Sky boxes must (now) be connected or they will charge a penalty...

jenhugs

OMG I am so glad I have found this thread.
I have had the most terrible argument today with Sky. Over an hour on the phone to the point I was shouting and ended up putting the phone down.


To cut a long story short, we too are being harassed by Sky.


Background details, been with Sky for 11 years. In 2007 we moved over to Sky Plus and then 2008 had multi room installed. They now want the Sky Plus box to be installed to a phone line. As I advised the horrible woman, there is a phone connection at the back of the tv but it has never worked. Both Sky Guys were aware of this issue. Well she said you must have had connection at some point in 2007 because we had a call back. Yes I said which he did by plugging an extension cable from the hall under the stairs through to the lounge. I said in the whole 11 years we have never had connection because we have never been able to order box office or anything like that unless we used an extension lead. Bearing in mind the first Sky guy told us to do this. Well over the years we must have ordered at least 5 sky box office in the whole time. Anyway at this the woman said, well that is what you have been doing then plugging an extension lead in and not being charged. My friend says this is a scam. Excuse me I said are you saying that I have not got it plugged into a phone line because I am scamming Sky? No she said I am just repeating what you said, you said you use an extension lead.....I said well this is what we were told to do when Sky was first installed, and as far as I was aware I had been charged for the very few films I had been ordered. Well this went on and on, because they want £69 for someone to come out, or I get Bt to come and sort it, or have an extension lead running through my hall and living room which is not that simple due to the layout. I am trying to tell the woman that is has never been connected and I don’t see why after 11 years this has now become an issue and after 4 years of having multi-room.

I think it is absolutely disgusting how I have been treated today by Sky. I have never had such shocking customer service before. I was so upset and angry when I came off the phone. My husband will be coming in this evening and cancelling. They would not let me cancel as it is in his name. They don’t give a damn about their customers. It also pees me off how some people are getting HD boxes for nothing or £30 and they want £160 from me. Where is the customer loyalty?



If you have got this far thanks I just had to rant.

Tropez

jenhugs wrote: »

OMG I am so glad I have found this thread.
I have had the most terrible argument today with Sky. Over an hour on the phone to the point I was shouting and ended up putting the phone down.


To cut a long story short, we too are being harassed by Sky.


Background details, been with Sky for 11 years. In 2007 we moved over to Sky Plus and then 2008 had multi room installed. They now want the Sky Plus box to be installed to a phone line. As I advised the horrible woman, there is a phone connection at the back of the tv but it has never worked. Both Sky Guys were aware of this issue. Well she said you must have had connection at some point in 2007 because we had a call back. Yes I said which he did by plugging an extension cable from the hall under the stairs through to the lounge. I said in the whole 11 years we have never had connection because we have never been able to order box office or anything like that unless we used an extension lead. Bearing in mind the first Sky guy told us to do this. Well over the years we must have ordered at least 5 sky box office in the whole time. Anyway at this the woman said, well that is what you have been doing then plugging an extension lead in and not being charged. My friend says this is a scam. Excuse me I said are you saying that I have not got it plugged into a phone line because I am scamming Sky? No she said I am just repeating what you said, you said you use an extension lead.....I said well this is what we were told to do when Sky was first installed, and as far as I was aware I had been charged for the very few films I had been ordered. Well this went on and on, because they want £69 for someone to come out, or I get Bt to come and sort it, or have an extension lead running through my hall and living room which is not that simple due to the layout. I am trying to tell the woman that is has never been connected and I don’t see why after 11 years this has now become an issue and after 4 years of having multi-room.

I think it is absolutely disgusting how I have been treated today by Sky. I have never had such shocking customer service before. I was so upset and angry when I came off the phone. My husband will be coming in this evening and cancelling. They would not let me cancel as it is in his name. They don’t give a damn about their customers. It also pees me off how some people are getting HD boxes for nothing or £30 and they want £160 from me. Where is the customer loyalty?



If you have got this far thanks I just had to rant.

I can see that you're angry but the unfortunate truth is that it is in Sky's terms and conditions that you should have all boxes connected to a phone line if you are on multiroom. The reason Sky give for this is because they need to ensure that the boxes are on your property and that you haven't just given the £10 a month extra viewing card to a friend at another address.

This also ensures that Box Office movies and events ordered through the box are paid for because when you connect to a phone line and order a movie you are not billed there and then. The box performs a callback at a later date and sends a list of all of your ordered programmes back to Sky so that they can bill you for these. I had a friend who was complaining that he couldn't use Box Office due to his "Credit Limit" having been reached, the truth is he was doing what you were doing and not realising that until the box had performed its callback, the programmes were still waiting to be billed on the viewing card.

Anyway, what the Sky advisor on the phone said is basically correct. You should have a permanent telephone connection for all boxes, and sadly admitting that you have never had the box connected reinforces Sky's position.

What the Sky advisor was wrong about is that you don't have to spend £69 for an engineer, or contact BT or even run an extension through your house. The majority of Sky boxes will work with a DECT Wireless Phone Extender which costs about £30 (maybe less second hand) which you use to connect the receiver to a plug socket and to the nearest working telephone socket, and then connect the other device to a plug socket and your Sky box. This allows your Sky box to go about its business, including responding to callbacks from Sky, wirelessly, cheaply and without any clutter.

As for free boxes and the like, you have to ask for them. If my dish goes out of alignment, I just phone up Sky pretending to be a complete moron and asking to cancel because I'm not receiving the service anymore - and they promptly send someone out to realign my dish for free. If you wanted a HD box, before this happened, you could have called up, asking to cancel and 9 out of ten times their retentions department would cut you a deal.

spike7451

jenhugs wrote: »

OMG I am so glad I have found this thread.
I have had the most terrible argument today with Sky. Over an hour on the phone to the point I was shouting and ended up putting the phone down.


