Sky engineer left a non subscriber with no channels and signal

brightondave

Hi    i am a longstanding Sky customer and I had a call from my daughter today, she doesn't have Sky but has been running successfully for the last year Freesat via a new Humax box and a smart tv.
She called me from her flat saying she noticed there was a Sky engineer outside her front door in the communal cupboard where all six flats electronics and cables are for tv and satellite etc,  his van was parked outside.
When he had gone she noticed she could get no channels or signal at all.
I was fuming how could some dufus come along to allegedly do a repair for another person in the block only to totally mess up what my daughter was using?  I took a look and there are 3 coloured cables hanging loose. I spoke to Sky who tried in depth to investigate for her within their company only to call me back saying that their own people due to data protection they are unable to divulge anything or look into it as she is not a Sky customer and it is down to her to try and find who originally called the engineer out and get them to ring in?
Your thoughts please and if anybody from Sky is reading this, your engineer (probably out on his own on his first day) he visited around 2pm today in the BN10 7QD area.

Chino

If the flat is a leasehold flat your daughter could complain to the freeholder.

brightondave

And where would that get her?
Already called out the maintenance engineers that installed the dish for her, to put what Sky did right.

Barny1979

It's unusual and weird, but maybe speak to her neighbours and explain the situation?

brewerdave

The problem has probably arisen because there are limited connections to the communal dish and someone has now subscribed to Sky. The fitter has checked which flats are subscribers and pinched your daughter's connection. If she is renting ,then is the access to the communal dish included in the agreement?

iniltous

I suppose ultimately it depends on who owns the communal dish , if it’s Sky, and your daughter isn’t a Sky customer, they can remove her connection as they see fit , especially if there is limited capacity and there is a new paying customer requiring the ‘port’ that your daughter occupied, but if the communal dish is the property owners , then  it’s ridiculous to think they did not provide every flat with a connection, so no need to disconnect anyone to supply service to someone else.
It could be a mistake by the Sky engineer, but if a basic TV service is part the building owner’s responsibility , then they may have to fix the Sky mistake, it would be up to them if they thought perusing Sky to foot the bill was worthwhile 

Barny1979

Pursuing not perusing /\

iniltous

spell checkers !!

Xbigman

Does your daughter have a freesat card? If she does she is a customer of sky and should ask sky to correct their error. 
If she was viewing without a card she is going to struggle to convince sky to do anything. 

Even if she has a card her lease agreement might trump other considerations.
Darren

brewerdave

Xbigman said:

Does your daughter have a freesat card? If she does she is a customer of sky and should ask sky to correct their error. 
If she was viewing without a card she is going to struggle to convince sky to do anything. 

Even if she has a card her lease agreement might trump other considerations.
Darren

See original post - she has a Humax box ,not an ex Sky box, so no Freesat card is necessary.

brightondave

UPDATE
Sky engineer traced and came back to fix the fault, spent 2 hours trying to put right what he had done but failed. Somebody else from Sky came out next day and tried to fathom it out but failed and blamed the dish maybe out of alignment due to the bad winds we had had and he left saying call the management of the block.
The guys that do all the work for the maintenance side of all things satellite and installations for all  the flats in the area came out and it took them 5 mins to spot what Sky couldn't and reconnected the offending cables in the right order.  Stating that they are always having to clear up after Sky have been involved with communal cupboards.
Believe in better?    Mmmm