They do claim they are assembling it themselves at their own factory..
Like others have said, I would never, ever touch a product with `Tiny` on it. here`s why..
About 6 years ago, they came up with a `free PC` offer-the deal was that you signed over your phone call charges to Tiny Telecom for a minimum of 12 months and you got a decent but hardly cutting edge PC for free. I needed a basic one for my work -You had to spend a minimum of £25 a month on calls, if you didn`t you`d get billed for the £25 minimum-I usually made around that, so it seemed a good deal
how wrong I was-
The PC was actually ok, but the telecoms side was appaling-I`d go three or four months without a bill, then thy`d all arrive together. Their terms were you had to give a months notice of quitting so, 11 months to the day, I gave them notice-they said I couldn`t bcause I was on a minimum 12 month contract and couldn`t even given notice to quit until the 12 months were up-which meant it was actually a minimum 13 month contract. I complained that they may well be breaking their terms by doing this, and I got an agreement that I could in fact stop my service on 12 months-and I got that in writing. Then I got a letter from another department saying I had to give 3 months notice, not one...another long and not inexpensive batch of calls later, and they finally agreed-as a `goodwill gesture` -to `allow me` to quit on 12 months.
Bang on the date I pulled the plug on their `dialler box` and went back to BT-and I waited for my final Tiny bill..and I waited..and I waited....I could see problems on the horizon again, as I got a call of Tiny asking me if I was happy with their service! Poor kid on the phone never stood a chance!! Anyway, that spurred me to cancel the direct debit, just in case they tried some extra billing....and they did...I got what should have been my final bill, which I paid by cheque immediately, and then got another bill for the month after my agreement ended for £25..and the month after that another one for £25...More phone calls, and the people at the other end of the phone (when you could get through) promised to `look into it and call me back`...they didn`t, and another £25 bill arrived...
I put all this in writing to them-they responded by waiting a month-and sending me another £25 bill.....
I responded by sending the previous months correspondence together with a threat to approach trading standards should this matter not be sorted..
The next thing I heard was from a debt recovery company, chasing 4 x £25 bills I calmly explained the situation, sent them copies of all the correspondence, and it all went quiet.... for a couple of months, the debt recovery company then sent me a final demand...more time on the phone, further copies of all correspondence..but still, they continued..After the `Final Notice Threat`, I get a `special offer` to settled the `debt` by paying 50%...Now, if there was ever an admission of `We know you are right, but you might just be dumb enough to pay this..` then this was it..I declined, referring them to my earlier correspodence...
That seemed to work...
Until a couple of years later.... I went for a bank loan-never had any problems on that score-always made my payments on time, I thought it was a mere formality...I got rejected...As I`d banked with the Nat West for over 20 years, I asked why-they weren`t at liberty to say, but the person on the phone advised me to get a copy of my credit history from Equifax...I did, and sure enough, there was the dreaded `black mark` on me-courtesy of...Tiny Telecom...
I hit the roof, I explained it to my bank, sending them all the correspondence I`d had with Tiny and the debt collection agency, and they eventually gave me my loan, but getting that black mark removed from my records was quite a task.
So, there you have it..OK, Tiny went bust (surprise surprise) and their Telecoms arm featured on Watchdog more than once, but even though the name is owned by Time, I would not touch anything with their name on it with a 10 foot bargepole..
