share your experiences with Telecom Italia
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Sounds all too familiar!!! We TRIED to switch from TIM to Alice, with no success. Telecom was SUPPOSED to email my husband to let us know when they were going to disconnect our adsl line from TIM, then switch to Alice. One morning my husband tried to go on the internet, nothing. He calls, the line has been disconnected, early. No notice, and no definate date as far as when we would be connected to Alice. Then “oh tomorrow”’s started. Then when my husband would call Telecom, it was supposed to be a problem on our end, that their system showed that we were connected. My husband is a computer techincian by trade, so on our end everything was configured correctly etc. My husband can do it bindfolded/asleep. After about two and a half weeks, we were fed up with the ….. and cancelled all contracts with Telecom, including phone, and have gone with Eutelia for both phone and adsl. We were up and running in less than a week, with no problems/drama etc, and for a fraction of the cost. For phone and a 4mgb adsl connection, 14 free hours of calls within Italy, .05 cents a minute long distanceabout 45 euro a month.
Comment by Ann — September 1, 2006 @ 6:13 pm
I will have been here 6 years in November. For all of that time I have been trying to get anything faster than dial-up. In every phone call or email enquiry, Telecom says: withing two years, signora!
We have a series of B&Bs out here (6 km from the city) a big frantoio, several agriturismi, and the rest of us all have computers and go online for our various purposes. It isn’t that there’s no market, and it isn’t because we are remote and too far from the office. Who knows why?
We also don’t have cellphone signal unless we walk up to the road and try different positions for the phone. We don’t have digital TV signal.
Before I moved here I had a farm in Appalachia, remote as you can get, in a deep valley amongst the mountains, and guess what? They have high speed connection now, and the same line carries television signals. They always had cellphone signal. So what’s the problem, Telecom Italia?
There can be no economic growth that includes the internet until they clear out the corrupt managers who misuse the fibreoptic cables we already have or neglect to use them at all.
Oh, and it took me 4 months to get a phone at all. I actually broke into a secure Telecom site by following a truck on foot and bearded a technico in his office, because otherwise all I got was lies– like “It was installed 3 weeks ago.”
There is no slander you could make about Telecom, because every slimy story told is true.
Comment by Judith — September 9, 2006 @ 10:46 am
Here’s a tip on setting up a new phone line. If you aren’t Italian but married to one use your spouse’s last name for the contract. We waited nearly two months before some nice customer service lady made the statement “I see that the service was requested in your husbands name” “Yes”, my wife replied. “The service would be installed much quicker if it was in your last name.” “Why?”, my wife asked. “Because he isn’t Italian and doesn’t have an Italian sounding last name.” Sure enough after changing it over to my wife’s last name they came in two weeks and the phones were up and running. Then, about four months later two telecom techs showed up to install MORE lines into the house. HUH? Yup they finally showed up to install the line we ordered in my name and then canceled and ordered in my wife’s name. We would’ve been without a phone line for six months just because I wasn’t Italian.
Comment by Jason — October 17, 2006 @ 7:58 am
I can feel Ann’s pain. I too live in an area which should have ADSL service but doesn’t. I live near the Aviano Airbase. The little town I live in is a very short drive to Aviano and thus is crawling with Americans who out number the actual Italian population. All of whom would love to have anything other than dial up. I’ve live here 4 years and heard that song and dance about 2 years every 2 years. It’s not for a lack of desire that Telecom hasn’t installed the lines. Our community has sent in at least 2 petitions with lots of signatures to the town hall. Still no results. In the last 4 years while we have not seen an expansion to the ADSL service Telecom in its infinite wisdom has brought ADSL to a small mountain community. OK so bring ADSL to a town with a few 100 people living in it of which maybe a couple dozen might subscribe to the ADSL service but not an area with several thousand potential customers? No wonder Telecom is bankrupt! Anyway, about a month ago the local paper had an interesting article. It was about an artist organization that was sick and tired of the whole area being without ADSL. So they got together and have successfully put up a privately founded WiFi antenna which services a large portion of the area without ADSL service. They plan to put up another 2 antenna’s over the next couple of months which will cover all the area’s without ADSL. The name of the company doing the installations is ASDASD http://www.asdasd.it . I haven’t used their service yet because I’m in one of the places not covered by the first antenna. I’ve seen it at work and it runs well. Although, the fastest service they offer at the moment is 1.5Mb and that will decay as the number of people subscribe to the service. I guess beggars can’t be choosers, so I’ll take just about anything over dialup.
