Sky Talk & Broadband Warning

amorphix

Hi fellow MoneySavers,

I just recently accepted a "30 day no obligation trial" of Sky's Talk & Broadband service after my O2 contract expired and Sky acquired O2 broadband. They offered me a very good deal to move to Sky (£2.50 a month for unlimited broadband, with no upfront costs). I had reservations about Sky.. the name and company just didn't sit well with me for some reason... their sheer size, Rupert Murdock involvement, their aggressive marketing practices..annoying door to door sales people etc.. anyway, I digress.. the purpose of this post is to give a clear heads-up to anyone else who is offered Sky Broadband at silly £2.50 a month pricing*, on their "30 day, try it at no obligation" offer.. When you get VERY pushy sales people on the phone trying to get you into a contract, be very cautious and check all the small-print carefully, before you agree to ANYTHING, even a "no obligation" trial. If they're pushing hard, and offering incredible fantastic low-price deals, it's normally for a reason, and it's usually not in customers interests or because they're a nice company.

I could write my entire experience and lengthy complaint about Sky (which I have sent to OfCom), but I'm sure it would bore some people (and it's already on my blog for anyone interested in what an absolutely dishonest company Sky really is, and how they operate).

So instead, I will cut to the chase and focus on the issues which will almost certainly harm your wallet should you be tempted to "try out" Sky Broadband to make savings (despite their "it won't cost you a thing to try us for 30 days and want to cancel") promise:

1) The company is not being straightforward and clear with customers about the costs and implications of transferring your phone line from the BT network to Sky Talk. Unless its hidden in the small print on their site, customers are just not clearly made aware (either verbally, in writing or on the website when registering) that switching to Sky Talk means leaving the BT network. And if you decide to leave Sky Talk & Broadband, you may face BT line reconnection charges and lose your phone number**. Several teleco providers informed me they are unable to port numbers across from Sky Talk, even if they were BT network numbers to begin with. This is very significant, and Sky should be making all this abundantly open and clear to new customers. It's something people accepting their "no risk 30 day trial" need to consider carefully, as accepting that offer, clearly has financial and practical implications.

2) Sky are not marketing their "30 day trial" in an honest or ethical way in my opinion. Their sales staff are giving the impression you're not entering into a contract or any obligation during the 30 days trial. Yet if you decide to end the trial and not use Sky service, they suddenly start claiming you agreed to give 30 days notice and can't just switch to another provider before giving 30 days notice, thereby they are actually hoodwinking customers into a form of agreement without consent and costs are being incurred for continued use of Sky's services, despite a customers desire to leave. They claim this "30 days notice" rule (even in a trial) is imposed on them by OfCom. Note: I'm awaiting OfCom's take on that, but it doesn't sound right to me, that customers should be obligated to give 30 days notice, when they're on a "30 day" trial and haven't agreed to enter into a 12-month contract yet.

3) Sky I believe, are intentionally delaying releasing customers phone line service to other service providers by weeks, when it could and should take hours or days. BT have confirmed this, and so have other telco companies I have contacted about switching from Sky. This is most likely to push customers beyond the "30 days trial" period, and to charge telephone line rental.

4) Sky Talk blocks calls to the popular 18185 call cost saver diversion service which allows free calls to landlines. If you dial this prefix number in front of a number, you get an engaged/busy signal on Sky Talk every time. Sky denied causing this, yet 18185 confirmed Sky are doing that. I pressed Sky on the issue, and they stated the 18185 service is "not supported" by Sky Talk. 18185 are aware that some telco companies are blocking their prefix routing number and denying customers savings on their bills, so 18185 have offered an alternative freephone 0808 number you can call before any UK landline you wish to call, for free, any time of the day. Sky Talk are charging for calls to this freephone 0808 number, which does not even appear on Sky Talk bills (only the actual destination landline number appears and its billed at Sky Talk peak rates). There is no indication (from Sky Talk) that the call is chargeable when you dial the 0808 service, in fact it operates normally and uses 18185's normal "zero pence per minute" voice confirmation on connecting calls. This to me seems to be a particularly dishonest and unethical practice by Sky Talk. I stayed on the phone hours, at peak rate, believing it was a free call, and Sky Talk charged me £15 for the call. When I queried how they could possibly justify charging for a call to a free phone number, they said, Sky Talk doesn't support that service and 0808 is not a free phone number***. According to the BT website, 0808 is a free phone number, the same as 0800. Sky Talk then argued that because the 0808 number diverts a call to another number, that call is chargeable, even though it's not being carried over the Sky Talk network and is using 18185's VOIP service. Sky Talk surely should either block the 0808 number or used a recorded announcement that it's not a free call, so customers are aware they're being billed and incurring costs at peak rate. I haven't looked at Sky Talk's contract yet (because I haven't received one, despite paying for a years line rental in advance), but I seriously doubt it mentions 18185, their 0808 number, or call diversion services in general***. Their website certainly doesn't seem to mention the denial of access to these services for Sky Talk customers. This is a again, an important consideration anyone who uses 18185 needs to be aware of, before they enter into a contract with Sky Talk. Most customers, like myself, accept on good faith that a teleco will act honestly and fairly and not charge for calls to a freephone number, so don't think to ask before joining Sky Talk.

