Warning - SKY £75 Pay Once Watch Forever problems

NonGeographicalMan

There was also a good article by Chris Tryhorn in last Monday's (August 4th 2008) Guardian about Sky's inertia selling trickery of the elderly, disabled and financially disadvantaged as a result of it being awarded the Digital Switchover project in the Borders region.

See www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/aug/04/digitaltvradio.television

In addition you might also be interested to know that due to apparently poor alignment of the satellite dish and LNB through a tree canopy by the installer of my mother's Sky Pay Once Watch Forever service last November (which has not withstood the tree canopy now coming in to full summer foliage) it can now no longer get Euronews, Travel Channel, Zone Romantica and a host of similar second string FTA channels in the Sky EPG broadcast on various transponders on the Eurobird satellite. So mindful of the fact the system is only guaranteed by Sky up to mid November I called them up on the 01506 number on the www.saynoto0870.com website and was told that because my mother had cancelled her subscription after 6 months the system was no longer Sky's responsibility and she would have to pay to get it fixed herself.

I then reminded the person I was speaking to at Sky (a relatively pleasant Scottish lady who was clearly only following orders to avoid support calls to non paying customers) of my mother's 1 year commitment to keep her box connected to the phone line under the terms of the Interactive Discount contract not to mention the usual custom of goods and services in the UK being guaranteed for one year and this product and associated satellite dish and cabling also being subject to that one year guarantee.

I was then placed on hold for over 10 minutes (fortunately on the free 01506 number) and the lady at Sky finally came back to me to tell me there had been a misunderstanding and my mother was indeed entitled to free service calls for up to one year and how would a service call on Monday afternoon be.

So as ever Sky cannot be trusted to honour any of their contractual commitments on this Sky Pay Once Watch Forever product and I am sure precisely the same thing will happen to people in the Digital Switchover areas who do not agree to become paying Sky customers after the trial free two months sub period to Sky+ and who then need defective satellite dish installs or defective Sky+ boxes (eg due to early hard drive failure) attending to under the terms of the one year guarantee. It seems that only those who are persistent and stick up for their rights will manage to force Sky to honour its contractual obligations.... :eek::mad:

harz99

Interesting article. I stay in a part of the Border region and will be interested to see exactly what paperwork Sky supplies to people who get these set ups for £40 or nowt - what is the betting they will try and get DDs set up etc as they did with our £75/78 Pay Once Watch Forever deals. Unfortunately we are not due to change until April 09 so no info yet.

Boogie83e

:j

Thank you harz99 for OP, and to everyone else on this thread. :T

Just received an email from Sky...


Dear Mr X


Customer Account Number: XXXXXXXXXXXX


Thank you for contacting us regarding the Pay Once Watch Forever offer.


Further to our telephone conversation, I can confirm that I have cleared the full balance from your account. I have also advised our nominated collection agent to withdraw all action against you.


Please allow me to again offer my apologies for any inconvenience or distress that this matter has caused you.


Should you require any further assistance please do not hesitate to contact me at the above e-mail address.


Yours sincerely

David Robinson
Customer Relations


Thank God this is over...and its taken 4 months!

:j

skodafan

A follow up from my posting of 6th August - I have not as yet had a written reply from SKY although a message was left on my answerphone yesterday (22 days after they received it) to say it was in hand.

I have just spoken to Consumer Direct who are now referring this to trading Standards.

PLEASE PLEASE will all of you who have had this problem with SKY over the pay now watch forever terms phone Consumer Direct ( who are part of Trading Standards) on 08454040506 and report the details to them.

Apparently every time a report is made it goes to your local Trading standards dept but also to the one where the organisation being complained about is based, so if we all complain, the T.S. dept at SKY's head office will get copies. I have been told today that what they are doing is a criminal offence so if they get a number of complaints they will take it further.

Together we can surely make SKY wish they had listened when this first started being a problem!

snortmaiden

I have been told today that what they are doing is a criminal offence so if they get a number of complaints they will take it further.


Surely they should only need one complaint if SKY are committing a criminal offence??

NonGeographicalMan

snortmaiden wrote: »

Surely they should only need one complaint if SKY are committing a criminal offence??

Sadly not.

Taking on Sky will be expensive and they want to have plenty of evidence of a number of incidences before spending the relevant time and money on solicitors etc.

Dave99_2

I've been reading this thread since March before I bought my "Pay Once Watch Forever" package, so I was antcipating trouble. Just as well I've got a sense of humour because I've had trouble from the point of arranging the install. So I tried to cancel the Sky services pretty much as soon as it was up and running. I thought I'd got rid of them at the end of April when they disconnected all the Sky services (3 months before the end of the Pay Once... promo).

Oh no, guess what they sent this morning. The usual letter about £192 for the rest of the years contract - extra charges - blah, blah, blah. Just as well I never gave them any bank details or signed a Direct Debit. So I've emailed Jeremy Darroch, CRSupport and AllCustomerCareEscalation all the stuff from March, phoned 'em to tell 'em it's coming, I've complained to OfCom and Otello and posted it all to Sky Recorded Delivery (as Otelo and OfCom like Recorded Letters). I'll let you know what happens.

Dave

RajaStyle

I bought one from comet today, can i get a refund if i haven't broken seal ?

bomber2

well i got the dreaded call from the dreaded debt company tonight,£96.00 apparently owed to them on skys behalf.Total rubbish everything was cancalled on the appropriate date and told that was the end of everything by the operator,nothing to pay,no direct debits to follow.So tried to phone them and surprise surprise 30 mins on the phone and no luck.sent an email to [EMAIL="mysky@bskyb.com"]mysky@bskyb.com[/EMAIL] awaiting a reply,altough not really expecting one.any advice would be helpful

Dave99_2

Result!

Just a follow on from my post of last Thursday. I've had an email from CRSupport in responce to my email to Jeremy Darroch of last week. Very apologetic, my contract is now cancelled, I owe them nothing, etc. I just wish I could believe them - we shall see.

Just another tack for those who might be getting desparate. This worked a year or two back when I took on NTL about double billing phone calls. Try the satellite TV regulating authority. It used to be OfCom, but I think it's changed now. I've noticed that civil servants don't pay much attention to complaints but they do get very upset if you query their integrity in making decisions. I wrote to Oftel and suggested that NTL weren't a fit organisation to hold a Public Telecoms Licence. Oftel suddenly became very interested and the matter was sorted in a couple of days. Top execs from NTL phoning me to apologise, etc. I'm sure Sky hold a Public Licence for something or other, it might be worth trying to find out who granted it and then raising a query about their 'fitness' as a company.

Cheers, Dave99