Having moved into a new place I needed broadband as an essential for not only keeping up to date here but also for pretty much every aspect of modern life, previously I have used virgin media and experienced bt at my mom’s however I decided to take advantage of the sky offer which included a free 32″ television and cashback through topcashback which seemed the best deal without waiting for a reasonable deal to arrive due to the urgent nature of needing internet access.
Sky also at the time had an offer for “free unlimited sky broadband for 12 months” of course this isn’t technically free as the requirement is to take sky line rental at £17.40 per month which wasn’t necessary for the sky free tv offer, nor the cashback so perhaps I could have got a better deal elsewhere taking the broadband separately however I decided why not to save hassle.
In order to get these services installed the sky tv would be £10 installation, and the broadband £20 installation. The sky tv engineers turned up despite there already being a satellite, installed cables into a different room to the existing installation was and this side of the service was exceptional. However, the more expensive installation charge which again would not have applied if I had not taken sky broadband no engineers showed up to perform, they deemed as there was an outlet which they received a signal back from at head office that nothing needed to be done, so they simply took the money and did no work, now bear in mind there are 3 outlets in the house only one is in the correct room and that is a virgin outlet.
Sky customer service have stated how if there was no outlet (as I had stated on my application) engineers would have arrived installed an outlet in the correct room where I want it included in the £20 installation cost, however as they deemed there was already one on the property they didn’t need to do anything and simply took my installation charge, this is stupid as even though there was an existing dish on the site, this was replaced with another newer dish of exactly the same design, new cables were installed and much more effort done for the £10 installation charge for that service, why then would they not provide the service that was paid for which they would have done if there was no outlet for no additional charge? Because they’re greedy, they’re demanding £130 to perform this installation which would have been done in the £20 fee if there had not been an existing socket, and they don’t care if it’s under the stairs in the cupboard or somewhere else unreasonable as there is one in the property to get one installed costs £130 on top of your existing installation charge, this is ridiculous as I have paid for the service and they would have performed this service but to do what they should have done they wish to charge me almost 6.5X as much money which is completely unreasonable.
The service is ridiculously slow as well compared to virgin or bt which are my only other real experiences as anytime I begin to upload anything the rest of the internet becomes completely unusable and there have been days since where it has taken 5 minutes literally to open a page which is completely unreasonable and I bet if there are any outages they wouldn’t be as reasonable as virgin in paying for the downtime and the hassle.
Other problems I have had have been constant emails and spam calls from sky themselves trying to sell services begging me to upgrade, insisting I take insurance and other nuisances, the odd email or the odd call wouldn’t be so bad other than I have set my preferences to never be called, and the fact that I received the same email 7 times for the first week, and even after blocking I kept getting the same repeated emails for weeks which was deeply irritating. I also feel they sold my number as not long after activation I was already receiving nuisance calls from “accident” companies, which when calling sky about they start trying to sell me their “nuisance call prevention” system for £5 per month which is completely ridiculous. How about just don’t sell my telephone number sky!
I’m regretting my choice as thing’s aren’t going so well with sky, and the tv I would be able to see with virgin anyway so I wouldn’t be missing out on that aspect, the customer services are definitely the worst though absolutely belligerent and unwilling to be helpful in any form and simply denying they should have installed the phone line as paid for, and stating either pay £130 or leave, and in this state I’m definitely opting for leave when my 12 month contract is up as they will undoubtedly add ridiculous get out charges if I was to leave within this first month of taking their services, I am having very deep regrets taking the service however.