kirennia
Part of the furniture
- Joined
- Dec 26, 2003
- Messages
- 3,857
Fuckity fuckity fuck Sky broadband! Let the wall of text commence!
I've been adding to this as events have occurred, then shortened it as the wall just got silly, hence my change in mood or whatever during the wall. Scroll to near the bottom if you just want a summary... Enjoy!
19th May - This sorry tale all started a while back with the decision to try and move to talk-talk broadband as all I'd heard were good things. Upon ordering that, the sky broadband package on our second line was set to close down in a months time and talk-talk was on its way giving us a days buffer for the 28 days needed to switch to a new service. Around three weeks after having ordered the talk-talk connection however, they phoned up asking us why we'd decided to cancel our new contract which hadn't even started...but we hadn't cancelled it. For whatever reason, talk-talk thought we'd cancelled so, instead of facing a fresh 28 days while they restarted the whole process again (which would have meant three weeks without any internet at all), we decided to just reactivate our sky connection. So, a phone call was made, sky were happy to have us back and they said they'd just continue our current contract.
26th May - A week passed and all of a sudden, the internet cut out as well as our second landline (which the internet is connected through) so we phoned up asking what happened using our other phone. Apparently we had been disconnected as our contract ran out...our reactivation hadn't gone through because with sky broadband, you can't cancel a cancellation at all, period... Clever eh? They have a stretch of 8 days after cancelling to reactivate although it turns out, the guy who said we could just continue, could have just started the contract again, leaving us with only one day without the internet as activating an already existing account only takes five days. So lies were told when they said they'd continue our package as per normal. As a result, we were told a new contract would be started within a week. So began the period of time with no internet and unfortunately, the troubles were only just beginning...
2nd June - Another week passed with no movement so a phone call was made and lo and behold, the new contract hadn't gone through at all; there was nothing on their books other then a cancelled contract but they did have a record of the phone call taking place... So we placed the order again but this time were told, three working days and it'd all be sorted.
5th June - Three days later, I called up, ended up being put through to the manager who said he had absolutely no idea why I'd been told what I'd been told. It turns out that when phoning through the sky broadband services number, firstly, you can't activate the broadband and phone line just through that number and secondly, three days is a bogus claim which they know they can't do anyway. Instead, you need to go through Sky Talk and activate it through there, which we hadn't been told. I was directed through to another number where another member of management was very apologetic and said he'd put the order through personally to make sure all was right. He then said he'd contact us in two working days to give us a progress report so, I gave them our first landline number for contacting us.
7th June - Two days later, an hour and a half earlier then expected, he rang! Shock, horror! He said it'd all been put through, BT had established the line and they were ready to connect. Hurrah! Early hurrah! Unneccessary hurrah! Because in fact, they'd somehow, in two days, managed to establish a connection to the contact information phone number I gave them...unfortunately, we can't run the internet through that number for logistics purposes and besides, that wasn't what I'd bloody asked for...
9th June - So back to square one, the manager said he'd ring in two days again which he didn't, so I phoned up and was put through to another person. Once again, they'd managed to put an order through for the contact information phone number. So this guy, who says he's going to put in a formal investigation to see what's what managed to do the exact same mistake, twice in a row and should now rightly be part of his own investigation. We never heard from him again, despite being told we'd be phoned the next day to give us a progress report, even though the five days have had to restart, yet again.
10th June - I phoned up for another call at 25p/min and once AGAIN and they'd put the order through for the wrong line, AGAIN. But this time it gets worse. Because the order had been put through for that line so many times (three, lol), their normal skivies can't do anything about it. Instead, they have to get in touch with their technical support guys to manually cancel the order in their database which can take upto... you guessed it... 5 working days. So 5 days to cancel their mistake and 5 days to reactivate what was requested weeks earlier. This time, I was told we'd be contacted the following night by management and then three days later for a progress report on the cancellation. Needless to say, I've become quite a big skeptic when it comes to ISPs.
