Advice - Neighbour cut my sky cable !!!!

soozgand

Morning Everyone

Oh deary me !!! What a nightmare few weeks we've had. its a long story so ill keep it sorted and simple

2 weeks ago our Sky TV just died, !!!!!!, Gone !!! We were watching a film and it went. Called Sky week later and £65 down sky said its not the box thats fine its your socket its dead.

Ok few days later the managing agents sent out out there own engineer ( Commuinal flats and dish) , he was here for 10 hours bless him, looking at everything, he finally said something has happened from A to B, Dish is fine, Socket is fine but your getting a short.

I was speaking with some neighbours and it just so happened the lady who lives above came in as we were talking, my other neighbour outright said is you tv working she said yer, he asked her isn't.

Now , i didn't get asked what happened, nothing, she went since when , i said week a half sun, her face said it all, she wouldn't allow the engineer in her flat at first she said her husband would put it right and didn't want anyone touching his work, so at this point she knew what they had done No apology, very unaccomodating would arrange a day for an engineer to come to her house, She kept saying she was working , at which point i turned around and stated i had taken 2 days off for engineers and paid £65 , didn't even blink just went upstairs. ( Ive been very polite through all this)

Anyways engineer got in in the end, the cut our wire and routed it into their bedroom

Engineer fixed it BUT now the box actually is fried !!! We get the tv but the hard drive is blown, sky have said it was on when he cut is so its shorted. The recording and + facilities aren't functioning. I explained this to the lady and she is failing to see how the box is her fault and will not contribute any costs. !!

This is a total of £329 we have to pay without days off I've lost for work for something we didn't even do

2 x £65 for engineers and £199 for a new box

Any ideas on it , she will not pay and is really quite unapologetic

amyloofoo

You say they cut your wire and routed it into their bedroom? So was this an intentional act of theft, i.e. deliberately stealing your cable service? If so, then I assume the police and Sky should be informed. Hopefully someone with more specific knowledge / experience will be along to advise. Sounds like you've had a really stressful time with it recently though

Fifer

My understanding was that the £65 Sky call out fee covered any part of the Sky installation which turned out to be faulty. The cut cable was part of a communal installation so I understand why that was out of the remit, but surely the Sky engineer should have checked your Sky+ box, found it to be faulty and replaced it with a free refurb under the £65 call-out charge?

Heinz

Criminal Damage. A police matter.

Moneymaker

soozgand wrote: »

Engineer fixed it BUT now the box actually is fried !!! We get the tv but the hard drive is blown, sky have said it was on when he cut is so its shorted.

That's pretty much a technical impossibility. Shorting out the LNB cable would cause the LNB supply to turn off but it would have no effect on the Hard Drive. Chances are, your HDD was already failing and switching off the mains power to your box simply precipitated the final failure.

In any case, Hard Drives do not "blow" and Sky employ installers not engineers so they wouldn't know anyway.

(I'm not condoning what happened. I'm merely stating that you've been wrongly informed. Chances are that your Digibox was in good enough condition for your recordings to have been saved - by anyone with an ounce of knowledge.)

chanz4

Raise it with whom owns the flats if comunial

macman

If not a criminal matter, then simply take a civil action via the small claims process-assuming that they fail to respond to a formal letter before action, which should be your next step.

howardthecat

You shouldn't have needed to pay a second £65.
When you pay full price for a service call you get a 90 day warranty but if you get a free or discounted service call you you only get 30 days.
If the sky agent booked it wrong call up and you should get the second on credited back.

And also moneymaker is right the hard drive was probably failing for a while

soozgand

thanks guys

well the engineer came out, he said that usually there 9 volts in those cables but when he cut it a surge of up to 24 would have gone down it and fried the receiver/harddrive ( it all got vert technical to be honest lol)

sky sympathised with our situation and credited our account for the call out fees

our neighbour keeps bothering us now though saying there box is now broken ( since the day it happened) and we are not updating them and she was shocked ours was working

i said had she called sky , she goes no ?!!!

i politely said our problem was you cut our cable left us without tv for weeks and ruined our box , i took days off work for engineers on ar least 4 occasions and you now having a go because your box isn't working and your wanting me to sort it !!!! if your box is broken you call sky , if he hadn't cut it in the first place we wouldn't be in this position.

she keeps pestering us and we haven't even done anything

bearing in my mind this is only 2 days her box is apparently broken too, we were without tv for weeks while she refused entry to flat and was very unaccomdating to allow engineers to fix the issue her husband created

spike7451

As the OP states they live in a communal flat,then any repairs to the cabling would have to be done by the company who pre-wired the block,not Sky.
The OP's neighbors box in this case would not be broken but instead be unable to function without a working feed from the dish to the box,you would just see a "No Satalite Signal" error message.
Now as the OP states

Anyways engineer got in in the end, the cut our wire and routed it into their bedroom

It sounds to me like the neighbors used the OP's cable to get multiroom installed to their bedroom as in 95% of all pre-wired flat's I've worked in the is only a single feed to the living room (unless the wiring was done post Sky+ & a siamese cable was used) and no feeds done to other rooms in the property from the dish.

brewerdave

Whats the betting that they don't have a Sky sub?