Hijacked by Tiscali - how to delouse my line

My broadband service has intermittent disconnects which be have traced
to the Italian culprits: "... at this current moment [Openreach's]
official records show that Tiscali are providing the broadband service
on the line. Unfortunately I cannot see any details regarding how this
happened. We have not placed any orders for our service to be stopped,
neither have we issued a MAC key for another provider to take it over.
At the current moment it seems that our equipment is still connected
in the exchange and this is why you are able to use our service."

My number is unknown to TalkTalk. But I was with Pipex before they
were ruined, and some weird welcome-goodbye-pay-us letters from TT did
arrive about 2 years ago. Now I find the line has been hijacked with
no official procedure to explain. What is the best way to remove the
intruders? Openreach are Unreach for us peasants, the ISP (the one I
am on and want) say I have a rigmarole to go through, which is
confirmed by googling and finding Ofcom ineffective.

Suggestions?

--
Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

On 23/12/2011 20:36, Colum Mylod wrote:
> My broadband service has intermittent disconnects which be have traced
> to the Italian culprits: "... at this current moment [Openreach's]
> official records show that Tiscali are providing the broadband service
> on the line. Unfortunately I cannot see any details regarding how this
> happened. We have not placed any orders for our service to be stopped,
> neither have we issued a MAC key for another provider to take it over.
> At the current moment it seems that our equipment is still connected
> in the exchange and this is why you are able to use our service."
>
> My number is unknown to TalkTalk. But I was with Pipex before they
> were ruined, and some weird welcome-goodbye-pay-us letters from TT did
> arrive about 2 years ago. Now I find the line has been hijacked with
> no official procedure to explain. What is the best way to remove the
> intruders?

Ask them for a MAC. Do they think you owe them money? Did you owe Pipex
any outstanding?

Or.... move house.

--
Adrian

On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 21:33:49 +0000, Adrian C <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:

>On 23/12/2011 20:36, Colum Mylod wrote:
>> My broadband service has intermittent disconnects which be have traced
>> to the Italian culprits:...

>Ask them for a MAC. Do they think you owe them money? Did you owe Pipex
>any outstanding?

Nope, I owe Pipex zilch, the parting was clean. 2 years later Tisc did
send a bill, then a sorry to see you leave followed immediately by a
welcome to your new service. All of which had no effect at the time. I
did write a letter of complaint and tried the useless Information
Commission or whatever the waste of space was called last year. But in
the last week? month? something happened. They are definitely not
supplying me with a service, unless disruption & irritation are
chargeable.

>Or.... move house.
And move back later!
--
Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

Adrian C wrote:
> On 23/12/2011 20:36, Colum Mylod wrote:
>> My broadband service has intermittent disconnects which be have traced
>> to the Italian culprits: "... at this current moment [Openreach's]
>> official records show that Tiscali are providing the broadband service
>> on the line. Unfortunately I cannot see any details regarding how this
>> happened. We have not placed any orders for our service to be stopped,
>> neither have we issued a MAC key for another provider to take it over.
>> At the current moment it seems that our equipment is still connected
>> in the exchange and this is why you are able to use our service."
>>
>> My number is unknown to TalkTalk. But I was with Pipex before they
>> were ruined, and some weird welcome-goodbye-pay-us letters from TT did
>> arrive about 2 years ago. Now I find the line has been hijacked with
>> no official procedure to explain. What is the best way to remove the
>> intruders?
>
> Ask them for a MAC. Do they think you owe them money? Did you owe Pipex
> any outstanding?
>
> Or.... move house.
>
Or less drastic get a new line connected, and then cancel the old one/

On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:36:56 +0000, Colum Mylod wrote:

> My broadband service has intermittent disconnects which be have traced
> to the Italian culprits: "... at this current moment [Openreach's]
> official records show that Tiscali are providing the broadband service
> on the line. Unfortunately I cannot see any details regarding how this
> happened. We have not placed any orders for our service to be stopped,
> neither have we issued a MAC key for another provider to take it over.
> At the current moment it seems that our equipment is still connected
> in the exchange and this is why you are able to use our service."
>
> My number is unknown to TalkTalk. But I was with Pipex before they
> were ruined, and some weird welcome-goodbye-pay-us letters from TT did
> arrive about 2 years ago. Now I find the line has been hijacked with
> no official procedure to explain. What is the best way to remove the
> intruders? Openreach are Unreach for us peasants, the ISP (the one I
> am on and want) say I have a rigmarole to go through, which is
> confirmed by googling and finding Ofcom ineffective.
>
> Suggestions?

From my experiences: Piex took over Homecall; Tiscali took over Pipex;
TalkTalk took over Tiscali.
Since TT took over the speed has nearly doubled, cost has gone down and, the
one time that I rang TT (on an 0800 no., not the old 0871) to sort out the
'boosts' there was a chap who could speak English, wasn't pre-programmed and
did all that I wanted (perhaps I should rephrase that).

For former Tiscali customers:

0800 1105850
or
0845 077 4488 01204 770498
--
Peter.
The gods will stay away
whilst religions hold sway

On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:36:56 +0000, Colum Mylod wrote:

> My broadband service has intermittent disconnects which be have traced
> to the Italian culprits: "... at this current moment [Openreach's]
> official records show that Tiscali are providing the broadband service
> on the line. Unfortunately I cannot see any details regarding how this
> happened. We have not placed any orders for our service to be stopped,
> neither have we issued a MAC key for another provider to take it over.
> At the current moment it seems that our equipment is still connected in
> the exchange and this is why you are able to use our service."
>
> My number is unknown to TalkTalk. But I was with Pipex before they were
> ruined, and some weird welcome-goodbye-pay-us letters from TT did arrive
> about 2 years ago. Now I find the line has been hijacked with no
> official procedure to explain. What is the best way to remove the
> intruders? Openreach are Unreach for us peasants, the ISP (the one I am
> on and want) say I have a rigmarole to go through, which is confirmed by
> googling and finding Ofcom ineffective.
>
> Suggestions?

