SKY+ installation... not!!

Stimpyone

I ordered and paid for SKY+ two weeks ago and today was the day that the installation was supposed to take place. So I took the day off work and got up for 8.30 and waited for the installation guy to phone between 9.00am and 10.00am to give me a estimate on what time he was to arrive..... he never called!, so at 10.20am I called Sky who called him and informed me that he (the installation guy) would call me back in 10mins!...... he never called.

So at 12.30 I called Sky again and they informed me that the installation guy had assured them that he would be out before 4.00pm....... he never arrived!.... I phoned Sky again and they apologised and told me that he would defiantly be out between 4.00pm and 6.00pm.....

At 5.50 I began to feel a bit nervous as he still hadn't arrived so I phoned sky again, and they told me that I had to wait until after 6.00pm and that he couldn't check on the "engineer" as the office of the installation company had shut!!. So I waited.....

6.30pm still no sign of the "engineer" and no phone call from anybody, what a waste of a day!, I am unbelievably angry. How do companies get away with treating their customers like this?. I rang Sky for the 5th time and was informed that they have no idea why the "engineer" never turned up and that I would have to wait 2 more weeks for the next instillation.

Needless to say I am furious....... what a bunch of cowboys. :mad:

bigpaddy2004

Ah...you were just unlucky, the installer probably ran out of day light today and never got around to ring you. What county are you in, I may be able to speed things up for you, i take it it was sierra doing the install?

Stimpyone

Mate are you serious...... unluckly!...

Is this the way I should be expected to be treated?. I live in Dublin 13, a phone call at some stage would have been acceptable, I would consider it common decency.

As you can tell I'm still P'ed. It wasn't easy organising a friday off ( which it turned was a waste of a day )

Tony

Well there have been several stories like this since you joined in June and although I agree you should not be treated this way I would have thought that an independant retailer would be the way to go.

Stimpyone wrote:

Mate are you serious...... unluckly!...

Is this the way I should be expected to be treated?. I live in Dublin 13, a phone call at some stage would have been acceptable, I would consider it common decency.

As you can tell I'm still P'ed. It wasn't easy organising a friday off ( which it turned was a waste of a day )

Stimpyone

Tony wrote:

Well there have been several stories like this since you joined in June and although I agree you should not be treated this way I would have thought that an independant retailer would be the way to go.

Tony, before ordering I did a search on the boards for "sky installation", I couldn't find any horror stories, but perhaps I was missing something.

On the plus side I rang Sky again(!) and found out that the company due to install it was indeed Serria com. ( Serria... Cowboys, the irony is laughable ) They also gave me the first month free as well as Serrias phone number.... which I rang and there was no answer, maybe the office is shut on the weekend so I'll try again Monday.

I don't think it's too much to ask for an explaination as to why nobody either rang or turned up. I also think that I shouldn't have to wait a further two weeks for installation for a situation that is of their making. In my opion I think that customers inconvenienced in this manner should be put to the top of the queue and not told to take a number and join the back of the queue again.

Tony

Hi, I meant on this forum not the web in general. You are absolutely right of course you should have been treated with more courtesy and respect. Sierras guys unfortunately are badly paid and badly lead. Sierra was mainly a civil engineering company (digging roads etc) before they started installing for sky.

They give their guys a 1 day training course and then send them out so quality and service do not seem to be a priority for them.

Hope it gets sorted for you

Stimpyone wrote:

Tony, before ordering I did a search on the boards for "sky installation", I couldn't find any horror stories, but perhaps I was missing something.

On the plus side I rang Sky again(!) and found out that the company due to install it was indeed Serria com. ( Serria... Cowboys, the irony is laughable ) They also gave me the first month free as well as Serrias phone number.... which I rang and there was no answer, maybe the office is shut on the weekend so I'll try again Monday.

I don't think it's too much to ask for an explaination as to why nobody either rang or turned up. I also think that I shouldn't have to wait a further two weeks for installation for a situation that is of their making. In my opion I think that customers inconvenienced in this manner should be put to the top of the queue and not told to take a number and join the back of the queue again.

bigpaddy2004

Hi, I meant on this forum not the web in general. You are absolutely right of course you should have been treated with more courtesy and respect. Sierras guys unfortunately are badly paid and badly lead. Sierra was mainly a civil engineering company (digging roads etc) before they started installing for sky.