Comment by Jason — October 17, 2006 @ 8:30 am
Speaking on WiFi. Back about 4 years ago when we finally got our phone line turned on I decided to research my options to pay by the minute dial-up service. I found Alice WiFi and thought……I’M SAVED! I figured I could at the minimum subscribe to Telecom’s WiFi service, buy a laptop, go find a nice cafe downtown that was in a hotspot and conduct my business from there. I was even laughing about it with associates of mine. Ah, I thought, what a hard life it would be to be required to go to the cafe all day for work so that I had broadband service. My associates were to say the least GREEN with envy. The future was bright……till I called Telecom to order the service. I got through right away to the customer service rep. A polite woman was more than willing to help me order Alice WiFi. Then everything came to a screeching halt. The woman asked me for my phone number. I gave it to her. Then she said something along the lines of “Oh, I see you don’t have ADSL service available in your area.” “Yes thats correct”, I said. “Oh well then you can’t subscribe to our WiFi service.” “Ummmmmm and that would be because…..?”, I said. “Because you don’t have ADSL service in available where you are located.” “Ah, OK but maybe Pordenone has it available.” “Oh well yes they do.” “OK, so I’ll just drive down to Pordenone and use their service.” “No I’m sorry it doesn’t work that way.” I hung up on her. I figured it wasn’t her fualt that clowns ran the marketing department and it was better to hang up than to leave her with an unpolite message to pass on to whoever was in charge. How is it that Telecom advertises that they have HotSpot’s all over Italy where you can use this service while on the go BUT you can’t subscribe to it unless you have ADSL available at your home. DUH! Whoever thinks up such stupid stuff.
Comment by Jason — October 17, 2006 @ 8:47 am
Hi! I’m one of the native inmates
I have a pleasant experience to report about Telecom Italia: my hate for their customer service and my sound “incazzatura” … for their rip off of the so called “anticipo conversazioni” (an advance payment for phone calls, due by those who don’t charge their “bollette” to a bank account) … which they never refunded after I sent them a “disdetta” for a former contract. Of course! … “disdetta” translates perfectly as “tough luck” … :)) So, this time, rather than trusting their kind chi-se-ne-frega customer care advice … i googled for disdetta and telecom and 187 … to find out how the real procedure works. This Telecom Italia Saga came out at the top of the usual garbage load … and I felt like I had been awarded a special bonus … because this web site turned out to be very interesting. I wouldn’t try to say why right now. I need some time to look around and understand why it seems to be appealing to me. I’ll just say that I’ve enjoyed some past and long gone expat experiences myself, in the UK, Switzerland and California. To survive the cultural shock of relocating to my own country, i decided to start a part time living experience as an “extracomunitario” in Veneto (where I have been a “bloody foreigner” from Bologna for 15 years). Hope to get back with some ideas about overcoming Telecom Italia Sagas and their likes, sooner or later. Congratulations for a great job, I’m so glad I came across it … that I might even feel grateful to Telecom Italia for giving me a motivation to .. serendipity (??).. for it :))
Comment by Luigi — January 5, 2007 @ 6:47 pm
Well, at least they’re occasionally good for something! I’m always glad to find new friends, though I’m not sure I want to thank Telecom for it.
Comment by webmaster — January 9, 2007 @ 4:16 pm
I have been trying to e-mail my father using alice adsl. He uses Comcast in the United States, if you try to e-mail someone from the Alice to Comcast, Comcast will deny or filter the e-mail because Alice’s servers are on a “blacklist”. This is due to Alice allowing their servers to be part of a spamming network. No kidding!! If I cannot e-mail my father because they are blacklisted I’m going to need to talk to someone at customer service. Ouch! I have a feeling they will not care. If that is so isn’t that a breech of contract or something? I am paying for services that they can’t provide. What if I just stopped paying for their services that they can’t provide? They’d shut me down of course, and that is the pain. I hope someday Comcast or Time Warner or at least one of the major U.S. companies just totally buy out and overhaul the entire Telecom monopoly. And take all their jobs too.
