Sky Broadband Rant

We're moving house, so I called the Sky Move Team (or whatever they're called) to work out moving our satellite tv, phone and broadband to the new place.  I called on September 2nd and told them to cancel it all at our old house and start it all on our new house on September 13th.  They said it would take a few days to get broadband going at the new place, but the rest would transfer immediately.  While I don't understand why it takes 7 to 10 days to start broadband, I know from moving a number of times that this is standard, so there's no reason to complain; that's just the way it is.

What did give me a reason to complain was when they cut off the broadband at my old house on September 9th; 4 days early.  I called up and told them I thought they'd cut off my broadband too early, and after 55 minutes of talking to various customer service reps at the move team, sales, and tech support it turned out that they had indeed cut off the broadband and there was nothing anyone could do to turn it back on.

Apparently, when I called on the 2nd to tell them to move everything to my new house on the 13th, what I was actually doing was cancelling everything at the old house and opening a new account at the new house, and broadband is cut off 7 to 10 days after someone calls to cancel.  It didn't matter that I said all this was effective on the 13th; it was going to happen in 7 to 10 days, and nobody bothered to tell me that.  If they had, I'd have waited a few days and called back, so as to minimize the amount of time without internet access (my girlfriend and I both work from home, so it's a bigger problem than not being able to surf Facebook).

At no time during the 55 minutes of waiting on hold to be told by yet another person that they were very sorry but nothing could be done did anyone offer any incentive for me to stay with Sky.  I asked several times if there was any sort of restitution they could make so I wouldn't be charged for the time I didn't have broadband, or anything else they could do to demonstrate their remorse, but no.  (Eventually my girlfriend called and talked to someone who gave us a month of broadband for free, and all the Sky movies channels for free for 3 months).

So, to wrap up this rant, Sky didn't fully inform me of all the implications of calling to schedule my home move, and then when I called about them cutting off broadband earlier than I anticipated they would, they didn't do anything about the problem, or anything to try and make me a happy customer again.

If it weren't for American football on Sky Sports, I'd have cancelled Sky and switched to someone else.  Thanks for listening.   

Hee hee...<sorry>    It's always something!  We don't have Sky.  However, when we moved 3 years ago, we of course had to ring up NTL (now Virgin) about moving house & asked them to transfer all our services (telephone, tv, broadband) from our flat to the house we were buying.  When the technician turned up at our new house, it was only to connect the telephone and tv - not broadband.  When I queried this, he said we'd only told them to transfer the telephone and tv - "you didn't say broadband too".  Um, ok - well what did they think all our services was supposed to mean?  It was as if they didn't know we'd had broadband with them already for months & months - wish that would have been the case when it came to the monthly bill all that time!  Anyway, getting the broadband installed then required waiting another two weeks for another appointment for another technician to come out and do that...which the first technician had already told us he could have easily done if someone at the home office had been prepared to 'give him the code' for it at the time of our first appointment.  Only they weren't apparently prepared to 'give him the code', because we hadn't scheduled the appointment for that, because we hadn't said broadband.  At no point did anyone from NTL seem in the least bit sorry - after all, it was our fault & all for not 'saying broadband' rather than 'all our services'.

Haha!  Yup, that's the thing; I'd bail on Sky if I thought anybody else even remotely cared about keeping customers happy, but it's as though they have different companies with different names and logos, but all the rules are made and all the phone calls go to the same place. 

After the trouble I had dealing with Sky trying to sort out somebody else's problems, I can't say I'm surprised (see http://talk.uk-yankee.com/index.php?topic=46644 ).

Sky rocks!  I'd be pretty boring TV without it.  Ours died the first minute we turned it on but got a replacement next day.  No other problems since.  I'd separate broadband and sky though, the two don't mix well.

Meh.  Sky TV is decent, but the Sky+ box is a poor imitation of a TiVo.  It's buggy, it locks up a few times a week, and it can't figure out what to do if there are conflicts between scheduled recordings.