If I understand the above correctly, you're currently getting your
broadband from Be, and Be confirm that your line is connected to their
kit in the exchange. But Openreach's records state that Tiscali are
the provider.
You've had some disconnects - could this be the Openreach engineer
migrating your line to another provider, realising something's wrong,
and putting your line back to the right provider ?

If this understanding is right, it sounds like someone else (perhaps
on a similar number) has asked for a broadband migration, and Openreach
have processed the request on your number instead. And, if so, then
only Openreach can sort out the problem.

I think the best course of action is to see if you can grab a friendly
Openreach guy in the street, explain the situation, and see what (s)he
reckons. You might get a useful contact.

Failing that, I think it would have to be a snotty letter to someone high
up in Openreach or BT Group. The "Contact us" link on:
http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/home.do
might be a place to start.

On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:31:53 +0000, Andrew Benham wrote:

> On Fri, 23 Dec 2011 20:36:56 +0000, Colum Mylod wrote:
>
>> My broadband service has intermittent disconnects which be have traced
>> to the Italian culprits: "... at this current moment [Openreach's]
>> official records show that Tiscali are providing the broadband service
>> on the line. Unfortunately I cannot see any details regarding how this
>> happened. We have not placed any orders for our service to be stopped,
>> neither have we issued a MAC key for another provider to take it over.
>> At the current moment it seems that our equipment is still connected in
>> the exchange and this is why you are able to use our service."
>>
>> My number is unknown to TalkTalk. But I was with Pipex before they were
>> ruined, and some weird welcome-goodbye-pay-us letters from TT did
>> arrive about 2 years ago. Now I find the line has been hijacked with no
>> official procedure to explain. What is the best way to remove the
>> intruders? Openreach are Unreach for us peasants, the ISP (the one I am
>> on and want) say I have a rigmarole to go through, which is confirmed
>> by googling and finding Ofcom ineffective.
>>
>> Suggestions?
>
> If I understand the above correctly, you're currently getting your
> broadband from Be, and Be confirm that your line is connected to their
> kit in the exchange. But Openreach's records state that Tiscali are the
> provider.
> You've had some disconnects - could this be the Openreach engineer
> migrating your line to another provider, realising something's wrong,
> and putting your line back to the right provider ?
>
> If this understanding is right, it sounds like someone else (perhaps on
> a similar number) has asked for a broadband migration, and Openreach
> have processed the request on your number instead. And, if so, then
> only Openreach can sort out the problem.
>
> I think the best course of action is to see if you can grab a friendly
> Openreach guy in the street, explain the situation, and see what (s)he
> reckons. You might get a useful contact.
>
> Failing that, I think it would have to be a snotty letter to someone
> high up in Openreach or BT Group. The "Contact us" link on:
> http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/home.do
> might be a place to start.

This page might help, although it places the onus on the "new" provider:
http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/tell-u...oblems/tag-on-
line/

On Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:42:24 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Benham
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

>On Wed, 28 Dec 2011 16:31:53 +0000, Andrew Benham wrote:
>
....
>> If I understand the above correctly, you're currently getting your
>> broadband from Be, and Be confirm that your line is connected to their
>> kit in the exchange. But Openreach's records state that Tiscali are the
>> provider.
....
>This page might help, although it places the onus on the "new" provider:
>http://consumers.ofcom.org.uk/tell-u...oblems/tag-on-
>line/

Update: after 7 calls to TalkTalkTiscali.ex-Pipex (all supposedly 1
group but with several factions) went round and round from pillar to
post, I got someone to send the problem up the chain of command, and a
MAC has been mailed to me. Of course I'm not actually migrating _from_
TTTxP as I never migrated _to_ them but this is a step be want to sort
things out. The actual problem is that the be connection drops for
~1min every 10mins as some dead gear from TTTxP is also on the line,
and the throughput has dropped from 13-14Mb/s to 9 (ADSL2+ annex M,
800m length with 2 horrible notches in the plot).

Outreach switched me without proper authorisation when Tiscali went
into some sort of mass hijack. Ofcom know about that, which is
probably why they have been reasonably swift in undoing the damage but
it's all a sign of how insecure the whole broadband game is set up.
I'll be following up.

--
Old anti-spam address cmylod at despammed dot com appears broke
So back to cmylod at bigfoot dot com

Colum Mylod wrote, on 31/12/2011 08:37:
[...]
> Outreach switched me without proper authorisation when Tiscali went
> into some sort of mass hijack. Ofcom know about that, which is
> probably why they have been reasonably swift in undoing the damage but
> it's all a sign of how insecure the whole broadband game is set up.
> I'll be following up.

The truth is that it was Tiscali who switched you without proper
authorisation.

Openreach are required to follow the procedures as laid down by OFCOM.
Openreach are prevented from undoing (others') mistakes because they are
required by OFCOM only to carry out migrations as and when instructed by
an ISP and therefore cannot carry out any changes on their own
initiative. This is the reason that it is a waste of everyone's time
trying to contact Openreach if a migration has gone wrong; the
instructions must always come from an ISP. Some ISPs understand this
but unfortunately some help-desk personnel don't.

If there is an existing "tag" on your line, it is the responsibility of
the gaining ISP to request its removal. In fairness, however, it can
become very confusing for everyone if a migration concerns both voice
and broadband services. The timing for each move is critical especially
if it involves the physical removal of connections in the telephone
exchange followed by an update to databases before the next change in
the sequence can be initiated.

--
Dave N