Another case of terrible service from Sky

jd87

I am posting on behalf of my parents who had Sky broadband and phone fitted on Tuesday. The installation was a complete farce which left them with no phone or broadband and the after care from Sky was a disgrace.

It begins with the installation. I'd first like to point out that I am well aware that this installation was performed by a third party, Openreach. However my parents have a contract with Sky, not with Openreach, so as far as I (and the law) are concerned, Sky are responsible here.

My parents had an existing phone line and broadband with Virgin which was set to be deactivated on Tuesday as they were switching to Sky. They have had BT-line based services in the house before, so there are two existing phone sockets in the entrance hall, one Virgin, one BT/Sky/Openreach. Everything was basically already in place, so all the installer had to do was connect up the ADSL filters and the Sky Hub properly (maybe he did some jiggery pokery with the cabinet down the road too, not sure).

The problems with the installation were that:

• He decided to place the Sky Hub in the front room, making use of an old extentsion lead which was already in place running from the hallway. Fair enough, but this old extension doesn't work any more! Shouldn't he have at least checked/tested this?
• He connected the phone and Sky Hub (via old extension) up to the Virgin phone socket!
• He left without giving any advice at all and left no paperwork. Wouldn't it be reasonable to expect a leaflet on how to connect the Sky Hub up to the Sky TV box for on-demand services? Perhaps a simple mention that the log in details for the new broadband can be found on the hub? None of this information was passed on.

All of this left my not-very-technical-minded parents with no phone and no broadband. Cue an expensive mobile phone call to Sky customer services. The customer service problems were:

• No attempt to help with the problem over the phone. No questions to check if the set up was right.
• Insistance that it was all Openreach's fault and nothing to do with Sky.
• Insistance then that the phone wasn't working because our phone handset must be faulty (it was working fine through Virgin...)
• The only solution offered was that my Mum pay for an engineer visit! :eek:

Of course she didn't pay, and I have diagnosed and fixed all the problems over the phone with her. I just wanted the world to know what a joke Sky are.

penrhyn

Not sure whats going on here, BT OR installed/reinststed a new telephone line. Thats where their responsibility ends. Sky broadband is self install.
Was the BT OR guy doing the job as a favour or did you pay extra to have the broadband installed.

All relavent installation information for the Sky Hub is in the box it came in, along with a leaflet on how to connect to On Demand.

This .http://www.sky.com/shop/__PDF/BroadbandSetUpGuidelines.pdf