That day, the post office who controls our connection with the contact information phone number we gave to sky, sent us a letter saying they were sorry to be informed that we were leaving their services. Oh ... my ... fucking ... God ... at least they were accommodating and agreed to ignore all forms of contact from any other ISP with regards to our account for 3 months. Thank you, the post office but my word was that a worry...
Anyway, I'm getting a lil bored just writing this; it took them 3 days to cancel the order which we only found out by ringing them and getting a skivvy to contact the manager we'd been in contact with via e-mail... she then rang us that night and said upto 5 working days. This was on a saturday so we figured by the end of the following week... she said she'd ring monday which she did, saying it's all fine, then said she'd ring again on thursday, 8am for a status update. So 2pm thursday she rang up again and I was ever hopeful of cheery news...at least it couldn't get worse right?
17th June - You've got to be fucking kidding me. 29th of June? Twelve days away just to get the phone line re-connected? Then a bigger blow... after getting the phone line reconnected, apparently it'll take twelve more days to get the broadband itself reconnected, after we were told that part would be near instant. Holy shit! Seriously... from potentially upto 24 hours without internet, all of a sudden upto... well I've lost count by this point, 5/6 weeks total?. As a result she said she'd put through a years worth of free line rental and Sky TV and then said she'd keep in constant contact to give updates on progress...I never heard from her again, nor got confirmation of the offer she laid down.
After contacting both BT and sky about potentially changing services, we've been told changing to another ISP could well increase that time period further. They gave shitty excuses saying that an engineer has to be called out to our town because they've physically removed the wiring to our property and thus the plebs who work at the wiring station aren't capable of sorting it out... I'd only ask, surely every house in mainland UK has wires connected to them for a phoneline, broadband is not a big step up from that, especially as we still have shitty old aluminium wiring around our way (yes that's right, it isn't even copper /sigh). Unfortunately BT confirmed this and explained that it isn't their company who is in charge out that particular service so not only were they trying to shift blame to outsourcers but because BT are their customer not us, we can't even contact them for any status updates or even just to give them what for. <Slams face into keyboard\>...
Well the company BT is in no way responsible for and that they cannot give us contact details for... BT openreach. <Slams keyboard into face\>
29th June - From this point, we heard nothing from the people who were supposed to be contacting us but we did get a letter through the door a few days later confirming the 29th of June as the day of phoneline reconnection and decided to just wait it out. The 29th came without any phone contact from BT or Sky but the BT openreach guy appeared at our doorstep three times that day to sort out a connection which hasn't changed from our end and the phoneline was reconnected. After the third visit he said he could get the broadband up and running shortly so around 3pm I rang up sky who said it wouldn't be completed until 7th July. Apparently while activating a phoneline, a BT openreach technician is unable to flip the broadband switch, despite having confirmed that we were setup via Sky services correctly in the exchange; instead they have to go away and come back another day to do it. <Slams mouse into keyboard into face\>
July 7th, 11am. Dead phone connection. Holy mother of.....phone up, 'sorry, there's a connection fault linking the exchange to your house, it should be fixed within 48 hours'. <Slams BT into Sky\>
July 8th - Luckily the following day, a BT openreach came around to fix the phoneline, he hadn't even been told we needed the internet fixing as well so he did that in 5 minutes flat at the box at the top of our road and here I am. Props to that guy but what a volley of miscommunication.
Summary:
NEVER EVER SIGN UPTO SKY BROADBAND! I realize mistakes can happen, really I do but this is just plain ridiculous...it seems like their job spec requires a full lobotomy. The amount of people we've been through to try and get this sorted and every single one has made an array of really idiotic blunders; alright so with some other call centres you may get put through to the other side of the world but these guys are actually based in the UK so there is no excuse for a language barrier there, they're just retarded and I don't use that word lightly. Apparently Talk-Talk are no better for customer service and considering we can't get a Virgin line here, the only other alternatives would be BT who are overpriced and cap their lines, as well as charged us in the past to send us quarterly bills or the Post Office who do similarly annoying things...
So I'm back after 43 days without the tinterwebs which should have only been at most 24 hours...oh and my connection speed has dropped from around 500kb/sec DL to 150kb/sec but I'm assuming that's just going to be temporary.
