Not sure I'd recommend Tiscali again

Dear insert customer name here!

I had a couple of friends connect with Tiscali recently - my inlaws had an entirely unremarkable experience - the self-install modem kit arrived and it installed and worked. My only beef is that it re-brands your Internet Explorer so you see "Tiscali Internet Explorer" in the title-bar. Easily fixed by undo'ing the reg-hack their installer does. Truth to tell if you actually run the ISP's CD you deserve all you get!
Anyhow - our friend Frances had the same kit mailed to her but her experience with them has been awful and shows up how bad cheap tech-support can be. Initially her line was too noisy for a reliable aDSL connection - the modem would loose sync and I spent a while swapping filters and moving 'phone handsets but I couldn't get it reliable - definitely on the hairy edge. Well it took Tiscali two or three calls from me to persuade them to get BT to re-test the line. Two weeks later a BT engineer shows up and sticks in an extra 12dBs at the exchange and the connection was at least reliable. Since I'd uninstalled Tiscali's installer from Frances's PC in disgust they had her re-install (I was out of town) and then she couldn't get any Internet traffic. So, she started on the long slog of 'phone tech support. The variously advised her;

• To disable any firewalls or antivirus because "that must be the problem".
• To re-install Windows!
• Her PC was of too lower spec (like they knew what processor/memory/HD config she had!)

What was apparent to me was that all the tech support representatives she talked to had the attitude that they'd say anything to get her off the line because in all likelihood she'd get someone else when she called back. They had no useful advice, but you're paying £1 a minute for this!
In the end the problem was down to the Tiscali installer CD! I tested this and discovered that about one time in five the installer sets your connection encapsulation to PPOE rather than PPOA (point-to-point over ATM) - now (according to a chum at BT) they could have detected this at their end - he told me that BT tech support representatives would have that on their screen when taking the call and they would have talked her through changing it.

In the end I suppose that when you're paying a mere £15 for a 2Mbits^-1 connection you can't expect anything other than a tech support person who reads the laminated folder pages and doesn't really understand IP networking. They all need to listen to Steve Gibson's Security Now podcast.