* The old saying applies, "if something looks too good to be true, it usually is". And this is certainly the case with Sky's Broadband. £2.50 a month for 12 months gets peoples attention. We all want to save money right now and reduce our monthly outgoings. But logic should tell you that a company can't operate a reasonable standard of service by offering a service so cheap, and advertising it so widely, attracting so many users. And this has indeed been my experience (same as with Virgin and all the big ISPs). The service was appalling. Very slow, with even simple non-video websites "caching" content...frequent forced disconnections/IP charges, obviously as some kind of tactic to prevent anyone hosting servers/services and manage bandwidth. Bottom line, if you need a reliable, fast broadband, look elsewhere, look at smaller ISP's and be prepared to pay more if quality of service and a static IP is important to you.

** Although BT (and some other telco providers) will transfer Sky Talk customers back to their network free of charge, it should be noted that this will take SEVERAL WEEKS as Sky drag their feet (according to BT) on releasing lines over...and also, if you want to switch to a super-cheap deal (such as Primus Saver's £6.50/month) no-thrills landline, you won't be able to switch to those kind of services without incurring a standard £58 BT transfer charge. Those cheap landline providers like Primus/Newcall get charged that fee by OpenReach as an engineer work has to carry out to "undo" whatever Sky do to your line at the exchange, and the cheap landline providers like Primus obviously cannot afford to absorb that charge, so it has to be passed onto customers. Either way you look at it, moving to Sky Talk, and then deciding to leave in the 30 days or 14 days cooling off, WILL cost you money, either by forcing you to go with BT or some other other telco that charges higher line rental and is willing to cover the engineer cost, or else, you'll lose any savings on a budget teleco line by having to pay the BT charge yourself.

*** Update: Sky Talk's pricing tariff on their website clearly states that 0808 calls are free phone calls, the same as 0800 (fully in-line most other telecom companies), which clearly contradicts what Sky staff are saying, as the reasoning for charging for calls made to 18185's 0808 number.

**** Further Update: after going over Sky Talk's website and terms of conditions, it does state that prefix services and Indirect Access Calls (IAC) (i.e. lower priced/free call diversion services like 18185), "may not be allowed" by Sky or "may be chargeable calls".. note how the wording is ambiguous. Yet my experience shows, Sky's policy is very clear, they DO and WILL charge for all these calls, and even hide the fact they're charging for 0808 IAC calls your their bill, but not showing the 0808 number and only the destination number, thereby making it difficult for customers to identify which calls should be free and to challenge Sky over their billing practices.

amorphix

Friday, I was assured (after the intervention of OfCom) Sky would finally release and terminate my phone line "within 72 hours". However, today I find, instead of getting my phone line released SOONER than the 17th September (3 weeks from initial cancellation/transfer request), it's now going to take even longer, due to more Sky unethical and misleading practices...so Sky have gone back on their word and not honoured the 72 hours pledge.

Last week, Sky informed me, a quicker way to get back onto the BT network was to reverse my cancellation request (with them) keep my Sky Talk landline active, and let BT transfer service over. I trusted them and did this, unwittingly*.

The upshot is, today I find out (from BT) that the transfer period is now going to be even LONGER and the 20th September is the date BT are showing for transfer back to BT's network. I'm locked into Sky Talk, cannot switch broadband provider to any BT-network broadband service, and neither can I use 18185, so I'm having to pay for calls, which would otherwise be free.

I'm furious. I've wasted at least 1.5 hours arguing with Sky AGAIN on the phone for the fourth day in a row and listening to their blatant lies and misinformation/stalling tactics. I think it's an attempt to claw back/recover costs, from their "no upfront costs" approach to marketing their "no obligation 30 day trial".. obviously they're incurring costs from OpenReach and modem cost, postage etc.. the longer they can delay a customer transfer from Sky Talk/Broadband, the more monthly rental/service fee they can charge.

They even tried AGAIN to get me to reverse my cancellation request a second time, claiming it would speed up the transfer back to BT, thinking I would fall for it a second time. They also invented a "14 day minimum transfer period" rule by OfCom (which OfCom says does not exist). Unbelievable.

I'm at my wits end with this company. They really are the pits. The worse company by far, I've ever had the misfortunate to deal with.

OfCom are now investigating Sky and in contact with me. I've passed over a lengthy report identifying a number of unethical business and marketing practices plus possible breaches of OfCom regulations.


* BT had refuted this and advised me not to do it this way, saying termination and BT (free) re-action is the way do it fast, if you want a line back on the BT exchange from Sky, since you're then working to BT's schedule, not Sky's, and BT can reactivate lines within 48-72 hours they assured me (usually). Despite trusting Sky and agreeing to reverse my cancellation, BT were obviously proved right, with the transfer date put back to 20th September!