Sky Faults-Call out

Gilally

Hi we had some issues with our sky box we lost 70% of our channels and could not record to the sky box. They charged 100 euro to call out and diagnose. When they did they said it was my dish was coming away from the wall. Should I have to pay the 100 euro. They are providing a service which I am paying for, if for any reason there is a fault in that service should it not be in their interests to fix it so I can resume the service I am paying for??

Soarer

If they've already called out, I reckon you'll have to pay up.

When you rang them to explain about the fault, if they didn't offer you a free engineer's visit, you should've threatened to cancel.

twinklerunner

Gilally wrote: »

Hi we had some issues with our sky box we lost 70% of our channels and could not record to the sky box. They charged 100 euro to call out and diagnose. When they did they said it was my dish was coming away from the wall. Should I have to pay the 100 euro. They are providing a service which I am paying for, if for any reason there is a fault in that service should it not be in their interests to fix it so I can resume the service I am paying for??

Why should Sky incur a cost for this? Would RTÉ pay to repair a damaged aerial?

Gilally

No but RTE are not charging 30 odd euro a month!

Tarabuses

Gilally wrote: »

No but RTE are not charging 30 odd euro a month!

They are receiving part of the €30 you pay.

twinklerunner

Gilally wrote: »

No but RTE are not charging 30 odd euro a month!

You own the equipment, not Sky. I always get a local contractor to do repairs, I would never contact Sky

brian_gall85

If you are out of contract call them up and ask for the work done for free. If this fails then ask for cancellations - they will do it for nothing. You should have done this before the call out was agreed as they always waive the charge this way.

steveon

Sky should not have to pay for a service call in the same way as u pay for a washing machine people will pay €80 for a service call per hour. If sky offered every service call for free they wouldnt be in business....You were given hundreds of euros worth of equipment for a small nominal fee when you signed up and people always forget that.

You are paying to receive the channels not for free equipment...if you had UPC and cancelled they come for the equipment where they find it worth there while in retreiving sky dont its urs to keep after 12 months.

Finally goto a local installer who will gladly sort you out for less than €100.

brian_gall85

Sky is a service and not a physical product. If the equipment that they provided for the service isn't enabling you to watch the service you are paying them for then why should you have to pay more to solve the problem? Also some of us actually had to pay for our boxes and/or installs originally.

basill

You were given hundreds of euros worth of equipment for a small nominal fee when you signed up and people always forget that.

You never read Alan Sugars book then? If you did you will see that he got to be a multi millionaire was by finding ways to produce electronics at a fraction of the price of what the competition were doing. The dish was outsourced to a manufacturer of car bonnets who did them for £1. With the brackets they were £3.

Just cos it sells in a shop for hundreds of euro doesn't mean it cost that to manufacture!

Sky have a monopoly and abuse that regularly. Charging for a call out to fix their own substandard equipment just highlights this. In 2011 they reported £1bn in pre tax profits. Its hard to shed a tear for them.

PogMoThoin

basill wrote: »

Sky have a monopoly and abuse that regularly. Charging for a call out to fix their own substandard equipment just highlights this. In 2011 they reported £1bn in pre tax profits. Its hard to shed a tear for them.

None of which contributes a single cent to Irish revenue, they are a UK company and pay their taxes in the UK. I wish Irish people would wake up and stop paying a foreign company for what's mostly free TV.

Sky+ is a huge gimmick, You own a set top box with PVR functionality, but you have to have a subscription to use those functions.

twinklerunner

PogMoThoin wrote: »

None of which contributes a single cent to Irish revenue, they are a UK company and pay their taxes in the UK. I wish Irish people would wake up and stop paying a foreign company for what's mostly free TV.

Sky+ is a huge gimmick, You own a set top box with PVR functionality, but you have to have a subscription to use those functions.

