Sky Sports cancelled, not paused my subscription

paulhowardhunt

So 17th March - Sky says customers can pause their sports subscription. I get in early and on 18th March I believe I paused my Sky Sports Premier League Subscription (it only saves me £4 a month as I had a deal). Late in April I receive an email asking if I want to 'rejoin' Sky Sports for only £23 a month, this makes me raise my eyebrows and worry that it was cancelled. I tried calling but very busy. I tweet their help team who ask me to check my bill - there's no Sky Sports suggesting it was indeed cancelled. Help team said I had to call as they couldn't deal with subscription queries.

So I call, hear the recorded message and as i'm not shielding or a key worker I hang up, it's months until football's back what am I worrying about?

I call again today seeing that you can get the channels you had back until football returns without having to pay extra. The recorded message still mentions key workers and shielding but also mentions vulnerable groups 'like the over 70s'. I have asthma, but no serious - the government original put me in that category with the over 70s and people with a broad range of vulnerable, but not shielding conditions so I continue. I'm told that before 31st March they had no function to pause accounts and I did indeed cancel my account. I keep saying that they shouldn't have allowed me to pause when in fact I was cancelling, eventually I hung up on them out of frustration.

I call again armed with the complaints line number, various publicity from 17th March saying that we could pause our subscriptions and a determination to get them to hear the recording. The agent keeps parroting the same line about it not being possible before 31st but I persist and she says she will listen to my original call and the notes - once she completed a questionnaire. Five minutes later the questionnaire which determined if i'm a key worker, vulnerable or not is still going on. They won't speak to me - fair enough I think, if they'd make it clear at the very start of the call that when they mean 'vulnerable like the over 70s' they mean people properly shielding, with a letter from the Government then I wouldn't have called, but they didn't.

So firstly a warning - if you 'paused' before 31st March do check, they may have cancelled it. Secondly what the hell do I do now? I guess I have to wait until these contact restrictions ease and hope they still have a record of my call (and that the PL doesn't return before that happens?)

Although I completely understand they may be short staffed and prioritise those in need / key workers the online system allows for no nuance whatsoever.

[Deleted User]

I don't really know why you are worrying about this? You've cancelled an element of your TV subscription, but when live Sport resumes you can just subscribe again. You can do this online without speaking to an operator and it's almost immediately restored. 

In the meantime, the content available on the channels is pretty poor so you aren't missing much. 

I'm a bit surprised you wanted to pause the Sport at all, as you had a very generous discount. 

paulhowardhunt

I paid £4 a month before 'pausing' it. They now say I have to pay full whack because apparently cancelled it. So whilst I can do this online it'll cost me a lot more than if I could speak to someone and get the original discount restored.

[Deleted User]

The point is that you don't have to worry about accessing the channels immediately if you  want to.  Whether Sky will honour the £4 a month you were previously paying is indeed something you'll have to take up with them when things return to normal...

paulhowardhunt

You should work for them.

SmashedAvacado

I have exactly the same problem - I phoned to pause a couple of months ago (before the ability to pause it on the STB was available) and they cancelled it  and there is literally no way of getting through to them to speak to correct this. I have tried calling but they won't speak to their customers. I am also moving house and again, I have called them to go through minutes of gumph on the phone where at the end they just say they are too busy to help. I appreciate they are busy but they surely are capable of having their staff working remotely. Their customer service is shocking.

[Deleted User]

SmashedAvacado said: I appreciate they are busy but they surely are capable of having their staff working remotely. Their customer service is shocking.

How could they  have Call Centre staff working from home? It would be a technical and GDPR nightmare. 

The reason they are "busy" is that many staff are furloughed. They aren't "busy" so much as swamped. They are also prioritising the vulnerable. 

Live Sport isn't returning anytime soon. So relax and wait until things return to normal before worrying about your  "lost" Sky Sports subscription. 

bradders1983

Moneyineptitude said:

SmashedAvacado said: I appreciate they are busy but they surely are capable of having their staff working remotely. Their customer service is shocking.

How could you have Call Centre staff working from home? It would be a technical and GDPR nightmare. 

Very easily given they are. TUI lady I spoke to last week was, and the lady on the British Gas advert is. And a woman who I spoke to from Jet2 MONTHS ago was working from home long before all of this.

As an aside, when I rang Sky recently I told them I worked for the NHS. They have no way of checking this. Just saying. Nudge nudge wink wink.

[Deleted User]

bradders1983 said:

Very easily given they are. TUI lady I spoke to last week was, and the lady on the British Gas advert is. And a woman who I spoke to from Jet2 MONTHS ago was working from home long before all of this.

The woman in the advert? You mean the actress?

What have travel firms and Utilities got to do with telco call centres? 

Sky Call Centre customer facing staff are not working from home. Most are furloughed which precludes them doing any work for Sky at all. 

Best advice is that if you have a non-urgent query,  just wait until things return to some semblance of normality. 

Perspective. 
 

bradders1983

Your comment "how could they have call centre staff working from home" seemed to me to be a comment that you couldnt think ANY call centre staff could possibly work from home whatsoever.

Maybe be more specific next time to avoid confusion.

There is probably nothing stopping Sky letting them work from home if other companies can manage it.

[Deleted User]

bradders1983 said:

Your comment "how can you have call centre staff working from home" seemed to me to be a comment that you couldnt think ANY call centre staff could possibly work from home whatsoever.

Maybe be more specific next time to avoid confusion.

I said how can they (Sky) have call centre staff working from home. So I was very specific. 

It's also (as I've said) a technical and GDPR nightmare having staff access private customer details from home. Are the staff to use their own phones and computers to do this? 

Regardless, neither Sky nor Virgin nor BT have enabled customer facing call centre staff to work from home.