Sky wont let me cancel - shocking service

Guilefox

We moved to a new house and decided to go with Sky as we already had a Sky + box for the spare multi room, and the overall package cost of TV, Broadband and phone was an incentive.

I will post my timeline rather than rant.

- January 28th - ordered Sky (full monty)
- February 13th - advised date our broadband would be activated.
- February 10th - advised they had accidentally cancelled our entire order. Re-ordered. We Complain.
- March 10th - Told in letter to expect an engineer to come and "activate us"
- March 10th - engineer arrives (he is a sub contractor to the contractor BT Openreach contracting to sky!) he is paid "per job" and seems in a hurry. Phone seems ok but broadband not working. We Complain.
- March 12th - BT Openreach engineer arrives. It turns out engineer no. 1 had disconnected our neighbours phoneline and connected it to our line! Hence phone but no data. Engineer says he fixes everything... in fact he does and later that day broadband works! :T
- March 28th - Broadband disconnected/stops working - phone line dead.
- March 29th - We Complain to Sky. Turns out engineer no. 2 fixed everything but didnt tell Sky. So Sky took it that we wanted to leave and issued another engineer at exchange to cut us off?! Told we need to reorder - may take at least another two weeks.

So as you can see this is a pretty shocking service. But unfortunately from here on it got worse. When I called yesterday to complain I was told there was nothing they could do. I said I feel inclined to cancel everything. I said that overall as a new customer of Sky who had taken out the full monty at not that short of 100 quid a month they would be eager to keep me. I said perhaps they can give me half price line rental or something as an apology and I could try them fourth time lucky. They put me through to their "cancellations department" to arrange.

This is not Sky this is an outsourced "call centre" called "Response Outsourcing" they had no interest in keeping me as a customer. They said that as the phone and broadband issues had dragged on for over a month and that as I had not had a problem with the TV (which I actually had but resolved it after two calls to sky customer services) I was under contract to keep the TV they can only cancel the phone and broadband "bonus packages". The operative refused to pass me though to a supervisor too but said he spoke to him and he agreed they could not help me and that was the end of it. They gave me an address to write to sky if I wanted to complain about my service.

Ok sorry I ended up ranting a bit but here is my question.

Am I stuck with Sky TV? Seems unfair. I bought the whole package together but only half has really ever worked. I cant access all the TV services because I dont have a workign phone line thanks to them. I guess I need to read the small print on my contract somewhere.

But would/can Sky treat the phone/broadband and TV as separate contracts? Are they in breach of just the phone one/broadband contract and im stuck with sky TV for 12 months? :mad:

richard734

[EMAIL="jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com"]jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com[/EMAIL] when I had problems, I emailed the CEO, got the directors office complaints team. I had a SKy engineer (not a bt or other subcontractor) within 48 hours, 6 months free TV package and a rather nice cheque for £20 to cover the cost of all my calls to the 0844 number they use - I did make a comment abount Sky using thier own incompetence as a revenue generating opportunity!

Guilefox

Thanks Richard worth a shot! Cheers :beer:

macman

They are separate contracts. Harsh to blame Sky for BT OR's screw ups.

jaibaby

macman wrote: »

They are separate contracts. Harsh to blame Sky for BT OR's screw ups.

But a nice big company like SKy should have their own engineers, not use BTs.

Ciske

jaibaby wrote: »

But a nice big company like SKy should have their own engineers, not use BTs.

Moreover, Sky are responsible for managing their supplier (Openreach) and ensuring their customers get a good experience. Openreach have escalation procedures and if it's their fault, Sky should use these processes to support their own customer. Only lazy companies blame their suppliers.

macman

But since OR have a monopoly on the local loop, they are a law unto themselves.

Tucker

Similar to Richard, when my installation wouldn't work several years ago, I was being fobbed off ringing 0845 numbers and being told they'd blipped my box and to wait 24 hours etc... that went on for a week. Turned out the engineer de-activated the new SKY+ card by mistake instead of the old standard SKY one.

I found via the web an email address for their head man and emailed him direct. I got a call from someone in his department and they sent me out a new viewing card by special delivery, gave me 6 month free viewing and let me have a 30 day contract instead of the 12 month one, in case I changed my mind after the 6 months were up.

hangers

richard734 wrote: »

[EMAIL="jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com"]jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com[/EMAIL] when I had problems, I emailed the CEO, got the directors office complaints team. I had a SKy engineer (not a bt or other subcontractor) within 48 hours, 6 months free TV package and a rather nice cheque for £20 to cover the cost of all my calls to the 0844 number they use - I did make a comment abount Sky using thier own incompetence as a revenue generating opportunity!

I have been a loyal customer for 10 + years, after reading the great deals some current customers are getting, I tried my luck and rang last Friday. I hoped to reduce my monthly cost. No discount at all unless I reduced the package! I sent an email about my call to customer service cancellations and said that I felt it was very unfair that new customers were able to get fab deals, others getting discounts, M&S vouchers etc... and as a long loyal customer I was getting no benefits.

Anyway, no reply received until I emailed same message to the address Richard quoted. Received phone call tonight offering half price on main package and half price on line rental for 6 months.

So big thanks to Richard for posting the email address, managed to save about £28 a month for 6 months - will help.:j

Tucker

hangers wrote: »

I have been a loyal customer for 10 + years, after reading the great deals some current customers are getting, I tried my luck and rang last Friday. I hoped to reduce my monthly cost. No discount at all unless I reduced the package! I sent an email about my call to customer service cancellations and said that I felt it was very unfair that new customers were able to get fab deals, others getting discounts, M&S vouchers etc... and as a long loyal customer I was getting no benefits.

Anyway, no reply received until I emailed same message to the address Richard quoted. Received phone call tonight offering half price on main package and half price on line rental for 6 months.

So big thanks to Richard for posting the email address, managed to save about £28 a month for 6 months - will help.:j

Well done.:D It's getting to the right people who have the descretion that counts!

Good to see you got a result.

spike7451

jaibaby wrote: »

But a nice big company like SKy should have their own engineers, not use BTs.

They do,but BT will never allow third party companies that are not direct contractors for them to work on their network.