Their service is the worst EVER.
Comment by Christopher Johnson — January 15, 2007 @ 4:19 pm
I can give you an invite for Gmail, if you like. That or some other web-based email is probably your best bet for a quick solution.
Comment by webmaster — January 15, 2007 @ 4:45 pm
Using Gmail is probably the best way out for Alice mail failing to reach a Comcast mailbox. It’s a less drastic solution than a US take over of TI; however, there also some internet service providers which work well, in Italy .. if one can avoid talking to their customer service.
Comment by Luigi — January 15, 2007 @ 10:13 pm
Okay, i am not one to say “they NEED to get an English phoneline to call” but to tell you the truth, it would save everyone alot of headache (mostly ours). As much as they service us (people near Aviano is whom i speak of), you would think that they’d finally figure it out, that w/ probably 60% of their customers being American, they’d actually start to higher English speaking people, with a little option on their completely, non understandable if you’re not Italian, that has the menu in English, urgh, just… so… hard… not… to kill little kittens in fustration…
Fustrated,
Joe
Comment by Joe — June 15, 2007 @ 10:29 pm
Well I have had a fine run in with telecom myself, and as I don’t speak italian its a bit more painfull so I deal with a customer support center in the town of Aviano. Well I have been fighting from day one, March 15th to get a 20mega connection my connections have gone up and down and services been all screwed up. I never got the 20mega they said I could only get the 4mega for the area I live in. I find that unlikely being that I live in Pordenone which is kind of a big city and you think they would have that in this area. No problem though I will happily take the 4 mega. Of course they say wait 10 days, its not a 10 day wait at all its actually pretty fast, but here is the kicker when they activated my 4mega line they fried my either card which is an on board card as most motherboards are, along with frying a modem that I paid 100 euro for. So the total cost is about 200 euro in damage, this is mainly a guess cause I have a backup modem that I’m using and I have to either ports and am using my other one which all work fine but the moment I use my other modem or port nothing works. I have not yet been able to contact telecom about this issue but when I do its not going to be pretty. And as far as how long it took for everything to be said and done well I started out with all this BS in March its now July and ummmm yeah I got my 4mega connection which is really fast I may add, but at the expense of hardware on my motherboard being toasted and my modem being sizzled I don’t think its really worth it and I doupt telecom will take fault for this or give me a discount for my bill. I fucking hate telecom bunch of assholes, even though I don’t directly deal with them I still hate those stupid pricks.
Comment by Josh — July 8, 2007 @ 12:05 pm
i actually dont have the energy to explain the very long story, but for me it is still ongoing, and I dont see a light, I still have no internet after over 40!!! calls!
Comment by jo — July 17, 2007 @ 4:54 pm
well, this is not about adsl troubles, but is about Telecom Italia Customer Care (if any).
Today i called again and the guy said to me, “why don’t you try deleting your account from the website?” I simply can’t do it from the website myself!, I said. “Why don’t you register a different account?” Because when you register, the first information is a unique code and the system recognize that you’re already registered!, I said. I asked please to try removing my account, not my password. I also asked for any different access to customer care other than calling 187, and if there is a way to communicate to someone responsible to the customer care service. Nope.
More than a year ago they invited me to switch from smail mail paper bills to website access electronic bills. I accepted and registered my account on the website, but after getting your ID and password, you need a further registration in order to access you bills informations. This further one-time registration asks for a couple of infos from one of the latest paper bills to work, but unfortunately this doesn’t work with any -correct- data!
So i can’t access details of my Telecom voice and data bills since last year!
I tried to call 187 many times but the front-end operators don’t have a clue about a way to fix the problem. Anyone has a different “idea” about a “possible” solution… try this, try that… Finally one day they said.. “we have to remove your account and you will start a new registration”. Well i thought this was the first time someone at 187 said something close to fix the problem. They said to wait for a week and then re-register to the site. When i did it i discovered they did not remove my account, they just changed/disabled my password. With a new password the problem was still to fix. I called again, and after a week they … reset my password again!
No hope.
I’ve found the email address of the Telecom Italia eCare Manager and sent my case. Never got a reply.
I will say goodbye to Telecom Italia _very_ soon.