Well Tony, I absolutely disagree with you and where ever you sourced your information on Sierra is nonsence. I work for Sierra, the majority of our installers are ex Ntl, Chorus or just have being in the business for year's with plently of experience. Every installer is paid an annual turnover of 50k, unless you consider this bad pay? There can be alot of reasons an engineer did'nt call. Independant's are no exception to this....over charging customer's (telephone line, cable run), Connecting subscribers whom have no phone line, the list is endless. Anything to just make a quick buck.

I have told Stimpyone I can speed up the process if he/she would like me to.

Tony

The information I got on Sierra is from installers themelves. As for the 50k figure this really is nonsense, perhaps you could tell forum readers what you pay per install IE price work.(last I heard it was €25 per install)

Perhaps you can also explain why I get at least one call per week from a Sierra installer looking for work as well as numerous requests over time to rectify work done by Sierra including requests from sky themselves.

As for your installers having experience how does working for NTL and chorus who are cable companies qualify you to work on satellite installations.

I helped a sierra installer one day who was working on the house next door to my job, he was trying to install a dish behind a large tree!

I'm sure other forum members also have stories to tell about Sierra installs.

Tony

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

Well Tony, I absolutely disagree with you and where ever you sourced your information on Sierra is nonsence. I work for Sierra, the majority of our installers are ex Ntl, Chorus or just have being in the business for year's with plently of experience. Every installer is paid an annual turnover of 50k, unless you consider this bad pay? There can be alot of reasons an engineer did'nt call. Independant's are no exception to this....over charging customer's (telephone line, cable run), Connecting subscribers whom have no phone line, the list is endless. Anything to just make a quick buck.

I have told Stimpyone I can speed up the process if he/she would like me to.

bigpaddy2004

The information I got on Sierra is from installers themelves. As for the 50k figure this really is nonsense, perhaps you could tell forum readers what you pay per install IE price work.(last I heard it was €25 per install)

That would be false information given to you, we pay our installer's double that for a standard sky install. Every installer is given on average 4 installations, and 4 service calls per day, so i cannot see where the installer get's the time to do overtime for yourselves.

As for your installers having experience how does working for NTL and chorus who are cable companies qualify you to work on satellite installations.

All these installers are familar with approaching customers, running cables, configuring the wireing of a home, etc...the only difference is all they have to do is fit a dish, no big deal, it's not rocket science.

All our installers are well paid, and for that we expect little or no complaint's from customer's. And if we do recieve numerous complaint's from customer's, that engineer will no longer be employed by us.

I'm sure other forum members also have stories to tell about Sierra installs.

Im sure they have plenty from independant's too.

Tony

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

That would be false information given to you, we pay our installer's double that for a standard sky install. Every installer is given on average 4 installations, and 4 service calls per day, so i cannot see where the installer get's the time to do overtime for yourselves.

I'm glad you are paying more now, a supevisor confirmed the rate of pay at the time of 25 € (although this was some years ago) on the basis that an installer could earn 100€ per day doing 4 installs. Doing 4 installs and 4 service calls per day is ambitious to say the least. Most sky installs I do take 2 hours on average including travelling time so 4 installs would take me a good 8 hour day with no time for service calls.

What do you pay when the weather is too bad to work?
I made no mention of overtime, any call I receive from sierra installers looking for work is for full time, i.e they are looking to leave sierra

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

All these installers are familar with approaching customers, running cables, configuring the wireing of a home, etc...the only difference is all they have to do is fit a dish, no big deal, it's not rocket science.

Hmm no big deal huh, I think this demostrates sierra's attitude to installation and BTW satellite tv is rocket science :-)

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

All our installers are well paid, and for that we expect little or no complaint's from customer's. And if we do recieve numerous complaint's from customer's, that engineer will no longer be employed by us.


Im sure they have plenty from independant's too.

Yes of course there are also complaints about independents, I would share your policy of not using anyone who had numerous complaints against them.

Tony

bigpaddy2004

I made no mention of overtime, any call I receive from sierra installers looking for work is for full time, i.e they are looking to leave sierra

My apologie's to you, my mistake, read your post wrong. Yes i do agree it is alot of jobs per day for only one installer, most of them do not finish up until around 10pm at night!! This is a problem we are finding it very hard to cope with because we just cannot seem to get installer's looking for work.
Tony i know you are well liked on this forum's, and the last thing I want to do is have a tit for tat match on the boards with you! Nobody is perfect, i hold my hand's up we are not 100% perfect, nor is anybody else.
The only reason people hear so much about us is becuase we do more installations than anybody else in this country. We do on average 400 calls in the south of ireland alone per week, and over 700 calls in the city alone per week. It's commonly known that if you do good to someone, that someone will tell 5 people, do bad to someone, that someone will tell 15 people.
Nobody ever hears about the good we do though?

