Sky changed contract without account holders permission

jimafblack

We own a house that my two student daughters share with two other students. Since there's no cable in the area, we decided that the basic sky tv/broadband/phone package was the cheapest option.

Last year one of the students broke the Sky box and called up Sky. They sent out a new box but upped the package to a higher cost.

We now want to cancel but they claim we entered into a new 12 month contract.

My daughter is the named account holder and only she knows the account password.

Sky claim that the changed the package with the account holders permission. We have asked for evidence that they were speaking to the account holder. They keep saying that they are investigating this. In the meantime we are paying over the odds for the service.

I believe that they have breached some part of Data Protection legislation by speaking to someone about an account when they were not the bill payer.

[FONT=&quot]My thought is to write Sky a letter stating that they have breached Data Protection by changing the package without speaking to the bill payer and stating we intend to write to the Information Commissioner to that effect.[/FONT]

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[FONT=&quot]Anyone suggest a different approach?[/FONT]
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Best regards,

JAFB

Kurtis_Blue

Seems it is down to your daughter to resolve as they would not be able to enter into discussion with you, a third party.

If some one telephoned and used your daughters details to obtain goods or services then she/sky will need to report to the police, how far do you really want to take this? either your daughter gave the details freely or fraud has been undertaken by her friends/fellow tenants.

jimafblack

Agreed they won't talk to me so the letter would be from my daughter. My issue is that they changed the account type without verifying that the person they were speaking to was the account holder. Clearly anyone would be able to claim they were the account holder if they provided say just the post code. I know from dealings with Virgin Media with our own contract that you need to provide an account password before they will discuss anything. If Sky is unable to prove that their call centre staff carried out the proper account holder verification then I feel we are within our rights to terminate the contract.

JAFB

Kurtis_Blue

They did not provide a new box with just a postcode.

jimafblack

Was using postcode as an example of lack of diligence on checking that they were talking to the account holder. The onus on my mine is for Sky to prove that they followed the correct procedure rather than on me to prove they didn't. Since they have stated to us that all calls are recorded and despite repeated requests they still claim to be looking for the recording, I think they have simply used the opportunity to up the rental and commence a new contract. This is known as "slamming" and Ofcom take a dim view of this.

I'm going to write the letter as at this point I have nothing to loose apart from continuing to pay Sky the inflated contract cost.

I've found on a few other occasions that a strong letter that either talks about your intent to take legal action or report the company to the relevant regulatory body often does wonders in changing a no into a yes.

JAFB

Kurtis_Blue

Well once your daughter gets a crime number for this fraud im sure they will take her seriously.
Have you sent back the stb that was obtained by deception yet?

macman

How can you be sure that the person involved did not obtain the password from your daughter, either freely or by some other means? If so, all Sky would require is that and the account holders name. What other verification could they be expected to carry out?
Why doesn't your daughter ask the student who 'impersonated' her about the circumstances?
Assuming that your daughter was out of minimum term contract, and the box was no longer under warranty, then a new 12m contact in return for a free box is not unreasonable.
If the package/tariff was changed, they woud have written to/emailed your daughter, and surely she would have noticed the change in her DD and her online Sky account.

smackaine

Concurrent to the posts above, Sky's view will inevitably be (if the call is found to be legit) that they processed DPA correctly and the fraudulent act was committed by your daughter's friend.

General consensus around Sky is:
-Being the bill payer means absolutely nothing. Plenty of parents pay little Johnny's Sky bill while he's going through hard times.
-Being the account holder means again, nothing. Plenty of wives deal with account in husband's name and vice-versa.
-The *only* thing that it difficult to do if you know the account holder's name, address and password but are not said account holder is cancel. Even downgrading is possible.

Having said this however, DPA breaches do, of course, occur. Sales and upgrades teams on commission have more incentive to bend the rules as well.

One possible problem with obtaining the recording is the different recording methods used in each call centre. In-house Sky have a centralised system whereas outsource Sky will each have their own call recording software which is run in conjunction with Sky. At my call centre, for example, the software is by and large reliable. However, I would say out of every 1000 calls I take, at least one is affected by some sort of issue. If these calls were to be investigated, it would be incredibly difficult to confirm what was spoken about!

I would suggest that you get onto the executory team about this in order to get your problem sorted as quickly as possible. Stalling tactics that seem to be prevelant in 'normal' customer service don't seem to occur as much at the higher tiers.

Good luck getting it sorted- but if Sky confirm the password was known, there wouldn't be much legal basis for you to fight on.

jimafblack

Thanks for the responses to my question. Smackine, your response on recordings makes perfect sense. Which department is the executory team in? A new term to me!

smackaine

These guys are based in Livingston and the easiest way to get through to them is to email one of the execs, Jeremy Darroch seems to do the trick.

I don;t know the exact rules on posting email addresses in the forum, but I'll go the old 'spammer' route, jeremyDOTdarrochATbskybDOTcom.

And I've never really had an extended conversation with them, so I'm not exactly sure what department they would consider themselves. All I do know is they have to deal with some pretty horrific things (slamming) and get paid pretty well to shut up and cope with it!

Good luck!