As for Sky Broadband, my opinion hasn't changed in the weeks since I first wrote about them.  I'd bail on them in a second, but since there's no faster option in my area, I'd be dropping the crap provider I know for an unknown crap provider.  From what I've read on this forum and elsewhere on the internet, most UK broadband providers suck.

Wow, I have never had those problems with my Sky+


Vicky

Yeah, my neighbour across the street had no end of problems with Sky - I think it took him the better part of a year before he finally had uninterrupted service and not sure what the final outcome was - he moved away.

The fun never stops with Sky.  Today we got a bill from BT for £172 for all of the phone calls we've been making since we moved into the new house on 13 September.  This was strange because we thought we'd transferred our £5/month Sky Talk Unlimited plan, which would've meant all the calls to America would've been included in the plan.

So we called Sky to find out what happened.  For some reason that remains unknown, Sky didn't begin the transfer of our Sky Talk Unlimited plan until 31 October, and the service wasn't active until 17 November - 8 weeks after we moved.

Nobody at Sky could explain a) why it took so long to switch us, or b) why nobody told us we hadn't been switched.  The only thing they are sure of is that they don't think they should credit our account for the £172 we owe BT.

They suggested that we scan a copy of the BT bill, send it to Sky and ask for a credit, but I have no faith whatsoever that this will get us anywhere at all.  As soon as I can figure out a way to get NFL games on TV without having Sky, I'm cancelling it all and they can go **** themselves.

In short, Sky is absolutely worthless.

When you write your letter of complaint, tell them you will be contacting Ofcom if they are unwilling to swiftly resolve it to a satisfactory conclusion with you.  Send your complaint letter so you get a proof of delivery receipt.  There's also Trading Standards.

MIL and I were in the shopping centre several months ago and there was a Sky booth there.  The guy asked her if she would like to sign up with sky and she replied directly to his face "I'd rather stick pins in my eyes" and walked away!  I almost died laughing after we'd gotten away from him.

Just reading this stuff gets my blood pressure up in sympathy. I've had so many problems with various broadband providers here that thinking about it makes me want to go break stuff.

I'm sorry you're dealing with this.

We had similar problems with Virgin and Bulldog. Demon are brilliant though! I highly recommend them.

Thanks everyone for the advice and support.  I've been looking at the various offerings for broadband & TV, and the sticking point that I keep running into is the NFL.

I'd be happy to bail on Sky and use Freeview and watch NFL games on Yahoo, but Yahoo isn't allowed to show games on the internet that are available in the UK on Sky, and more importantly, Yahoo isn't allowed to show post-season broadcasts.

I'm about this close to getting my sister to point a webcam at a TV screen in the US and just watching football games via Skype or MSN Messenger just for the satisfaction of telling Sky where to stick it.  I am fully aware that this would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, but I'm way past caring about the logical thing to do.   

Carl

Thanks everyone for the advice and support.  I've been looking at the various offerings for broadband & TV, and the sticking point that I keep running into is the NFL.

I'd be happy to bail on Sky and use Freeview and watch NFL games on Yahoo, but Yahoo isn't allowed to show games on the internet that are available in the UK on Sky, and more importantly, Yahoo isn't allowed to show post-season broadcasts.

I'm about this close to getting my sister to point a webcam at a TV screen in the US and just watching football games via Skype or MSN Messenger just for the satisfaction of telling Sky where to stick it.  I am fully aware that this would be cutting off my nose to spite my face, but I'm way past caring about the logical thing to do.   

Carl

Would something like Slingbox help you?  If your sister doesn't mind it, it's only a one-off fee to buy the equipment (and you can either watch it free on your comp & buy another box [SlingCatcher] to watch it on your TV).  In the long run, that's cheaper than Sky...

http://www.slingmedia.com/

If your sister hooks it up to a secondary cable connection in her house, then it won't interfere with her own TV watching (or I think if you buy the Pro version, there's some sort of dual feature).  Of course, this all depends on how nice your sister is!   They run around $150 from what I can tell...