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I had basic sky installed about 4 years ago but cancelled at the end of the year as there was nothing I wanted to watch which I couldn't see on freeview. I kept the satellite, wiring and digibox.
Last December I decided to buy my family HD TV and a friend recommended the Sky HD+, particularly for the functionality of the time slip hard drive. I paid £129 for the installation of the new service and agreed to a monthly fee of £36, of which £9.95 was the monthly fee for HD+. I regarded this as an absurd amount of money but wanted to give my family a nice treat.
The engineer who came simply connected the HD+ box to the existing sky connection and left. We recently extended our house and went to the expense of putting in a conduit through which to run cables. The satellite dish is on wall of a ground floor courtyard. All you need is rod, like a fishing rod to push the cable through.
Our Sky HD+ has never worked properly and I haven't been able to record anything in the 5 months I have owned the system! The few programmes shown in HD are good quality, but certainly not worth paying £120 per year for.
The sky signal for the basic service is also very unreliable and goes down at least 3 times a month - usually when I want to watch a horse race or other time sensitive event. At present Sky is less reliable than "freeview".
If you need to watch a film you can either rent or download from the Internet. The customer service is non existent. The "support" phone number shown on the screen had been incorrect for 6 months. The automated menu system is excruciating and the good people of Bangalore, India find it hard to communicate with us (not their fault). You then get Livingstone, where some people can be very helpful, but are powerless to actually solve the problem.
After 6 months I have had enough
At the beginning I was promised 2 visits from engineers to fix the problem, neither of whom showed up so basically a huge waste of time with people sitting in waiting for them. After 6 months I have had enough of their dishonesty and incompetence. I have sent them a default notice giving 10 days to supply what they are contracted to, otherwise I will take legal action to recover the money I have spent and to sue them for breach of contract.
I have offered to employ a competent engineer with the required tool to push the wiring through the conduit, but they continue to offer only a call from their less than competent installers, who are not equipped with the basic tools that every TV and aerial installer should have.
Apparently it takes sky a month to process letters by which time the summons will have been issued and the case will have been put before the county court. I will claim a refund of all the money paid, my legal fees and all my expenses including my time spent on the phone to their dreadful "customer service". At the very least they are going to have to take some notice.
No one should have to put up with such terrible service and breach of contract. If their company ethics are that they simply don't care for their customers and their own moral standards, then the only way is to take them to court using the small claims procedure. Anyone can do it, so good luck!
By: JP
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Broken down into: Sky is a waste of money.
You spend hours on the phone pressing this and that to no acail. we have had nothing at all for five weeks and paying for nothing.
They will do anything but fix it. It a big money making scam.
I read you pathetic experience with SKY and I sympathise. I have recently moved to SKY ( about 3 months back ) and I too have been having terrible experience with SKY.
Could you please tell me whether you had taken legal action and the process you followed. I can be contacted at ravi_roark@yahoo.com.
Thank you
RC
daz 17-Feb-2010 14:44
well daz sky's normal box only uses one cable from the dish to recieve the signal, a sky+ or sky+HD box uses two cables from the dish, so basically you would need to have your reciever on the dish replaced with one that accepts two cables and also have a second cable running through into your house, the reason for this is that one cable uses the signal for viewing now and the other cable uses the signal for recording or pausing live tv, also your sky subscription card will not work in any new box until a sky customer service rep has sent out a signal to enable your viewing card to be used with a new box, hope this answer helps
Des