Has Sky wrongly charged me? 30/09/2008

Matt.D

Greetings everyone! Apologies for coming to the forum first time out with a problem and not first contributing in some way :rolleyes:

My problem is basically two-fold. First, my girlfriend's bank account has been attacked by scammers. £650 has gone without her knowing. While sitting down with the assistant at the bank I noticed a payment had gone out of her bank account, dated 23/09, for Sky Digital, which we are unsure we should be charged for.

The £650 has been taken by some unscrupulous *******. That is now being taken care of by the bank.

The main problem we have is with Sky. We recently moved into our first home together, where rather annoyingly, we cannot receive traditional television through an aerial. Instead we have to have Sky. There was a dish and sky cable running into the property when we moved in so we've connected an old Sky box that my girlfriend had while at University in order to watch TV. At no time have we had access to or tried to access any of the Sky channels that are chargeable (in any case, all of these channels are locked).
I was under the impression that this was a free method to watch TV (Freesat)? We have a valid TV licence registered to our new address, yet on September's bank statement was a debit for £18.00.
It now turns out that when my girlfriend temporarily cancelled Sky when she moved here over a year ago, she didn't cancel the Direct Debit.


Can Sky legally take money from her account, despite us not using any premium content and owning our equipment?

Has this happened to anybody else, if so what was your experience with dealing with them?

Have we unwittingly wondered into a contract without realising?

Or worse still have we broken the law?

Any comments or advice would be greatly appreciated.

Kind regards,

Matt

cifpower

You say she "temporarily" cancelled Sky. Could it be that she never cancelled her subscription in full but only for a few months?

McKneff

have they been taking this £18 every month, i would check to make sure, It sounds like a monthly subscription. If she forgot the cancel the direct debit it would have gone out monthly for a year. I wuld contact the bank to get a refund of the direct debits. If not ,then why have they suddenly taken out the amount now.

emma396

you haven't broken the law, it's absolutely fine for you to watch the free to air channels. your gf needs to cancel her DD first, and then get in touch with sky to claim back the money she's paid in error

McKneff

the bank will refund any charges under DD rules, the bank will then reclaim them from SKY

Matt.D

After many, many hours on the phone (and 2 dropped lines) I think we've finally sorted our problem out!

I'll post details for future reference in case anyone else has this problem.

Basically the problem was CifPower suggested - the subscription was temporarily cancelled. When my Girlfriend left University, she assumed it was only going to be a couple of months before she would move into a new residence and reactivate Sky. These two months turned into 18 months. We went through her old statements and at no time have Sky issued a bill during this time.
Fast forward to the day she met me (yay!) and more specifically the day we moved in together and couldn't get a TV signal. I foolishly attached the Sky box into the phone line and with the OLD viewing card in it. This was traced by Sky who believed the connection was re-established and thus issued a bill.
Of course, my missus should probably have cancelled the Direct Debit and warned her moron Boyfriend from attaching things he doesn't know anything about, but hay-ho. All's well that ends well.

For the record, Sky have cancelled the subscription, but won't refund the £18. Not sure how I feel about that, but we’re now focusing our energies on reclaiming the £650 that has been stolen through her Paypal account (new thread to be started shortly…).

Many thanks for the messages – they really helped. Thank you for taking the time out of your day to help someone who really didn’t know what to do next. It’s humbling to think that there’s still decent people who care about others. I will try my best to help where possible in other threads!

McKneff

hi, there. glad the problem was sorted. Like i say the£18 should be refunded by your bank through DD rules. Explain to the bank as you have here and they will refund you and claim it back from SKY. They cannot refuse you. Good luck with your £650

PrincessPink_2

Hi there,

I've been searching this site trying to find a way of adding a new post but I can't find the option to... so apologies for using a 'reply' to the posts below. Still a newbie!

We have recently moved into a property and Sky tv was high on the agenda so it was organised and installed with Sky + in July. Our agreement with them was £34 a month for Sky Sports and 1 other channel.

After a month or so of being charged £34 Sky have now charged us an extra £2 this month without no warning or asking! I have only noticed this by noticing it coming out of our account. I checked the on line bill and it doesn't mention why it is increased.

We have not added any extra channels. I have contacted them via email as I was fed up with paying a silly amount of time and money on the phone to Sky. Nearly 1 month on and I still have no reply to my email (apart from a delivery receipt and then an email saying they are experiencing a high level of emails and they are unable to reply - how convenient!!) I really want to know if they are allowed to increase our monthly payments via direct debit without writing to us to inform us they will be doing this??

I find it disgusting how much they charge for their phone line and the customer service responce by email. We all know full well Sky earn great money and this is proven by charging their customers different amounts when they like!

Unfortunately there is no cheap phone number to use for them on the website saynoto0870! (

I would appreciate any response about this problem.

Thank you in advance!

kurjam

every customer was informed of the price increase in writing !!!
in the sky magazine that you get every month (i think this is now every 2 months) it explained in the letter they send with the mag that the price of sky tv was increasing and would be seen on your next direct debit payment that is to be taken !! hence why you are paying £2 more

PrincessPink_2

Ok. I don't receive a magazine. We have been with sky since July. I have asked for a magazine in my email asking about the price increase.

kurjam

you can opt out of receiving a magazine but you still pay the same price, maybe you have opted out without realizing, when you signed some paperwork, or when booking sky...
hope you sort it out !! good luck