Sky want to replace my HD box - can I refuse?

sillygoose

moonrakerz wrote: »

In that case why deal with Sky ? If you read the T & Cs, which you agreed to, you will see they are offering you a service of so many TV channels. NOT supplying you with a Box manufactured by x, y, or z.

It's rather like buying a rail ticket from London to York, then complaining you don't like the colour of the locomotive hauling the train !

Wrong. I bought my box from Tesco and paid full price. Its mine, I chose it for what it is.

How about you bought a new Mondeo paid cash, yours. A while later Ford came along and said we may have put the wrong pressure in the tyres we want to take it away and give you a replacement, it may be a Mondeo or a Fiesta or Ka instead OK?

Leopard

moonrakerz wrote: »

In that case why deal with Sky ? If you read the T & Cs, which you agreed to, you will see they are offering you a service of so many TV channels. NOT supplying you with a Box manufactured by x, y, or z.
Sky are exceeding the requirements of consumer Law: that states that if the unit breaks down within 12 months (Sky warranty) they will repair or replace it. They are not waiting for it break down they are replacing all those which MAY have a potential fault. You would be the first to complain if your box died then you had to wait several days for Sky to get a new box to you.

It's rather like buying a rail ticket from London to York, then complaining you don't like the colour of the locomotive hauling the train !

Why deal with Sky, indeed!

moonrakerz,

With the usual idiocy of those who sound off pompously, unaware of the facts of the particular case about which they are pontificating, you make a fool of yourself with your ignorance.

I always read the Terms & Conditions of a contract before I agree to it and again before seeking to enforce any clause of it.

And particularly so when dealing with a company as devious as Sky. (With which, contrary to what you simply, and wrongly, assume, I no longer have a contract - with or without Terms & Conditions.)

The whole point is that one cannot obtain either a new or replacement Sky+ HD box from anyone but Sky itself, unless one buys a second-hand box on something like eBay or bribes a Sky installer to obtain the model of one's choice.

So Sky can mess its customers about - and do so as much as it likes. That is the OP's grievance and complaint.

My first contract for Sky's service (analogue, in those days) began just over 20 years ago. In those days one could simply walk into Currys or Comet (or any high street dealer), choose the specific box one wanted, from whichever manufacturer one wanted, pay for it and walk away with it, employing anyone one wanted to then install it and its dish.

(I bought an NEC box. It still operates perfectly, with the Astra satellite, and for the last 12 years, when everyone groaned as the adverts came up on ITV in the middle of a Formula One race, all we had to do was switch back to the analogue box and continue watching it live on RTL. )

Sky Digital began in 1998. Again, one could choose one's box, buy it from an independent dealer and have the dish installed by whomever one wished. (Or do it oneself). We bought a couple of Panasonic boxes. Because the choice, back then, was ours. The warranty was with Panasonic; Sky could not subvert it.

I took out my Sky+ contract in 2001. That was still in the days before Sky got so greedy that it resented any independent dealer earning a penny that Sky could not arrogate to itself and decided, instead, to operate (and, inevitably, then to exploit) a monopoly on the supply of hardware. So, with Sky+HD, it instituted a new arrangement whereby one pays money to Sky for "an HD box" and Sky will (eventually) supply whatever it feels likes palming you off with. At the lowest possible cost.

Back in 2001 we bought a Pace box, Sky+, from an independent dealer, paid for it in full (£300) and had it installed by his aerials guy. I subsequently put a 250 GB hard drive into it (Seagate, 7200 rpm) and we never had any problems with it. It was properly built.

You can't do that now. One can only buy a Sky+HD box from Sky itself and Sky insists on extorting an "installation fee", even when all one actually needs to do is unplug the two LNB feeds to the Sky+ box and plug them into the Sky+HD box instead. (Which is what one does with a FreeSat HD box.)

So, what it boils down to is that if you have Sky+ and want to upgrade to HD television, you can either buy a Humax FreeSat-HDR box for about £280, take it home, plug it in and start watching it at no further cost at all, or, you can pay Sky an "installation fee", wait a few weeks, take delivery of whatever sort of HD box Sky feels like giving you and then start paying Sky £318 a year minimum to watch it until it packs up, whereupon Sky will then swap it for a refurb of something unpopular that it's trying to get rid of.

Sky would no doubt tell you that you get what you pay for.

I told Sky that I could now get better for nothing and that it could, henceforth, stick its contract where the sun doesn't shine.

So, no, moonrakerz, I won't be "the first to complain if (my Sky+HD) box dies" - because I haven't got one and won't be getting one (particularly after all I've read and heard about the woes of their reliability).

