Setanta Sports - Writing a complaint help please

Jillybaby_2

I have had trouble with Setanta for a while now and finally had a tantrum this morning. Got cut off a couple of times before I even spoke to someone. Then cut off halfway threw a rant. Called back and insisted on speaking to a manager (took 30 mins but refused to go). He promised to call me back by 2.00 today, which never happened. However, I called a number from one of these posts and got through to someone in the Escalation dept. The lady sorted me out and sent me an email confirming what she had done. While this won't help you when they owe you money (well it might, I don't know) she seems to have sorted the debt collection letters. The lady was on 028 30831901 this is a direct number to this dept. Good luck all

parkside_stroller

Don't know if this one is on her already but I just got put through to disconnections (my dish is not working and I have taken the Setanta via Freeview route to watch my football).
I was asked to send an email to [EMAIL="requests@setanta.com"]requests@setanta.com[/EMAIL] with my name, address and account number

davethemaster

To be perfectly honest, i really dont know why any of you are complaining.
i will now adress all of the issue you have raised.
with regards to cancellation...
to cancel an account, a written cancellation request must be sent to them by writing.
it states this in the terms and conditions, and is common place within most subscription services.
one argument ive heard is " when i ask sky to cancel sky sports they do it within 4 hours" the reason sky can cancel your sky sports package so quickly is because they are only removing a small part of an overall package they provided. sky operate on an annual contract. and setanta do not. when you subscribe to setanta, you enter into a rolling contract ( and before you start saying you never signed anything, in english law you do not have to sign somthing to enter into a contract, aslong as you have accepted the service, where the terms and conditions have been know to you, then you are then entered into that contract and are bound by the terms and conditions) which basically means that you are subscribed to them untill you cancel your account. ( this also applies to annual subscriptions, as this is an annual payment, instead of a monthly payment, NOT an annual subscription)
the 30 days cancellation period is started from the point of your next billing date. which generally means that when you send off your letter, youve got one more payment to make before you cancel.
alot of people i have spoke to have said that they arent going to pay, and that if setanta try and take them to court over £12.99 they would be laughed at.
they would not be. i have checked the procedure with setanta, as to what would happen if someone owed money and refused to make payment. and as with most big companies they would not take you to court but would instead pass the debt on to a 3rd party debt collection agency. they add on charges for every letter they send, every visit they make. and soon its nowhere near £12.99, then when they debt collection agency takes you to court, adding on their legal fees and what have you, then its not such a small sum. so if i was you, id just make your final payment, because you have to.
unless you have a freeview (DTT) account, in which case you just need to inform them before you next billing date, and the service is cut off 30 days after that point, with no futher payments to be made. because you had to pay this month at the very beggining of your subscription. so job done.
the adress for a DSAT (sky) account to be cancelled is.
Setanta Sports
DSAT Cancellations
PO Box 192
The Quays
Newry
Co Down
BT355BF.

The adress for freeview account is..

Setanta Sports
DTT Cancellations
PO Box 191
The Quays
Newry
Co Down
BT355DT

Any customer services adviser will tell you this. the number is 08712003322
and no, this is not a premium rate number, it is the same as a standard network charge ( around 4p per minute from a BT landline) setanta do not get any of that money, its is a charge put on by your network.

davethemaster

also, setanta are not judicated by OFCOM. so that wont help, if you have had technical issues, you should contact setanta and they will fix the problem, they will re-sent the signal, or take you through a LNB or "low noise block" reset procedure with your sky remote through a secret menu on your setup area. if this doesnt work then it generally means that its an issue with your sky dish, generally the small black box on then end of the antenna which changes the frequency of the signal you recieve and transforms it into a form you can watch. some people say "well all of my sky channels work, why is it that its just setanta that doesnt?" this is because ALL of your sky channels are sent on the same frequency,and are all sent through the same way, whereas setanta is not (obviously). setanta channels are sent though a low frquency and sky is sent on a high frequency. this can normally get broken when it gets water in it (you might not even realise its broken because you would still recieve the high frequency (sky) fine. and gets broken when the change in weather, hot, cold, make it expand and contract causing it to crack. it is only plastic afterall. other than that it could possibly be an issue with your dish allignment, and sky and setanta send from two different satellites, in which case, you would need to get a sky engineer out, because sky is not providing you with the necessary eqipment to recieve your subscriptions. obviously if setanta are sending you the signal and its your equipment thats dodgey, that would be your fault, not theirs, and you would still have to pay untill your account was cancelled. it states everything regarding liabilty of technical difficulties in section 5 of the terms and conditions.
while on the subject of T`s and C`s, the bit relating to 30 days cancellation is in section 5 paragraph G- 1.
setanta did change their policy, to make it easier for the customers, and will now accept cancellation by e-mail, aswell as by letter.
you need to send them an e-mail saying you want to cancel. your meant to include your account number, or if you dont know this this, then your full adress and postcode to make it easier for them to locate your account ( alot of people have the same name remember!) and if you have a multibox account, you have to state that you want that cancelled aswell cancelled aswell.
the reason setanta (like all of the big companies who have a subscription service) ask for cancellations in writing is so all requests can be proplerly processed, and that their is hard evidence, for want of a better term, of your cancellation. this is to remove the possibility of there being any confusion about your cancellation.

if you have any other quieries, post them and i will answer to the best of my ability.

i do know everything afterall

pen1

davethemaster wrote: »

the reason setanta (like all of the big companies who have a subscription service) ask for cancellations in writing is so all requests can be proplerly processed, and that their is hard evidence, for want of a better term, of your cancellation. this is to remove the possibility of there being any confusion about your cancellation.

Sky accept full cancellation of their tv service (aswell as downgrades) by telephone, so I disagree with your assertion that all big companies request cancellation in writing.

