavoured to ensure that all downloads of large files were out with peak hours. I would like to know why my connection is still being managed by Tiscali since I do not believe it is possible to have exceeded your peak "download limit" (whatever that is - not defined exactly in the FUP) with the connection I receive during peak hours - even browsing web pages is a laborious experience. Thank you for your assistance, (Name Removed)

Quite some time later, the Tiscali representative responds:

"Dear Tiscali Customer, Thank you for your query. Apologies for the delay in replying to your email. After carefully considering your case we have decided to give you another chance. This is your last chance so please ensure you do not abuse the service during peak hours because the large amount of traffic you are using is affecting the service of other customers. Your package is unlimited as are all consumer packages we provide. We shall not ask you to keep your total usage under a specific limit for the month, we are asking you to be considerate to other users during peak hours (from 6pm to 11pm Monday to Sunday) so all customers experience a high quality of service all the time. You can upload and download as much as you wish outside the peak periods. Any transferring of large files, peer to peer file sharing we ask is done outside of peak hours. If you do not adhere to the following guidelines you will be restricted:

• Do not file share or peer-to-peer software during peak times
• Do not download large files during peak times

Use the service during these hours for normal Internet use only, e.g. browsing, emailing etc. All file sharing, peer-to-peer activity or transferring of large files is to be done outside of the peak periods. We believe it is unfair that the vast majority of our customers' broadband services are affected by a very small number of very heavy users. If you wish to leave Tiscali and move to another service provider you may do so regardless of whether you are in contract or not. Please reply to this email and request a MAC Code. This will allow you to seamlessly migrate to another service provider with out obligation. To enable us to ensure you receive any further communications on a regular basis could you please let us know your most used contact email address to update out records. This can be completed by responding to this email. Kind Regards Tiscali Support"

Do you believe this kind of shit? They're basically telling him to fuck off and die.