Sky Talk/Openreach

maurice28

Apologies, this may go on a while, but feel I have to have a rant about trying to sign up to Sky Talk/Broadband.

We moved into a new house in the last week of October, and ordered Sky TV, Talk and Broadband. We ordered ours as the people selling the house were cancelling theirs, and so our order got cancelled by mistake. When I rung about this, they assured me they’d sent it to their crack team of experts who would put the order through as a matter of priority. This was about 2 and a bit weeks ago.

A week later, and we haven’t heard a peep, so I ring again. “Oh, sorry sir”, says the nice Geordie man on the phone. “They have a back log in the team and it hasn’t even reached them yet.” Grr. So he suggests the quickest way is to cancel that order and just put a new one through. This still means another two week wait potentially for the phone to be activated, so it would be done by 24th November.

Then a few days later the nice Geordie man rings back. BT are going to come out and install a new line. God knows why, the previous owners had a Sky phone line until 2 weeks ago, so surely they can just turn it back on? No, apparently BT have to come out. “But I’ve managed to get you a BT appointment a week earlier”, he says. “They’ll be there Wednesday 17 November between 6pm and 7.30pm.

Finally, we are getting somewhere! Then, half an hour after the call, Sky send a text message to confirm the BT appointment…on Wednesday 24 November! So I ring up. The new man I speak to is confused, their system says BT ARE coming on the 24th. He’ll have to get nice Geordie man to call me back.

Nice Geordie man calls me back an hour later. “Don’t worry sir, BT are definitely coming on the 17th, 6-7.30pm. Because I rung and got an earlier appointment, it doesn’t show on the system. You’ll get a letter saying the 24th, but trust me, it’s the 17th between 6-7.30pm.”

He sounds trustworthy, so I carry on with life. Monday just gone, I get a recorded message from BT, confirming the installation time. “Your BT engineer will be with you on Wednesday 17th November…” it says, and I think great, sorted! Then it continues… “between 1pm and 6pm”. Arrrrrgh! That’s no good, I’m at work, and it should be 6-7.30pm, as Geordie man said! So I ring Sky. Another person says “Well, our system says the 24th…” so I calmly explain. He says he will ring BT and check, which he does and gets back to me and confirms it is the 17th, between 6 and 7.30pm. The voicemail was wrong apparently.

So, yesterday was the 17th and finally we are getting a phone line! We made sure we were in for when the engineer arrives….which, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, never happens!

I try to remain a calm and understanding person, but it was with barely concealed, quiet smouldering fury that I spoke to the slightly rattled sounding Sky operative on the phone last night at 8.30, wanting to know what went wrong. I tried not to have a go at her, it’s not her fault, I just explained how frustrated, disappointed and annoyed we were with them, and BT. She tried to call BT, they’d gone home. She said she’d call them this morning. “I start at 8” she said. “Can I call you that early?” I told her that would be fine.

Of course, she didn’t ring. So I call Sky this lunchtime. The man who answers keeps me on hold for 10 minutes while he calls Openreach. He comes back and says the Openreach engineer didn’t turn up last night because he ran out of time! No phone call or message or anything from them to say they won’t make it. And then the final straw? The next available date they can offer is 6th December!

I said then that I wanted to think about cancelling the order, but will I be able to get a install date quicker with another provider? I assume they all use Openreach. And is there any way to complain or make a fuss with Openreach?

Sorry to vent, I know that’s really long!

Heinz

When the Openreach guy eventually turns up, my money's on him saying something like, "I have no idea why Sky have sent me here to install a new line, you already have a Sky line."

Have you tried plugging a phone in by the way? The number of times a line is still active (or mysteriously gets reactivated remotely) is amazing.

Mark_In_Hampshire

All providers use Openreach.

You won't get anywhere with them, as you are not their customer. Their customer is Sky.

For Sky simply to pass on "well, they just ran out of time" is poor, but then Openreach are a monopoly. Unless Sky want to start installing their own phone lines, they have Openreach as a supplier and they were let down, and so in turn were you.

Happens with all line suppliers, sadly.

This [you need an engineer visit when there is already a working line] happened to us with BT, the engineer eventually turned up, raised his eyebrows, rang the exchange, and nearly 9km of near-useless poor quality copper phone line which couldn't support DSL and struggled with dial-up was enabled instantly.

mobilefan

Ive had an issue with skys phoneline and broadband neither of them work for more that 3 days so as im within my 1st month of contract ive cancelled. Customer services lied to me, saying i couldn't cancel but thats a load of old rubbish they finally admitted defeat when they realised that I was not going to be put off and cancelled my account

Chick

Blimey Maurice- your saga sounds exactly like mine!

I'm hoping they got to you yesterday...I signed up for phone/broadband the last week of October after moving into a new-build property.
Engineer appt booked for 11th Nov, we couldn't make that so shifted it to the following day where my partner waited from 8am to 1pm, nobody turned up.
I phoned Sky to check what was going on- they informed me that the appt had been cancelled as they had already come round the previous day and nobody was home (surprise, surprise). Cue a letter in the post informing me they would take £105 from my credit card as a missed appt penalty.

So, appt was re-arranged for this afternoon 1-6pm, I had a strange feeling they wouldn't be turning up so I called Sky this morning to check. They told me that may/may not be coming due to the extreme weather conditions- I live in SE London where all the snow has now gone. I was just about to leave work at 12.50 and I received an email saying 'missed appointment'. A phonecall to Sky confirmed it has been cancelled by BT openzone, next free appt is around Jan 20th :mad:

I really wish I'd just signed up with BT in the first place, I stupidly assumed Sky would be installing the phoneline plus it was cheaper than BT, but I think all the providers have to go through BT engineers first. The moral of the story- get a phoneline with BT then take your pick of broadband providers.

Am now waiting to see what date they offer me, I don't want to cancel it all yet though am not holding my breath...I have a feeling the next battle will be to cancel my account with them and get the original line installation charge refunded.
Phew, rant over!

Chick

Just checked on BT website, went through process of ordering phoneline & broadband- next available appt is 20th Jan 2011 !!:eek: