Rant Sky

[SawTooTH]

I got home last week to find a notice on screen saying by Sky box was being updated and not to turn it off or unplug it or 10min. After 30 mins I phoned Sky tech suport who told me to turn it off/on again. Nothing worked.

He said, I see from your account that you have an old box (7years) & it looks like it hasn't taken the upgrade ie its FUBAR

I asked what he was going to do about it as it was working right up till the time Sky initiated this "upgrade"

He said there was nothing he could do. I could spend money on an extended warranty (£8.99 per week for 12 months)

Call out an engineer £65 and would probably sell me a box or upgrade to another Sky package.

All the above cost me money to sort out a problem Sky caused.....RANT



In the end I sorted it by buying a Free to air digibox and canceling my Sky subscription. At least Im now leaching the Beeb etc off their satellite.

Bastards.

 

[dysfunction]

Bastards!

I thought about this and if I really wanted sky and my sky box broke outside of it's warranty I would cancel the subcription, get them to take it all away and then order sky again...would be cheaper than buying their stupid warranty crap..

 

[ford prefect]

Bastards!

I thought about this and if I really wanted sky and my sky box broke outside of it's warranty I would cancel the subcription, get them to take it all away and then order sky again...would be cheaper than buying their stupid warranty crap..

Yep, you could probably get a sky+ box for free as well, rather then paying £90+ as a current subscriber.

 

[SawTooTH]

Worse thing was they had a name for it...the red light problem.

That means a lot of people with old boxes get shafted.

I wonder how many poor saps out there just bend over and pay the money.

Looks like a lucrative business to me. Send an upgrade down the phone line to screw up the box then charge them for a new one.

Brilliant business model.

 

[DaGaffer]

Its been a massive fuckup for Sky apparently. They've looked into a rollback but apparently that could fuck up even more boxes. With perfect timing Humax released their Freesat PVR this week. Unfortunately its immediately sold out in Comet, Currys, John Lewis etc. but I'm hoping to get one for Xmas.

 

[ECA]

Television?

Sup grandads.

 

[rynnor]

Its been a massive fuckup for Sky apparently. They've looked into a rollback but apparently that could fuck up even more boxes. With perfect timing Humax released their Freesat PVR this week. Unfortunately its immediately sold out in Comet, Currys, John Lewis etc. but I'm hoping to get one for Xmas.

Aye - its very tempting. I had a letter from sky saying my sky+ box is now out of warranty and I'd have to pay for any faults.

Personally if anything goes wrong with it I'll give em a chance to fix it for free but if they dont take it I'll cancel the subscription and buy one of these and they'll never get another penny out of me

 

[DaGaffer]

Aye - its very tempting. I had a letter from sky saying my sky+ box is now out of warranty and I'd have to pay for any faults.

Personally if anything goes wrong with it I'll give em a chance to fix it for free but if they dont take it I'll cancel the subscription and buy one of these and they'll never get another penny out of me

Its a no-brainer for me. Sky+ here in Ireland is outrageously expensive (never mind Sky+ HD) and doesn't even have all the UK channels I want (you can spoof the box but who needs that shit?). If I buy the Humax, it'll have paid for itself in about six months and its all UK content and has HD. Even my Irish girlfriend doesn't watch any of the Irish channels. Just need to find somewhere with fekkin stock now.

 

[Raven]

With Sky+ you have to have an extra line in to be able to record 1 thing and watch another.

You can plug any old sky box in and it will work, just get a 2nd hand one off ebay.

 

[DaGaffer]

With Sky+ you have to have an extra line in to be able to record 1 thing and watch another.

You can plug any old sky box in and it will work, just get a 2nd hand one off ebay.

Yeah, and the house I'm in has the lines installed, so no problem there, and I have a Sky+ box. But its an Irish one, with the Irish EPG, so Free to Air is extremely limited (you basically get BBC1 & 2 and that's your lot), and I'm not thrilled about paying Sky 50 Euro a month. I've found some online references that explain how to reset the box to UK settings, but I haven't been able to get that to work, and even if I did, the PVR function still wouldn't work, and that's the most important bit for me. I know I could get a separate hard disk recorder and a freesat or UK Sky box, but its messy, and the Humax has the extra benefit of HD broadcasts.

 

[old.user4556]

and the Humax has the extra benefit of HD broadcasts.

All 1.5 of them .

Gaff, my advice is to fuck the retailer in the ear and phone their warehouses or customer service lines. When Freesat was launched, everyone was "sold out" and depending on what store you phoned and what 17 year old shop assistant you spoke to, you got a different story. Some people were being told (forums peeps on Digital Spy) that Freesat had been cancelled until a later date. Some also hadn't even heard of Freesat, they said "is that Freesat from Sky?" I said "no, this is the new Freesat service that has nothing to do with a Sky box"... "oh, well no we don't".

Anyway, I was told by Comet stores that they had none at all and weren't expecting any in, so I phoned their customer services number and I was told they had them "stocked in the warehouse". I paid my £150, got an emailed invoice and it arrived the next day.

 

[DaGaffer]

All 1.5 of them .

Gaff, my advice is to fuck the retailer in the ear and phone their warehouses or customer service lines. When Freesat was launched, everyone was "sold out" and depending on what store you phoned and what 17 year old shop assistant you spoke to, you got a different story. Some people were being told (forums peeps on Digital Spy) that Freesat had been cancelled until a later date. Some also hadn't even heard of Freesat, they said "is that Freesat from Sky?" I said "no, this is the new Freesat service that has nothing to do with a Sky box"... "oh, well no we don't".

Anyway, I was told by Comet stores that they had none at all and weren't expecting any in, so I phoned their customer services number and I was told they had them "stocked in the warehouse". I paid my £150, got an emailed invoice and it arrived the next day.

No hurry, I'm off to Africa for a couple of weeks from Wednesday, so it can wait until I get back, then if there's no availability at that point I'll take your advice.

(and 1.5 channels is 1.5 more than I have at the moment, so its a start...)

 

[Rubric]

I have known people who have had this problem. Each of them basically had the same conversation. Then threatened to cancel and get virgin or cancel and resub in GF/Wifes name and hey presto free engineer or replacement box.

 

[kirennia]

I have known people who have had this problem. Each of them basically had the same conversation. Then threatened to cancel and get virgin or cancel and resub in GF/Wifes name and hey presto free engineer or replacement box.

Was going to suggest doing pretty much the same thing. Banks, broadband suppliers, mobile phone companies, pretty much everyone who has direct large corportaion competition will at some point try their luck and when you threaten with swapping to a rival, they'll pretty much bend over so long as they're still going to make money off of you with reasonable demands.

It's sad really that you have to be vocal with your demands before you'll get these sorts of things done for less money and the quieter among the population don't but they're trying to profit off of you anyway so not making these kind of threats will just lead you to being screwed over anyway.

Just say okay, I'd like to cancel my account with you and go to xxx (insert name of biggest direct rival here) and you'll generally get a much different tone from the other end.


Classic example was a friend of mine a while back wanted a new specific phone (can't remember what it was now but it's beside the point). He was first quoted in the orange shop at £200 for the phone and £25 a month for a package. He then went to the vodaphone shop and they knocked it to £175 so back to orange he went and he carried on and on doing this until they went no lower and he ended up with the phone for free and the contract at £15 a month with a better package.

Meanwhile I'm sure there are countless people who are paying much much more for less...

 

[SawTooTH]

Alternatively tell them they have permanently lost your custom.

BT pissed me off over an ADSL line 10 years ago, I told them I would never use them again and I haven't, its easy really. If everyone did that these big corporations would have to change the way they treat customers.