But it's kind of you to demonstrate your intelligence with your asinine train ticket analogy. That was most useful.

What you actually project is the image of a person who would go to a railway station, buy a First Class ticket to York, board an Inter-City express train and make no complaint if, after the first 30 miles the locomotive broke down and you were downloaded on to a Second Class stopping-train via Leeds instead. You could spend the resulting unpleasant journey reading the Terms and Conditions of your ticket, couldn't you? :rolleyes:

sillygoose wrote: »

Wrong. I bought my box from Tesco and paid full price. Its mine, I chose it for what it is.

How about you bought a new Mondeo paid cash, yours. A while later Ford came along and said we may have put the wrong pressure in the tyres we want to take it away and give you a replacement, it may be a Mondeo or a Fiesta or Ka instead OK?

More like buying a new Mondeo for cash from a multi-franchised dealer and being told a while later that you need to give it back and have it replaced with a rebuilt Lada because of the possibility that it might break a drive shaft.

If Sky sold cars, it would slip that little clause into its Terms & Conditions.

The essential thing to grasp when dealing with Sky is that Sky thinks you must be a fool (and can therefore be treated as one) because you are dumb enough to be paying Sky lots of money to watch mindless drivel on your own television when there is now a wealth of intelligent stuff to watch for free.

(The latter is called Money Saving. :money: )

moonrakerz

Leopard wrote: »

With the usual idiocy of those who sound off pompously, unaware of the facts of the particular case about which they are pontificating, you make a fool of yourself with your ignorance.

As your post starts off by throwing insults, no wonder you have trouble with Sky !

I shall not bother to reply to your drivel other than to say that it is funny you should mention First Class rail tickets. In most cases you are NOT entitled to refund in the circumstances you outline - However I did get a refund from FGW when I had to stand, "when all around me were saying" - no you won't !

Your knowledge of the railways seems to be as imperfect as your knowledge of consumer Law.

I shall leave other readers to decide who is being pompous.

JennyW_2

Just to let you know what's happened.
Concerned about being fobbed off with a 2nd hand boxed, I called Sky back on Friday to voice my concerns. I was basically told that all the replacement boxes are "graded" but will come with the 12 month guarantee blah blah.....

Still not happy with the answer, I thought I would wait and speak to the engineer. I rearranged the appointment for sunday (today) so that my husband would be around (strength in numbers and all that....) and the sky engineer was really good about it. He came in, I made him a cup of tea , expressed my concerns and he said it was OK because I was getting a new Amstrad box, however he did mention that the guy after me was getting a graded Thomson box. Must've been the tea.........

sillygoose

Many thanks for the follow up, you played it just right. Sure you will be happy with your box, Amstrads were selling at a premium on Ebay. But it just goes to show we WERE right, some other sucker is getting a duff one!

Its not the boxes being graded by sky, its the gullibility of the owners!

deanos

All they have done to the Pace box is add cable ties to the power/hard drive cable inside the box (see pic below) as the mains cable could come loose and touch the metal case

Amstrads have a problem with the contrast being stuck, bad news if its stuck on high as it makes the picture look bad.

Ive had the call but refused the exchange at the moment, cant be bothered taking my 1tb drive out.

sillygoose

Thanks very interesting, especially as it looks like a vaguely safety related concern, which they said its not! Presumably they chickened out on saying that because they would have had to replace hundreds (maybe thousands) of boxes instantly taken off line.

If you box is sitting still on a TV unit shelf its unlikely that a connector is going to come loose that didn't during transport and it wouldn't have worked if that had happened. I might decline as well, although the Amstrad issue will get fixed on an update I am sure.

Are they not offering 3 months HD for free to compensate? whats the bet if you don't cancel after 3 months they start billing you automatically!

deanos

Yes £30 credit ( 3 months HD subs) and 12 months warranty from date of exchange, alot of Pace boxes are now being used for the swapout now as they will have had a load in for the recall

Looking around the various forums, all the Pace boxes now being installed have the cable ties, all the older ones before the recall dont have the ties including mine) , so pretty certain thats all the problem is.

spaceman5

sorry to resarect a pretty old thread, what is strange is we had sky hd installed about 6 months ago now, and it is a thompson box, we had a phone call last night from sky saying that the have identified a fault with our box, i had already read this thread so thought it was a bit strange being we have a thompson box, anyway enginear coming round tomorrow to change boxes, what do you think will happen, when enginear comes he will obviously realise we have a thompson box, so will he refuse to change the box over, Dave