To cut a long story short, we too are being harassed by Sky.


Background details, been with Sky for 11 years. In 2007 we moved over to Sky Plus and then 2008 had multi room installed. They now want the Sky Plus box to be installed to a phone line. As I advised the horrible woman, there is a phone connection at the back of the tv but it has never worked. Both Sky Guys were aware of this issue. Well she said you must have had connection at some point in 2007 because we had a call back. Yes I said which he did by plugging an extension cable from the hall under the stairs through to the lounge. I said in the whole 11 years we have never had connection because we have never been able to order box office or anything like that unless we used an extension lead. Bearing in mind the first Sky guy told us to do this. Well over the years we must have ordered at least 5 sky box office in the whole time. Anyway at this the woman said, well that is what you have been doing then plugging an extension lead in and not being charged. My friend says this is a scam. Excuse me I said are you saying that I have not got it plugged into a phone line because I am scamming Sky? No she said I am just repeating what you said, you said you use an extension lead.....I said well this is what we were told to do when Sky was first installed, and as far as I was aware I had been charged for the very few films I had been ordered. Well this went on and on, because they want £69 for someone to come out, or I get Bt to come and sort it, or have an extension lead running through my hall and living room which is not that simple due to the layout. I am trying to tell the woman that is has never been connected and I don’t see why after 11 years this has now become an issue and after 4 years of having multi-room.

I think it is absolutely disgusting how I have been treated today by Sky. I have never had such shocking customer service before. I was so upset and angry when I came off the phone. My husband will be coming in this evening and cancelling. They would not let me cancel as it is in his name. They don’t give a damn about their customers. It also pees me off how some people are getting HD boxes for nothing or £30 and they want £160 from me. Where is the customer loyalty?



If you have got this far thanks I just had to rant.

It's part of the Sky installers job to run a phone line from the phone point to the sky box,now the majority of Sky installer's I worked with would often tell the homeowner "Nah luv,you don't need one at all" so I would argue that;
A-The Sky monkey told you that you didn't need one
B-He made up the extension lead & told you to plug it in once in a while & do a ringback if you ever got any letters.
C-At the time,you paid for a install to be done,expecting everything to be installed correctly,the monkey did NOT fulfil his (Sky's) end of the contract ergo you didn't get everything you paid for.
D- Therfore a installer should be sent out free of charge to fulfil the contract that you had with Sky when Multi Room was added.

silvercar

What the Sky advisor was wrong about is that you don't have to spend £69 for an engineer, or contact BT or even run an extension through your house. The majority of Sky boxes will work with a DECT Wireless Phone Extender which costs about £30 (maybe less second hand) which you use to connect the receiver to a plug socket and to the nearest working telephone socket, and then connect the other device to a plug socket and your Sky box. This allows your Sky box to go about its business, including responding to callbacks from Sky, wirelessly, cheaply and without any clutter.

We did exactly this when we took up multi-room. The Sky engineer was more than happy to use the phone sockets coming out of the phone extender point.

I don't really understand why Sky allow this, other than they cannot police it. I have a friend who shares an internet service (via wifi) and sky multi-room with their neighbour. OK, you have to trust your neighbour not to run up your phone bill, but if you do it makes the price a lot cheaper.

grumpyofwhitecross

I do wish someone would tell the sky monkeys that when they fit an extension cable it DOES need to be plugged into the adsl filter ( if the customer uses them )If its not plugged in , that's the quickest way to drop your broadband speed !

spike7451

grumpyofwhitecross wrote: »

I do wish someone would tell the sky monkeys that when they fit an extension cable it DOES need to be plugged into the adsl filter ( if the customer uses them )If its not plugged in , that's the quickest way to drop your broadband speed !

Unfortunatly,that is something that isn't covered in the Sky installers training.(Well,it wasn't in mine,mind you,being a telecomms engineer,I knew better)

LillythePink

We have HD and a multi room and neither box are connected to a phone line.

They were new installations a year ago when we bought and moved into the house.

We haven't received anything from them to say that we need this.

Enterprise_1701C

Everyone on here with Sky on their backs to connect to a phone line, please do NOT go to BT to install an extension, you could get a quote from BT them, then pick yourself up off the floor and call a small telecoms guy in your local area for a quote. You will be astounded at the difference. You do NOT have to use BT to do any telecoms work in your house apart from the installation of the line.

Tropez

LillythePink wrote: »

We have HD and a multi room and neither box are connected to a phone line.

They were new installations a year ago when we bought and moved into the house.

We haven't received anything from them to say that we need this.

Sky assume that you have read and understood the terms and conditions that they require you to agree to when you take up a multiroom subscription so they won't be sending out anything saying that you need to do this as they expect that you have read this -

Multiroom subscription: £10 pm. Provides the same Sky TV channels as your main Sky TV subscription on a box in another room. You must subscribe to Sky TV throughout and an extra box is required for each Multiroom subscription. Each box you have must be connected to the same fixed telephone line at all times. To receive your HD subscription channels in another room, you’ll need another Sky+HD box and HD Pack subscription.

They randomly send requests for boxes to "callback" or "phone home" to check that they are connected and it seems they review account's every so often to catch boxes that have repeatedly failed to respond to the callbacks. If they catch yours they will send a warning letter first asking you to rectify the situation but if the letter is ignored then they can begin billing you full price for the second subscription.

LillythePink

oh ok thanks for that, it would probably be ok for the multi room to be connected as that is in my parent's wing.