Comment by Fab — July 24, 2007 @ 10:51 pm
update: after sending an email to Telecom Italia CEO and to Domestic Fixed Services Director, i’ve got my problem promptly fixed and they called me from two different offices to be sure that all is ok now. After months of calls to the Customer Care!
So if you want to try, just get their names and the Telecom Italia mail-address format… :-/
Comment by Fab — July 27, 2007 @ 12:06 pm
I am at the moment going through a similar experience. In March 2006 I stopped one of my Telecom numbers sending Telecom a registered letter, but they went on another 4 months invoicing for it… I have sent all the correspondence 3 times by registered mail and 4 times by fax and they are still trying to collect 400 euros for services not rendered.
Comment by Tomas do Amaral — September 24, 2007 @ 9:59 am
I have had fastweb for 5 years now with no problems, once we got it set up (which was a bit complicated).
thats one way to resolve telecom.
Comment by Elizabeth — October 15, 2007 @ 12:48 pm
Don’t bother switching to Alice “Business” — we were without ADSL for almost three months this spring and a friend of mine in Como has been without hers since May. There is NO GUARANTEE whatsoever regardless of whether your contract is under a business name — we actually got a faxed response to our written complaint and request to be reimbursed for the months we paid but did not actually receive service (not business lost, mind you, just payback for the months we paid for NOTHING) and were basically told in two lines of black and white: “cazzi tuoi.”
I hate this company. They’re just evil. Across the board. I recently bought a Blackberry (locked to TIM, stupidly) in the hope that at least that would allow me to check e-mail for reservation requests and do basic work when our rental property opens, but I’m still waiting after three weeks for them to respond to my request to initiate service. I wish I could figure out how to get satellite service somehow — I’ve heard it’s possible, but I don’t know much about it. The idea of contacting TI to hook up my newly completely affitacamere makes my blood run cold.
Comment by Kate — October 17, 2007 @ 2:01 pm
If telecom Italia was a person, I would stab it in the f-in face!
Comment by S — October 23, 2007 @ 9:03 pm
Telecom Italia is the worst organisation I have ever had the misfortune to deal with. the 187 phone desk is 99.9% rude, hopeless, and ineffective. Promises given over the phone are a mirage that evaporate into hot dusty sand. I recently signed up to Alice with the option of buying a lap-top. The technician duly arrived on the right date at the wrong time, so I missed him. That was in October 2007. January 2008, after repeated phone calls, faxes, and e-mails to every Telecom Italia point of contact under the sun, still no sign of making the technician re-materialise despite all the assurances from 187. The company deserves to go down and I won’t be shedding any tears when it does - as surely it must. I just worry about the hours and days this totally incompetent organisation has taken off my life in terms of stress and raised blood pressure - not to mention the loss of time phoning, faxing, and waiting in for never-respected appointments. I’d switch tomorrow if there were another option - the sad fact is all the other operators have to go through this humongous colossus of uselessness so in the end you just end up adding a further layer of inefficiency to the process; plus the fact that Telecom Italia plays dirty with 3rd parties. Real open competition when it finally comes will quickly dispatch Telecom Italia down the plughole of infamous company dismemberment. That will be the day to uncork a bottle of bubbly . . .
Comment by nn — January 9, 2008 @ 4:13 pm
So many have said it before me, but I’ll reinforce the point. Telecom Italia has to be the worst run, most disorganised “piovasca di merda” (Shower of shit - and yes, I have actually managed to get some of my friends to start using this expression in Italian) I have ever had the misfortune of dealing with. I won’t bore you with the full story but suffice it to say that I have just this very evening recieved a telephone bill for a line that I had disconnected nine months ago when we moved house. To add insult to injury the final bill is a whopping 500 euros. They must be taking the piss, but for the sake of low stress levels of my wife and father-in-law I have decided not to go to court over it, depsite having plenty of documented evidence to support my point of view.
Italy is a fabulous country and Italians are for the most part a marvellous, warm and friendly people (except whilst driving), but their national services stink and Telecom is the crowning turd in the waterpipe. We are now on a Skype telephone connection and I have vowed NEVER to use Telecom Italia again for the rest of my life.
Comment by Stuart — February 28, 2008 @ 8:50 pm