In theory a "cancellation in writing" policy might reduce the possibility of confusion, but the irony of your comments is that one of the themes of the many complaints in forums etc. about Setanta in 2008 has been that Setanta didn't process many of the cancellation letters when they were received, even where delivery could be proven because they had been sent Royal Mail "recorded".

I sent 4 cancellations in total- 2 of them recorded. Setanta processed the cancellation after 11 weeks. For many weeks there was no computerised record of the correspondence being received, before it presumably surfaced from wherever it had been laying, and I was "blitzed" by telephone and written demands from Setanta in the meantime.

I respected Setanta's terms and conditions, irrespective of my personal views on them, but Setanta didn't respect them!

crazyfj

Written? Its a delay process, they should accept via the phone. Makes it easy for them to say we never rec'vd that.

davethemaster

if you had sent the cancellation letters by recorded delivery then they would have to honour them, as you would be able to track the code on the letter. and again, the reason sky do this is because they have you tied into an annual contract. and when you say it took you 11 weeks to cancel, was this prehaps when they were still operating under the 60 day cancellation period? which was taken back down to 30 days on september 16th of 2008.
when you are implying that setanta are deliberatly ignoring letters this is not the case. setanta are a legitimate, multi-million pounds company, and would not go around pretending to lose letters to get an extra £12.99. most of the time, when letters are recieved, the reason that nothing is actioned is because customers do not include enough information within the letter to be able to identify which account it relates to. or that people have sent it to the wrong adress.

pen1

davethemaster,

The cancellation request in question was sent recorded delivery in early April.

The terms & conditions required one month's notice at that point, and Setanta subsequently claimed and received by direct debit, a further month's payment, per their entitlement to a month's notice.

They attempted to take another payment, however, because they hadn't processed the cancellation letter, but my bank rejected it because I took the preventative step of cancelling the direct debit in the week previous.

A reminder was sent recorded delivery in mid-May. 2 further letters were sent in June, with certificates of posting obtained.

Every piece of correspondence had the account number on it.

Setanta processed the cancellation in late June.

I haven't implied that Setanta deliberately ignored the letters- I have stated as fact, that they didn't process the letters and have previously stated that I think the standard of their customer service is dire.

As you may be aware, whilst featuring viewing/satellite dish alignment problems, BBC Watchdog added that they had received a "staggering number of complaints" regarding Setanta's customer service "across the board" (not just the satellite platform).
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/watchdog/2008/12/setanta_users_experience_viewi.html

Since rejoining them, they have made further billing errors and when I contacted them to have them resolved they didn't reply to my online message in over a month. As a consequence the situation descended in to chaos, leading to them disconnecting both boxes at separate times, despite me having overpaid and having had to claim the overpayment back from my bank under the direct debit scheme, in the absence of a response by Setanta.

snipsmovies

Has anyone had issues registering for Setanta by Broadband ? ?

I have been a Setanta customer for 18 months now - no problems so far, well none until I had to phone them for the first time........

I'll make it brief....

Got an email from Sky in November informing me about Sky Sports on demand. I always work Sundays and miss the football so the thought of me watching it in work I figured was too good to be true. It wasn't. A quick 5 min registration / sign-up process and I was watching all the Prem matches on Sunday afternoons.

This weekend just gone, I was a bit annoyed at missing the Utd FA Cup 3rd round match - so I went to Setanta.com to see if they also did a web based viewing service.....and to my suprise they did !! ...........at a mere £7.99 a month !! Sky's is free needless to say. However, I spotted that if you are a NEW customer it is only £2.99 a month. OK, I thought - I can live with £2.99, lets see if they will let me have it for £2.99 seeing as I have been a loyal customer for 18 months. Well, the online registration was having none of it, and only gave me the £7.99 option. So for the first time in a year and a half I figured I better phone them.

The first advisor thought I wanted a Broadband connection ! , the second had no idea what I was on about, the third said that cust.services only deal with satellite and cable and the fourth was simply catatonic. So I used their contact form online to email them my query.... no response. A day later I emailed [EMAIL="setantauk@setanta.com"]setantauk@setanta.com[/EMAIL] ..... no response. I phoned the 02077 number and someone at front desk said she would get someone to return my call...... no response.

I know all of this is probably no big deal compared to other peoples frustrations, but the hassle of having no solution to this very simple situation is just crazy. After all I'm TRYING to give them more money - but they just don't want to take it. Crazy.

Anyone any thoughts / advice ? ?

phil_rule

I appear not to be the only one having trouble with Setanta. I cancelled in December firstly because I never seemed to have time to watch it, secondly because I was trying to cut back on expenditure and finally because when I did watch it, I thought the coverage was awful. To describe Setanta as second rate would be to exaggerate it dreadfully. Having cancelled it quite correctly and given sufficient notice as per the terms and conditions, I found it had been cut off early. Over the following three weeks I received 28 calls on my mobile, 17 on my home number, 31 texts and 26 emails. The calls asked me why I was cancelling and the texts and emails threatened me with legal action if I didn't reply or call back. So I decided to fight fire with fire and bombarded them with over 200 emails asking why they wouldn't reply to me. Each email also copied in the previous emails so they became quite long and protratced. It stopped the nonsense for another two weeks but it has now started again. I have now written to Setanta advising them that I have reported the matter to my local police as "A 1st Instance Harassment report" giving details of every call either written or via phone. I have stated that if after 7 working days I receive any further communication from Setanta, I will make "A second Instance Harassment" report. This will be to report a criminal offence. My message to anybody having trouble with this dreadful company is to do what I have done. It does now appear to be working. Also demand that your details are removed from all their mailing lists. One month later send them a Freedom of Inofrmation Act request. If they hold any records on you they are in breach of the Data Protection Act. Good luck.