Sky Customer Service shocking attitude to vulnerable customers with special needs

Teresa68

Almost 5 weeks ago my daughter, who due to medical issues is considered a vulnerable adult living alone, signed up to Sky TV, phone and broadband. She was advised that the TV would be fitted within the week (which it was) and then the phone line connected within 3 weeks, although not ideal this was sooner than BT as such the connection fees of both TV and phone were paid. A land line telephone is essential to my daughter as should there be an emergency she can guarantee that she will be able to get hold of someone. To date, despite calls to Sky customer service we still have no date for connection.

On Tuesday, I called Sky Customer Services and their attitude disgusted me to be honest. They had not date for a connection and the only 'excuse' they had for non connection was that a whole batch had been rejected but now accepted??? But all of that could have been forgotten if it was not for their complete disregard for my daughters special needs - Let me get one thing straight here, neither my daughter or myself want special treatment or to jump any lists - we just want correct information and a date for connection! Only when I pressed for some indication as to when the telephone line was going to be available did she vaguely guess on mid Feb (7 weeks from when the connection fee was paid) but this was not guarantee.

I advised the representative that this was not good enough and contradicted the information we had been given when signing up, I therefore asked for their complaints procedure, to which I was given an address and the operator’s assurance that no action will take place unless I sent a letter in! I then asked for a name to address my complaint to ... she would not give me one.

Increasingly annoyed by her lack of care or knowledge I asked to speak with her supervisor to obtain a name ... she refused to put me through! I asked for her supervisors name ... she reused to give it to me. I asked if she had even asked her supervisor to speak with me ... she said she hadn't! So I asked if she would ask him if he was prepared to speak with me ... she said no as he would not change the information she had already given me! As far as I was aware she hadn't actually given me any information! I pointed out to her that this was not my intention and that I wanted to speak with him to obtain a name to address the letter of complaint to and to register a complaint with him as she had already told me that she was not going to record my complaint! I asked one final time for her to ask her supervisor if he was prepared to take a call concerning the way in which Sky were treating a vulnerable customer? This time she put me on hold and asked him .... HE SAID NO!

At that point I wished both the operator and her supervisor well and hung up.

We are still at a point that we have no idea of when this vital service will be connected, but i have sent a letter to 'whom it may concern' although from my dealings with this company ... that is nobody within the customer service team!

Rant over

All_eBayed_Out

I found sky appaling for customer services too. They use to make out that I couldn't cancel because they owned the box, even though I was out of contract. He tried to make me feel 1cm tall for wanting to cancel and wanted me to explain why why why I would want to cancel.

Then when I really did HAVE to cancel a year later I was passed around to different people like a hot potatoe for 30 minutes on the phone & then cut off. This happened twice.

lockeman

This isn't acceptable at all.

At the risk of stating the obvious, maybe you should consider other options to put pressure on Sky to provide a reasonable level of service.

The obvious first port of call is Consumer Direct - they can be quite supportive and know what is and isn't acceptable.

Another could be OTELO, the telecoms regulator that i believe Sky comes under. Normally they would only come into play after 12 weeks of a complaint or a deadlock. However they might have insight into rules regard vulnerable customers and they might be interested in the way the Sky operative ducked the complaint issues, especially not giving a full address to complain to.

Finally, you could email Jeremy Darroch, head of Sky which usually gets a quick response from a high level operative. I don't know if his address still works, jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com but is worth a try.

I normally advise standard escalation routes, but this should be treated with a little more urgency which is why a head office email might be appropriate.

I hope you get tis sorted quickly.

Lockeman.

Teresa68

Thanks Lockeman, I'll give your suggestion a go and let you know how we get on.