I've been adding to this as events have occurred, then shortened it as the wall just got silly, hence my change in mood or whatever during the wall. Scroll to near the bottom if you just want a summary... Enjoy!
19th May - This sorry tale all started a while back with the decision to try and move to talk-talk broadband as all I'd heard were good things. Upon ordering that, the sky broadband package on our second line was set to close down in a months time and talk-talk was on its way giving us a days buffer for the 28 days needed to switch to a new service. Around three weeks after having ordered the talk-talk connection however, they phoned up asking us why we'd decided to cancel our new contract which hadn't even started...but we hadn't cancelled it. For whatever reason, talk-talk thought we'd cancelled so, instead of facing a fresh 28 days while they restarted the whole process again (which would have meant three weeks without any internet at all), we decided to just reactivate our sky connection. So, a phone call was made, sky were happy to have us back and they said they'd just continue our current contract.
26th May - A week passed and all of a sudden, the internet cut out as well as our second landline (which the internet is connected through) so we phoned up asking what happened using our other phone. Apparently we had been disconnected as our contract ran out...our reactivation hadn't gone through because with sky broadband, you can't cancel a cancellation at all, period... Clever eh? They have a stretch of 8 days after cancelling to reactivate although it turns out, the guy who said we could just continue, could have just started the contract again, leaving us with only one day without the internet as activating an already existing account only takes five days. So lies were told when they said they'd continue our package as per normal. As a result, we were told a new contract would be started within a week. So began the period of time with no internet and unfortunately, the troubles were only just beginning...
2nd June - Another week passed with no movement so a phone call was made and lo and behold, the new contract hadn't gone through at all; there was nothing on their books other then a cancelled contract but they did have a record of the phone call taking place... So we placed the order again but this time were told, three working days and it'd all be sorted.
5th June - Three days later, I called up, ended up being put through to the manager who said he had absolutely no idea why I'd been told what I'd been told. It turns out that when phoning through the sky broadband services number, firstly, you can't activate the broadband and phone line just through that number and secondly, three days is a bogus claim which they know they can't do anyway. Instead, you need to go through Sky Talk and activate it through there, which we hadn't been told. I was directed through to another number where another member of management was very apologetic and said he'd put the order through personally to make sure all was right. He then said he'd contact us in two working days to give us a progress report so, I gave them our first landline number for contacting us.
7th June - Two days later, an hour and a half earlier then expected, he rang! Shock, horror! He said it'd all been put through, BT had established the line and they were ready to connect. Hurrah! Early hurrah! Unneccessary hurrah! Because in fact, they'd somehow, in two days, managed to establish a connection to the contact information phone number I gave them...unfortunately, we can't run the internet through that number for logistics purposes and besides, that wasn't what I'd bloody asked for...
9th June - So back to square one, the manager said he'd ring in two days again which he didn't, so I phoned up and was put through to another person. Once again, they'd managed to put an order through for the contact information phone number. So this guy, who says he's going to put in a formal investigation to see what's what managed to do the exact same mistake, twice in a row and should now rightly be part of his own investigation. We never heard from him again, despite being told we'd be phoned the next day to give us a progress report, even though the five days have had to restart, yet again.
10th June - I phoned up for another call at 25p/min and once AGAIN and they'd put the order through for the wrong line, AGAIN. But this time it gets worse. Because the order had been put through for that line so many times (three, lol), their normal skivies can't do anything about it. Instead, they have to get in touch with their technical support guys to manually cancel the order in their database which can take upto... you guessed it... 5 working days. So 5 days to cancel their mistake and 5 days to reactivate what was requested weeks earlier. This time, I was told we'd be contacted the following night by management and then three days later for a progress report on the cancellation. Needless to say, I've become quite a big skeptic when it comes to ISPs.
That day, the post office who controls our connection with the contact information phone number we gave to sky, sent us a letter saying they were sorry to be informed that we were leaving their services. Oh ... my ... fucking ... God ... at least they were accommodating and agreed to ignore all forms of contact from any other ISP with regards to our account for 3 months. Thank you, the post office but my word was that a worry...