DMC

Fact of life, I'm afraid, Paddy. If you are the biggest at anything, you get knocked. And especially if you are a telecoms or technological company.

Its rare that we get here praise of Sierra, but, if there is a silent majority, they are quite welcome to post up any good experiences of Sierra installs. I'm very happy to see you post here, Paddy, do keep it up (but civil! and that goes for everyone!) But people are more inclined to post if there is a problem, you'd never get a post here if everything was ok!

Like an online poll, replies here don't necessarily indicate public opinion!

Tony

no problem Paddy. I agree with you, because you do more installs then anyone else even if you have a small percentage of problems it might seem like there is a lot going wrong.

I guess the biggest issue I had with sierra was the way they entered the market on sky's behalf with the lowest price being the most important factor which I felt lead to lower quality. Hopefully things have improved since then

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

My apologie's to you, my mistake, read your post wrong.
Tony i know you are well liked on this forum's, and the last thing I want to do is have a tit for tat match on the boards with you! Nobody is perfect, i hold my hand's up we are not 100% perfect, nor is anybody else.
The only reason people hear so much about us is becuase we do more installations than anybody else in this country.

Tony

I agree Damo, in the interests of balance we need to hear about good experiences of Sierra installs but as you say the tendancy is to post when there is a problem.

DMC wrote:

Fact of life, I'm afraid, Paddy. If you are the biggest at anything, you get knocked. And especially if you are a telecoms or technological company.

Its rare that we get here praise of Sierra, but, if there is a silent majority, they are quite welcome to post up any good experiences of Sierra installs. I'm very happy to see you post here, Paddy, do keep it up (but civil! and that goes for everyone!) But people are more inclined to post if there is a problem, you'd never get a post here if everything was ok!

Like an online poll, replies here don't necessarily indicate public opinion!

Stimpyone

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

I have told Stimpyone I can speed up the process if he/she would like me to.

Paddy... this would be very helpfull, anything you could do would be very much appreciated.

orignal job number was....23671163

Cheers.

Hydromonkey

Stimpyone wrote:

I ordered and paid for SKY+ two weeks ago and today was the day that the installation was supposed to take place. So I took the day off work and got up for 8.30 and waited for the installation guy to phone between 9.00am and 10.00am to give me a estimate on what time he was to arrive..... he never called!, so at 10.20am I called Sky who called him and informed me that he (the installation guy) would call me back in 10mins!...... he never called.

So at 12.30 I called Sky again and they informed me that the installation guy had assured them that he would be out before 4.00pm....... he never arrived!.... I phoned Sky again and they apologised and told me that he would defiantly be out between 4.00pm and 6.00pm.....

At 5.50 I began to feel a bit nervous as he still hadn't arrived so I phoned sky again, and they told me that I had to wait until after 6.00pm and that he couldn't check on the "engineer" as the office of the installation company had shut!!. So I waited.....

6.30pm still no sign of the "engineer" and no phone call from anybody, what a waste of a day!, I am unbelievably angry. How do companies get away with treating their customers like this?. I rang Sky for the 5th time and was informed that they have no idea why the "engineer" never turned up and that I would have to wait 2 more weeks for the next instillation.

Needless to say I am furious....... what a bunch of cowboys. :mad:

The EXACT same thing happened to my parents on friday, sort of wierd actually, phone calls around the same time, told the same thing pretty much except about Sierra. Lets just say they weren't too happy about it

eigrod

I went direct to SKY for my SKY installation in Nov/Dec 2002 [ I assume the installers were Sierra although I don't know ]. Absolutely no problems, they came on the date & time originally arranged between me and the Scottish guy on SKY's sales line.

Stimpyone

Well I rang Serria with the number bigpaddy2004 gave me ( thanks again ) and they more or less said that there was nothing the could do for me unless there was a cancellation as SKY don't allow them to reshedule appointments(?).

So I guess I have to wait another 2 weeks.

bigpaddy2004

Sorry about that Stimpyone, i dont deal too much with Dublin but i would think that it is very hard for them to 'force book' an installation up there when every installer is full of booking's all ready. it is alot more busy than us down here in the south. But one thing we do not tolerate is the installer not contacting the customer at the end of the day to give them an update on the installation. An installer not doing this is almost immediate dismissal, so I cannot understand why you were not contacted. But dont worry, im sure you will have better luck next time, and if you do not get a call by 9:30, you ring that man again on the number i gave you. The installer will be tracked down immediately.

