As some will know, I moved to Tiscali for my phone and internet service recently. Everything went OK, in fact, I was transferred from Wanadoo and BT without even noticing it.
However, yesterday morning I got up and found I had no internet. I picked up the phone and found that was dead too. I went to my sister's, rang Tiscali technical support and was told that the exchange had a fault and an engineer would be sent out to look at it. I had no sooner arrived home, when the police and fingerprint people came round and told me that while I was out watching the Rugby World Cup Final, some intruders had broken into my building and had cut all the telephone wires with a knife. A sixteen year old girl had been caught in the building with the knife in her hand as the police had been watching her.
Therefore, I rang Tiscali, spoke to the same Indian oppo that I had spoken to from my sister's, and told him to cancel the engineer as there was nothing wrong at the exchange and I could fix the problem myself. He didn't know what an "intruder" was - so I had to explain it in simple terms - and then continued to insist the exchange was f***ed! Eventually, I had to ring Tiscali complaints centre to speak to someone who understands English. They were very apologetic, described it as "embarrassing" and assured me that they would speak to the technical people and cancel the visit to the exchange.
Why, then, has the engineer just phoned me to say that he has checked the exchange, found nothing wrong, and will report his findings back to Tiscali?
I'm more of a technician than some Indian sat in a prefab in Delhi!