Pipex, Tiscali and TalkTalk problems

ISPs dropping like sick flies

Worried Pipex customers who pay by direct debit can relax - they are not about to be cut off.

Several Reg readers got in touch after they received emails warning them they were about to be cut off for not paying their bills.

The email read: "Your Pipex account has now fallen overdue as we are yet to receive payment from you.

Unless the balance is paid within the next 5 days your Pipex services will be suspended."

But the emails had been sent in error.

Pipex gave us the following statement: "Pipex apologises for any inconvenience experienced by some of our customers yesterday (Thursday), when an automated overdue payments email was sent to those who pay by direct debit. The issue has now been resolved and our customers informed that their service will not be suspended due to the incorrect email."

Well, that's alright then....

Moving on...

Some Tiscali customers are still without email.

The ISP had problems on Sunday which have left some customers without email all week.

One customer who contacted El Reg said: "This is my primary email which I use for most of my online activity I feel I have been left high and dry. It is unclear what is happening in terms of undelivered or lost email, there is no adequate reply from customer services....

The service status page does not reflect what is happening. From the response on the Tiscali forums I am one of many customers who has been let down."

Reg reader Paul also got in touch: "When it comes to contacting an ISP, and as with every other companies similar to Tiscali, it's their existing customers who seem to get put on the back burner, but when it comes to a sale then they can't go out of their way enough!"

Tiscali sent us a statement, via email amazingly: "We did believe that we had totally resolved email access issues, however we have found an error on some legacy email groups such as World Online and Screaming.net. A fix has been identified and we are working on it now so mail access should be restored shortly. If you have any further complaints about ongoing problems then please email [e-mail]."

And let's not forget Carphone Warehouse's ISP TalkTalk. We heard from several readers that they lost broadband access last night.

A spokeswoman for TalkTalk said:"" We regrettably confirm that there was a fault on the network yesterday evening affecting a small number of people for a limited time period. The problem is now resolved and full access restored."

[That's enough broken ISPs for today, thanks - Ed]