Sky TV..Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr

Bit of background...... we have been having a few problems with a few channels on Sky , for a few weeks now... "no satalite being received", so my hubby chose last night to phone sky to report it........ gets through to a very well spoken Indian gentleman in a call centre somewhere in the world hubby explains the problem, sky man starts to talk him through a procedure to fix it over the phone....... end results , 1 1.2 hrs later we now have NO TV at all

Have to give my hubby some credit , he was very patient with sky man.. listening and going through switch this off, switch this on, take the plug out, put it back, take it out, go to controls do this , do that and so on and on

The patience ran out after about an hr, and my hubby told him to get someone on the phone who new what they are doing, as we now have NO tv at all he also told the supervisor if someone said............ its because you have clouds in the sky, one more time he will jump down the phone and throttle someone

We had clouds in the sky before we rang up, we had 95 % of channels with clouds in the sky before we rang up, we now have none. we have none because the first bloke broke the bl**dy telly with his instructons......

Ok, still insisting its due to heavy cloud, they told hubby that we will have to pay for any repairs when the technician comes out............at this point hubby blew a gasket and informed them, we are not paying anything, they broke it , they fix it at their cost, which they then said, since we are such good customers , there will be no charge, long and short is, we have no telly, till t Thursday when they are coming to repair it.

Just when I was sitting down to watch something good on TV too

OMGoodness

Did you eventually get it fixed at no extra charge?

I hate phoning sky I usually just try and work it out myself, a few times now I've looked on the net for a fix rather than call them.....For the very reason you mention above

What happened to good 'ole customer services?

Sky customer service is dreadful

We had problems a couple of yrs ago and they were going to charge us for an engineer to call,I wasn't happy and told them to cancel the lot,at this point they said they would send an engineer out for nothing,thankfully it got sorted out.

We had another freebie when we had multi installed cos the engineer couldn't make the appointment and didn't let us know till 7.45pm on the day it was supposed to be installed.
I threw an absolute fit at the engineer and rang sky,this time they were alot better to deal with and gave us the HD package free for a month

hmmmmm...Sky?

whats that? hehehe im a tight ass, we just have the free channels!

Yes, got it fixed, no extra charge and a new box

Oh Been there myself Jackie, with some INdian woman, and I ranted at her saying I wish I'd never rung them now coz at least I did HAVE some channels before I rang, and then I had none, so thanks for that!!!

Hubby came home though, and found out the installation guys had put the cable into the wrong socket either on the skyHD or my telly when they installed it (at a cost of £60 a might add, when they were only here for 5 mins coz Dave had done all the wiring ). Then there's the other HD box in the lounge, which Dave has to switch off nearly every single morning in order to get his tv to work

Now I belong to that Sky Protect Plan, so as long as I've actually rung Sky to tell them about a problem, I don't have to let them totally screw it all up by going through any of their "procedures" with me I can then ring the Sky Protect peops and they will come along for free, by which time I usually don't have to coz we've fixed it ourselves lol!

If I were you, I'd unplug it all after switching it off (if you can switch it off of course), leave it for about an hour, plus it all back in, press the SKY button top middle, then it'll search for listings while you watch SKY and voila, you will have tv again hopefully!

The trouble with these HD boxes is, there's always a problem with all of them we've found, no matter how many times they've swapped them for us with a completely new one, there's still A problem! Too much technology in too small a space maybe, I dunno At least with the old normal ones, you could always just go out and buy another unit by another manufacturer, but these are all made by the same peops and they're all rubbish according to Dave.

If it's any consolation Sky News at the moment has gone all weird on me, the dubbing is all wrong and the picture is all "behind" if you know what I mean, just when I wanted to get stuck into the Live MJ case!

Hopefully, once it's had a lie down it'll be fine, just like our puters sometimes!

When the technician came out, he said the problem was (not a cloudy sky) that the box was old, (only a couple of years old mind and with all the new technology on sky, the memory on the box was not big enough to cope with it, so he put a new up to date box in... so far we have no problems.......

J we get that quite often - no satellite signal being received". We were told by their engineer the problem was to do with wiring on the roof, they were not covered insurance wise to go on the roof and we would have to get an independent aerial company out that would go on the roof

To cut it short the problem turned out to be the sky digi box, the aerial comp didn't have a new one in stock so sold us a reconditioned one, it lasted the weekend. He came back with with another reconditioned one as they still had no new boxes in stock. We still get that message off and on!!!!!

Helena, this sounds very much like the problem they had when they first introduced the Sky Plus box (The first one where you could program it to record while you were out)

Like a mug I bought one of the first in about 2002 and had continuos problems with it 'locking up' the help line was as much use as a clockwork orange eventualy they sent a man out (NOT a technician 'cos all he did was replace the box) needless to say within a few weeks it 'locked up' again.

I eventually found out that there was a software fault and the problem was being kicked around between Sky (The service provider) PACE (The set top box manufacturer) some German outfit (who made the hard disc drive) and a Japanese firm who supplied some of the software

While all this was being sorted out (It took more than a year) the poor old customer was being told all sorts of porkies and all sorts of erroneous information was being put out, but what the heck, it's only the customer, so who cares

This is one of the reasons I didn't go for an HD box. I was so furious at Sky over the lies they told about the real reason for the Sky Plus box not working.

If they've been sending out a 'box swapper' and you still have problems you can be sure that Sky, PACE, and heaven only knows how many other firms are in dispute about who is responsible and while they sort it you (and all the other Sky customers) have to listen to all the excuses the help desk read out to you when you phone them, after all you are just the customer, you can't bring any legal action against them, you just have to listen to these help desk muppets in India (or where ever) reading from a script and giving you a load of garbage

So, so true H! Mum had the old Pace in Mallorca and whenever she had problems and would phone me. Of course I had to pretened that she lived upstairs (coz you're not allowed to have them outside the UK of course!!! ), so I'd be ringing her to do this, that and t'other that they asked me to do, then I'd have to ring them back to get the next commands from them, and so it went on, all blooming night!!! Nothing's changed sadly, like you say, they read out all the garbage to you, tell you to go into this and that and press this and that, and you're no further forward, your system still doesn't work properly, or worse, as Jackie experienced, it doesn't work at all after their tweaking!!!

My new HD box is the latest Tri something or other, where I can record 300 hours of telly Who on EARTH would want to record that much telly, especially when all you get on Sky is repeats of this and that but put on a new channel lol!

We've now got the new 3D telly, so thought we'd upgrade to the 3D channel with Sky, and have to say, that was a very simple procedure to go through over the phone with them to switch it on, BUT, of course, we were BUYING something off them weren't we, not complaining about the service!!!

Might be an idea for them to swap their sales team for the aftercare perhaps, we might well benefit lol!