Phone line held ransom by sky!

Nekoda

Oh and no haha! We have a modern sky box, no "fliddling" we just bought the ppv, downloaded as normal.

It was skys claim it must have been the inet (inet was fine, downloaded film obviously) then they tried to tell me something about the signal only just reaching them (I queried how it would take 12 months for a signal to reach them to which the bloke became tongue tied, naturally)

Nekoda

I also forgot to mention BT have offered to refund me the £80 early termination fee sky have charged me, once I've paid it. They have been great so far and understanding of how badly sky have been with us, however I am aware it's because I'm a new customer
Either way theyve sorted me out with a new socket AND paid some of my final bill with sky ^_^

Sorry for the triple post my phone wont let me edit my previous post!

iniltous

It's my understanding a company cannot stop you moving to a new provider , regardless of the account being in debit etc, if the old company are 'owed' money they can use the normal methods to recover any debt if they wish, if in the opinion of the losing service provider the account wasn't settled then a lot of people would be unable to move, after all the final bill normally arrives after the change of provider has taken place
Were you attempting to keep the number you had with Sky , they may be able to mess you around in those circumstances, but they shouldn't , you could speak to the regulator about this as it's probably an abuse of the system by Sky

parttimeskint

Sky advisers can't set up payment plans on active accounts anymore, no matter how hard you get them to try. Before even being switched back on and restrictions removed you have to get any outstanding amount to less than £20. A manager can override that but If they switched you on with an outstanding amount then the system is likely to just switch you back off again automatically.

If phone and broadband were restricted then Sky can't do anything with the service until it was back to being active again anyway but you would still be able to get another company to take over at this point. However, you did say you forced a breach of contract and sky issued you with termination charges. They will only issue termination charges after the service had been terminated. In which case Sky never even had your line anymore and you would have by this point already lost your number. Perhaps why BT couldn't take it over?

3 months is normally how long a number is quarantined for before it can be reissued.

Glad BT got you sorted though.

[Deleted User]

Nekoda wrote: »

A luxury it may be but surely customer service should come first, helping customers who come into money troubles would be something I would have expected from them

As I said earlier, they are not a utility and so do not behave as one. It's hardly a "customer service" issue if you are having money troubles.

Regardless, you are better off as a non-Sky customer if you are struggling. Banks regard Sky accounts as evidence of wasteful spending when their customers complain they are in financial hardship.

Just make certain you don't end up in a similar situation with BT in the future...

[Deleted User]

brewerdave wrote: »

Can't work with a modern Sky HD+ box cos its a wireless connection.

Still has to be connected via Wi-Fi (or ethernet), so of course it can easily be circumvented. Since Sky provides some PPV on a credit basis, it would still be possible to order pay-per-views up to a certain limit before the service would become unavailable.

However, once the connection is restored, Sky would receive the purchase information stored in the box and bill accordingly.


I am in no way accusing the OP of doing any such thing deliberately or otherwise, of course.

brewerdave

Moneyineptitude wrote: »

Still has to be connected via Wi-Fi (or ethernet), so of course it can easily be circumvented. Since Sky provides some PPV on a credit basis, it would still be possible to order pay-per-views up to a certain limit before the service would become unavailable.

However, once the connection is restored, Sky would receive the purchase information stored in the box and bill accordingly.


I am in no way accusing the OP of doing any such thing deliberately or otherwise, of course.

...but if the internet connection was deliberately broken then On Demand and catch up services would be unavailable -rather defeats the object of a modern Sky Box.
On the old Sky+ boxes, the telephone connection served no real purpose, few people had it connected

[Deleted User]

brewerdave wrote: »

...but if the internet connection was deliberately broken then On Demand and catch up services would be unavailable -rather defeats the object of a modern Sky Box.

My point was that it was possible. Not everyone uses On Demand and Catch Up services, of course, and Sky Store is still available without internet.

I'm not sure "few" had the telephone connection either, although in recent times Sky has certainly relaxed this requirement.