Anyway, I'm getting a lil bored just writing this; it took them 3 days to cancel the order which we only found out by ringing them and getting a skivvy to contact the manager we'd been in contact with via e-mail... she then rang us that night and said upto 5 working days. This was on a saturday so we figured by the end of the following week... she said she'd ring monday which she did, saying it's all fine, then said she'd ring again on thursday, 8am for a status update. So 2pm thursday she rang up again and I was ever hopeful of cheery news...at least it couldn't get worse right?
17th June - You've got to be fucking kidding me. 29th of June? Twelve days away just to get the phone line re-connected? Then a bigger blow... after getting the phone line reconnected, apparently it'll take twelve more days to get the broadband itself reconnected, after we were told that part would be near instant. Holy shit! Seriously... from potentially upto 24 hours without internet, all of a sudden upto... well I've lost count by this point, 5/6 weeks total?. As a result she said she'd put through a years worth of free line rental and Sky TV and then said she'd keep in constant contact to give updates on progress...I never heard from her again, nor got confirmation of the offer she laid down.
After contacting both BT and sky about potentially changing services, we've been told changing to another ISP could well increase that time period further. They gave shitty excuses saying that an engineer has to be called out to our town because they've physically removed the wiring to our property and thus the plebs who work at the wiring station aren't capable of sorting it out... I'd only ask, surely every house in mainland UK has wires connected to them for a phoneline, broadband is not a big step up from that, especially as we still have shitty old aluminium wiring around our way (yes that's right, it isn't even copper /sigh). Unfortunately BT confirmed this and explained that it isn't their company who is in charge out that particular service so not only were they trying to shift blame to outsourcers but because BT are their customer not us, we can't even contact them for any status updates or even just to give them what for. <Slams face into keyboard\>...
Well the company BT is in no way responsible for and that they cannot give us contact details for... BT openreach. <Slams keyboard into face\>
29th June - From this point, we heard nothing from the people who were supposed to be contacting us but we did get a letter through the door a few days later confirming the 29th of June as the day of phoneline reconnection and decided to just wait it out. The 29th came without any phone contact from BT or Sky but the BT openreach guy appeared at our doorstep three times that day to sort out a connection which hasn't changed from our end and the phoneline was reconnected. After the third visit he said he could get the broadband up and running shortly so around 3pm I rang up sky who said it wouldn't be completed until 7th July. Apparently while activating a phoneline, a BT openreach technician is unable to flip the broadband switch, despite having confirmed that we were setup via Sky services correctly in the exchange; instead they have to go away and come back another day to do it. <Slams mouse into keyboard into face\>
July 7th, 11am. Dead phone connection. Holy mother of.....phone up, 'sorry, there's a connection fault linking the exchange to your house, it should be fixed within 48 hours'. <Slams BT into Sky\>
July 8th - Luckily the following day, a BT openreach came around to fix the phoneline, he hadn't even been told we needed the internet fixing as well so he did that in 5 minutes flat at the box at the top of our road and here I am. Props to that guy but what a volley of miscommunication.
Summary:
NEVER EVER SIGN UPTO SKY BROADBAND! I realize mistakes can happen, really I do but this is just plain ridiculous...it seems like their job spec requires a full lobotomy. The amount of people we've been through to try and get this sorted and every single one has made an array of really idiotic blunders; alright so with some other call centres you may get put through to the other side of the world but these guys are actually based in the UK so there is no excuse for a language barrier there, they're just retarded and I don't use that word lightly. Apparently Talk-Talk are no better for customer service and considering we can't get a Virgin line here, the only other alternatives would be BT who are overpriced and cap their lines, as well as charged us in the past to send us quarterly bills or the Post Office who do similarly annoying things...
So I'm back after 43 days without the tinterwebs which should have only been at most 24 hours...oh and my connection speed has dropped from around 500kb/sec DL to 150kb/sec but I'm assuming that's just going to be temporary.
