Sky charge me £ 65 service call without telling me beforehand there would be a charge

jb66

McKneff wrote: »

They dont have to 'tell' you. It's in your terms and conditions.

You surely cant have expected them to come out and do the repair free of charge.

Virgin do, so some might assume sky do

McKneff

jb66 wrote: »

Virgin do, so some might assume sky do

Yes, maybe some Virgin customers might assume Sky do but
Sky customers shouldnt lol

chanz4

sky customers own their box from day one, virgin rent theres

deanos

Sky have always mentioned the charge when i have called them in the past, they have always waived it when i have threatened to cancel.

The should have told you in the phone call that you agree to the charges, as mentioned hopefully you paid by direct debit and call the bank.

Just had a quick scan of the terms and cant see a call out charge mentioned

ilikewatch

Like others, I'm surprised that you weren't expecting to be charged for Sky to come out and repair your system.
My car broke down a few weeks ago, and I called out a garage to repair it - no mention of a charge was made when I called, but I didn't assume that they would provide this service for free.

prowla

The last time I had a call out, I said that I had been a Sky customer for a very long time and didn't want to pay for it - they did it FOC.

(The difference between Sky and a garage is that you need the specific branded Sky kit to be able to use their service.)

spiritus

ilikewatch wrote: »

Like others, I'm surprised that you weren't expecting to be charged for Sky to come out and repair your system.
My car broke down a few weeks ago, and I called out a garage to repair it - no mention of a charge was made when I called, but I didn't assume that they would provide this service for free.

Don't be so facetious !!

You don't have a contract with your garage so why use that as an example ??

The fact that Sky will remove the charge if people threaten to cancel is typical of the way Sky operate.

They don't provide the same offers to all their customers. My neighbour might be offered half price Movies for 2 months but I won't be etc

ilikewatch

spiritus wrote: »

Don't be so facetious !!

You don't have a contract with your garage so why use that as an example ??

Ok, - I have a contract for my mobile, but if the handset developed a fault once it was out of warranty I wouldn't expect Vodafone to repair it for free, and if I phoned to book a repair through Vodafone I would enquire about the cost before sending the phone to them.

I agree that it would be good practice for Sky to explicitly tell you about this charge when booking a repair visit. In all fairness I'm sure that in most cases they do, certainly a couple of years ago when I phoned Sky to report a fault I was not only told about the charge, the CS agent even pointed out that I probably had a faulty Sky box and it would be possible to find a used box far cheaper elsewhere, then get it paired to my viewing card afterwards.

spiritus wrote: »

The fact that Sky will remove the charge if people threaten to cancel is typical of the way Sky operate.

It's good business sense, and probably typical of the way most successful companies would operate in Sky's position.

spiritus

ilikewatch wrote: »

Ok, - I have a contract for my mobile, but if the handset developed a fault once it was out of warranty I wouldn't expect Vodafone to repair it for free, and if I phoned to book a repair through Vodafone I would enquire about the cost before sending the phone to them.

I agree that it would be good practice for Sky to explicitly tell you about this charge when booking a repair visit. In all fairness I'm sure that in most cases they do, certainly a couple of years ago when I phoned Sky to report a fault I was not only told about the charge, the CS agent even pointed out that I probably had a faulty Sky box and it would be possible to find a used box far cheaper elsewhere, then get it paired to my viewing card afterwards.



It's good business sense, and probably typical of the way most successful companies would operate in Sky's position.

I think there's a legal argument to be made that if an appliance breaks down outside the 12 months i.e. 12-18 months then perhaps the provider "could" look at replacing it free of charge or repairing it.

In Sky's case there is a strong case for the customer to consider cancelling the contract and simply moving to Virgin. When all is said and done it would have cost me around £ 65 or less to have a new Virgin box installed.

That aside-I would have liked to have been told about the charge beforehand. People saying that I should have been aware of it is irrelevant. Not everyone is aware of the call out charge or to be more precise how much it is.

Sky had a duty of care to inform the customer of the charge and in fact, they agree with this statement themselves !

They should also have given me an option to pay the service charge either by card or via my direct debit-obviously I wasn't given an option as no mention was made of any charge.

I am afraid I also disagree with your final sentence that it makes "good business sense" to treat all customers unequally.

"Business" is a two way street between the provider and the customer. Just because something benefits the provider and disadvantages the customer does not automatically make it "good business sense".

There's a growing wave of consumers who are getting fed up of being made to feel that we should be grateful to be customers of X Y Z company.

Power to the people ! :T

yrp01

To be fair i do work for tech at sky they most certainly should have told you of the charge. Skys stand point on it will probably be "your responsibility to check your bill".

However i would raise a complaint via sky.com or email the executives team because sky have no over the phone way to truly listen into the call which is what this seems to require.

If you havent phoned to contest it already (which im assuming you have) then phone state what has happened and what your expectations are ask the agent to go conult with his manager if there is nothing they will do then ask for a complaint to be raised then contact jeremy.darroch@bskyb.com and ask for your bank charges + £65 back.

If you wish to deal with it on the phone best bet is to go through to cancellations and see what they will do to compensate you if it all.