Advice needed re. Sky and Virgin

clyde_valley

Throughout 2007 I became increasingly annoyed with the amount of money I was paying Virgin Media for there 4 meg broadband connection and unlimited phone call package. My monthly bills were easily over £70.

Because of this I decided to leave Virgin and in November 2007 I contacted Sky Talk / Broadband with a view to changing from Virgin Media to Sky. At this time I was aware I would need to have a BT landline. Whilst making enquiries about changing I also discovered that Sky also did line rental for a pound less that BT. I was also aware that when I moved to BT that I would be under contract with them for some.

Whilst discussing Sky Talk and their Line Rental with a Sky customer services agent, I was informed that just after I moved over from Virgin to BT for my line rental, that Sky would then contact BT on my behalf and take over my BT landline contact at NO EXPENSE to me the customer. In fact, more that one Sky agent confirmed this.

After an error with BT (who had noted my telephone number incorrectly), the day (20/12/07) finally came for me to have BT as my landline provider.

On the 20/12/07 I noticed that my main phone and the extension in the bedroom, both didn’t have a dialling tone. I then contacted BT and reported this. After doing some checks a BT engineer finally had to come my house on the 21/12/07. The engineer examined the socket on my main phone point and immediately showed me the “BT wire”, which he believed Virgin (Blueyonder)had removed some years before when I went over to the Blueyonder some years before. The BT engineer further stated that if he had done this, and it had been discovered during an audit, then he would have got his books. He also said that Blueyonder should have built in there own telephone socket.

The BT engineer worked at the main point, then left and later phoned me. I took it for granted that the phone in bedroom would be working. I later found out it wasn’t and after contacting BT was informed that it would cost me £168.00 for an engineer to come back and connect bedroom point. I was told BT’s only responsibility was my main socket.

Annoyed with this, I contacted OFCOM and informed them of what the BT engineer had said to me. The bloke I spoke to was sympathetic and advised me to write to Virgin and suggest that they pay my expenses for any repairs to my second phone point (I can just Sir Richard agreeing to this). OFCOM further told me there was nothing they could do because Blueyonder had allegedly done all this around 6 years ago and they could only look at complaints that were under 9 months old.

Moving on, on the 21/12/07 I contacted Sky and informed them I had changed over to BT landline and requested that I go onto Sky Talk and that they take over my line rental. I also paid them £30.00 for their broadband kit. Sky told me that I would be connected to SKY talk in 10 days and that I would have a broadband connection within 15 days. I was keen for the broadband connection ASAP as Virgin is due to end my Internet connection on the 06/01/08.

On the 31/12/07, and keen to establish how things were going, I contacted Sky. After doing the rounds, Sky Customer Services informed me that I had been apart of Sky Talk since the 25/12/07, whilst Sky Talk Customer Services told me I would only receive Sky Talk after 10 WORKING days and Sky broadband after 15 WORKING days.

It was only at this point that I was told by Sky Talk that they were due to take over my line rental on the 09/01/08, and that they confirmed that I had been mis-informed about Sky being able to take over my BT landline contract at no expense to me (BT later confirmed it would cost me at least £70.00 to come out of my contract with them during the first “12 to 18 months”).

Now aware of this, I again contacted Sky Talk Customer Service and told them that I no longer wanted to have their Line Rental, as I didn’t want to pay BT 70 quid. I was then put through to Sky Broadband and asked when I would have their Internet connection. The chap told me that in light of me no longer wanting the Sky Talk line rental that it would probably be 10 days away.

Throughout this whole process, Sky’s customer service has been totally shocking. One unit in their call centre organisation doesn’t know what the other is up to. And it is quite obvious that agents are giving out duff advice presumably to make a sale.

Can some one please advice me if I have a valid complaint with Virgin (Blueyonder) given what the BT engineer said and secondly what action should I take with Sky? Will a letter of complaint to Sky achieve anything? I am most annoyed about getting duff advice about Sky taking over my BT landline rental contract at no expense to me, and that I will also now go without an internet connection for sometime as Virgin are due to pull the internet plug on me on the 6th January, and thereafter leave me with no internet connection until the Sky connection comes good (and God knows when that will be!!!!!) Further how long I am tied to BT?

Can some one offer me some good advice on the way forward?

normanmark

With regards to how long you're tied in with BT then its up to you. The standard period with them is 12 months, if you want to leave before the 12 months is up then you're liable for the cancellation charges.

About Sky giving you duff information theres not a lot you can do unfortunately, whilst people will tell you things for the hard sell you as the consumer needs to double check the contracts & terms and conditions to ensure you're not caught out.

As for the connection part with Virgin there isn't a lot they could contest in all honesty. They delivered the service via their means & you're no longer a customer of theirs so i doubt they would be interested.

Hope the above is of some use

Heinz

Anyway, with regard to voice telephony, it'll be better for you with a BT landline and only having Sky as your CPS calls provider because, even though the line rental will be 50p per month more, that will allow you to use the 1280 prefix to 'hop back onto BT' for those calls for which they're cheaper (e.g. 0845 and 0870 calls at certain times) and to use 18185 too.

You don't say whether you've gone for Sky Talk Unlimited or Sky Talk Freetime but, in both cases, 18185 will be your cheapest route at all times for calls to UK mobiles and, if the latter, it'll be your cheapest route for weekday daytime UK 01/02 calls too.

Please see the 'HERE' link in my signature below.

darwin-rover

The engineer examined the socket on my main phone point and immediately showed me the “BT wire”, which he believed Virgin (Blueyonder)had removed some years before when I went over to the Blueyonder some years before. The BT engineer further stated that if he had done this, and it had been discovered during an audit, then he would have got his books. He also said that Blueyonder should have built in there own telephone socket.

What does the socket say on it , BT or Telewest/BY

Leodogger

I also was considering moving over to Sky from Virgin and as we had originally had a BT land line to the house before we decided to have Telewest (as it was then), I thought it would be a straightforward swap to Sky. However, customer services at Sky told me I needed to check that I definitely still did have a BT line to the house before they would swap me over. BT told me there could be an "old" line to the house but to get it reconnected it would cost me £149 for an engineer to come and check (no mention was made of entering into a contract with BT as I had told BT I intended to go for a Sky package of internet, tv and phone). I told BT I didn't think I should pay £149 as I knew the line was still there and they suggested that I contact Sky customer services and ask them to foot the bill as an inducement to change over. Sky agreed in the first instance to pay this one off cost and I then asked if I could have the package I suggested and they said yes. Then I was asked by Sky had I checked if there was space at the exchange when I was looking at the packages on the internet. I said I had tried to do this but could only get an approximation of the possibility of space as I only had a post code and not a connected BT land line which would have given me a positive answer. Sky then "went off to consult a supervisor" and came back to say that as there may or might not be space available at this time I could take their "Connect" package which was £12 per month extra - in my opinion their way of recouping their £149 for my BT land line. I said I did not want this but the package I asked for. They then said well I would just have to keep checking the web site to see if there was space and then come back to them when there was. I said how can I do this without a BT Land line to know for definite. They said I would not know unless I paid to have the landline connected and then I could check the phone number and "IF" there was space available on the network I would get my requested package at no extra cost, but to find this out I had to lay out £149 but presumably could then be told, no there was no space available and I would still have to pay the extra £12 per month. I told them I was not interested and if they wanted my business they could come back and let me know when there was space available on the network and left it at that!

Disgraceful way to treat customers in my opinion where once they haggled for your business they now act like they are doing you a favour!

Has anyone else managed to get round these tactics?