A month without Broadband, all thanks to BT screwing up our initial phoneline installation (we wanted one line, they recorded they’d installed two), then Tiscali completely futzing the reactivation of the connection after…. well, I won’t bore you with the details. Suffice to say that I swear that the only time I’ll be willing to deal with any company which has a call centre in India will be over my dead and fragrantly rotting corpse.

“Indian Call Centre” is now synonymous in my mind with the words “stunningly crap customer service”. Tiscali gets even lower points for having a Call Centre in India which costs a fucking fortune to speak to, as well. Not that speaking to them makes any difference as every single time we did, we were given yet another excuse, another date or some grumpy Indian bloke basically saying there’s nothing that can be done and putting the phone down on me. Sheesh.

Not that I’ve got anything again peoples of Indian descent at all – we’re all individuals and there’s good and bad in all, and I’ve spoken to folks at Tiscali who are great and genuinely want to help, but can’t. But I’ve got a hell of a lot of dislike for Companies with Indian Call Centres. That smacks too much of “cheapest possible option”; they’re cutting corners to an unacceptable degree, and in Tiscali’s case then rubbing our faces in it by making us pay for the privilege of calling them. Damn, I feel for the folks who work in the Call Centres in India who have to put up with folks like me shouting at them because their feckin’ company can’t give them the tools to do their jobs.

So anyhow, we jumped ship to O2 Broadband which is cheaper, faster (4Mb rather than 1.5Mb – and we even got letters from Tiscali saying they can’t provide broadband on the exact same line we wanted reactivating!), got a freephone number to a UK Call Centre and is all set up and working on exactly the date scheduled. No fuss, no bother.

Here’s hoping it stays that way, eh?

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