EKRIUQ

Stimpyone wrote:

I ordered and paid for SKY+ two weeks ago and today was the day that the installation was supposed to take place. So I took the day off work and got up for 8.30 and waited for the installation guy to phone between 9.00am and 10.00am to give me a estimate on what time he was to arrive..... he never called!, so at 10.20am I called Sky who called him and informed me that he (the installation guy) would call me back in 10mins!...... he never called.

So at 12.30 I called Sky again and they informed me that the installation guy had assured them that he would be out before 4.00pm....... he never arrived!.... I phoned Sky again and they apologised and told me that he would defiantly be out between 4.00pm and 6.00pm.....

At 5.50 I began to feel a bit nervous as he still hadn't arrived so I phoned sky again, and they told me that I had to wait until after 6.00pm and that he couldn't check on the "engineer" as the office of the installation company had shut!!. So I waited.....

6.30pm still no sign of the "engineer" and no phone call from anybody, what a waste of a day!, I am unbelievably angry. How do companies get away with treating their customers like this?. I rang Sky for the 5th time and was informed that they have no idea why the "engineer" never turned up and that I would have to wait 2 more weeks for the next instillation.

Needless to say I am furious....... what a bunch of cowboys. :mad:

Practically the exact same thing happened me last year when I was sorting out the Auld fellas Didibox, all the calls to Sky and they reasuring me that the engineer was on his way all a load of bollacks, but my difference was it happened twice not just once!!!!! :mad: :mad:

Good point about sierra they came 5 weeks from the time I made the appointment and fixed the problem. :rolleyes:

Stimpyone

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

Sorry about that Stimpyone, i dont deal too much with Dublin but i would think that it is very hard for them to 'force book' an installation up there when every installer is full of booking's all ready. it is alot more busy than us down here in the south. But one thing we do not tolerate is the installer not contacting the customer at the end of the day to give them an update on the installation. An installer not doing this is almost immediate dismissal, so I cannot understand why you were not contacted. But dont worry, im sure you will have better luck next time, and if you do not get a call by 9:30, you ring that man again on the number i gave you. The installer will be tracked down immediately.

Not to worry Paddy thanks for your help anyway.....

Tony

Paddy I think you should run customer service, you have the right attitude

bigpaddy2004

Thank's very much Tony....but it's hard enough for me to do what im doing without that!

chump

So if they just do the installations thats 200euro per day, if they work extra they could earn up to say 350 per day let's say.

Thats 1000min per week. Let's say they work 50 weeks a year = 50k
And 1750max per week. 87.5k
Of course they have to pay for insurance etc.. etc... but it's still a nice take home pay... why are people still going to college!

Tony

I think the weather will play a big factor in how many days are actually worked, I have weeks where I lose two or even three days to the weather

chump wrote:

So if they just do the installations thats 200euro per day, if they work extra they could earn up to say 350 per day let's say.

Thats 1000min per week. Let's say they work 50 weeks a year = 50k
And 1750max per week. 87.5k
Of course they have to pay for insurance etc.. etc... but it's still a nice take home pay... why are people still going to college!

bigpaddy2004

There is a lot more to it than that Chump. I.E Diesel, vehicle maintenance, stock, tools, phone calls, vat, etc.

therecklessone

Well, it was Sierra failing to turn up on a number of occassions (booked through Sky for a service call) that prompted me to tell Sky to shove their satellite dish up their holes.

The best excuse I got was:

Sierra: Oh, the engineer got bitten by a dog this morning, and he's been in hospital all day.
Me: Its now 4pm, he didn't contact you earlier in the day so that you could tell your customers?
Sierra: Eh, no.

Bas*ards.

Stimpyone

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

There is a lot more to it than that Chump. I.E Diesel, vehicle maintenance, stock, tools, phone calls, vat, etc.

Seems like some of the installers are saving money on the phone calls

bigpaddy2004

Ah....Comedian's!

Stimpyone

Finally the Serria guy arrived to install SKY+ this afternoon and I have to say he was very professional and quick, so kudos to the installer. Now if only they could sort out customer services.

bigpaddy2004

Finally the Serria guy arrived to install SKY+ this afternoon and I have to say he was very professional and quick, so kudos to the installer. Now if only they could sort out customer services.

Thank's very much Stimpyone for your honesty, and sorry about the trouble.