Be careful what you moan about. What about all the foreign companies that are providing employment in Ireland purely to avail of low Corporation tax rates? From today's Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/04/amazon-british-operation-corporation-tax

PogMoThoin

twinklerunner wrote: »

Be careful what you moan about. What about all the foreign companies that are providing employment in Ireland purely to avail of low Corporation tax rates? From today's Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/apr/04/amazon-british-operation-corporation-tax

Yes, but by paying Corporation Tax here they are contributing to the Irish economy. Sky don't contribute a single cent here. A hundred million goes to the queen in UK VAT for Sky subscriptions held here, meaning half a billion leaves this country every year (UK VAT is 20%). It's very wrong. Most people don't realise most of the channels are free, 9 of the 10 channels most watched here on Sky are free if you have the equipment

twinklerunner

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Yes, but by paying Corporation Tax here they are contributing to the Irish economy. Sky don't contribute a single cent here. A hundred million goes to the queen in UK VAT for Sky subscriptions held here, meaning half a billion leaves this country every year (UK VAT is 20%). It's very wrong. Most people don't realise most of the channels are free, 9 of the 10 channels most watched here on Sky are free if you have the equipment

'Sky don't contribute a single cent here.' Wrong. They employ people in Cork who pay Irish taxes .. and will also shortly be opening a call centre in Dublin 2.

The channels might be free but there is no equivalent easy-to-use box that records Irish & UK channels - simple as. Even in UK, they have citrca 10m customers where your arguement also applies. Basically, [FONT=Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif]it's a free country and people can choose to watch tv however they like. [/FONT]

Cantona's Collars

It's like having your washing machine breaking down then ringing Hotpoint to come & fix it for free.Things break,that's life.
However Sky should have a sliding scale regarding repair charges,€100 for a loose cable is a bit much but €100 to replace a dish,cables or a box isn't.

PogMoThoin

twinklerunner wrote: »

'Sky don't contribute a single cent here.' Wrong. They employ people in Cork who pay Irish taxes .. and will also shortly be opening a call centre in Dublin 2.

Sky don't employ anyone in Cork, they outsource to an Irish company. They'll be dropping them shortly, wait and see. The new call centre in Dublin is good news, it's about time they contributed something here. I'd like to see them forced to pay Irish VAT as we're losing out big time, they've contributed nothing for years.

twinklerunner

PogMoThoin wrote: »

Sky don't employ anyone in Cork, they outsource to an Irish company. They'll be dropping them shortly, wait and see. The new call centre in Dublin is good news, it's about time they contributed something here. I'd like to see them forced to pay Irish VAT as we're losing out big time, they've contributed nothing for years.

My last word on this is that we can't have it every way. We have a low corporation tax rate here, thereby bringing additional employment & business taxes to Ireland and in turn depriving other countries of same. We can't then complain about Sky paying vat to the UK authorities .. when they're based in the UK.

brian_gall85

zerks wrote: »

It's like having your washing machine breaking down then ringing Hotpoint to come & fix it for free.Things break,that's life.
However Sky should have a sliding scale regarding repair charges,€100 for a loose cable is a bit much but €100 to replace a dish,cables or a box isn't.

It's nothing like your washing machine breaking down. Hotpoint et al don't come around to your house every week and do your washing for you do they? That's a product sky is a service, if you can't avail of the service you're paying for, (almost €100/month in so cases), then they should fix it for a very minimal cost.

PogMoThoin

twinklerunner wrote: »

My last word on this is that we can't have it every way. We have a low corporation tax rate here, thereby bringing additional employment & business taxes to Ireland and in turn depriving other countries of same. We can't then complain about Sky paying vat to the UK authorities .. when they're based in the UK.

UPC/NTL are a Dutch company but pay Irish VAT. Any company who trades more than €36,000 per year here must register with Revenue and pay Irish VAT. Sky get out of this on a loophole, their service comes from satellite. This is the reason they didn't open a headquarters here. If the Irish VAT rate was lower than the UK one they would register here tomorrow. Times are tight, the Irish economy could do with it now. Hopefully when they open their new call centre they'll have no choice as they'll have an Irish operation.

aidan_walsh

Can we try and come back around to the OP's topic of callout charges please?

twinklerunner

brian_gall85 wrote: »

It's nothing like your washing machine breaking down. Hotpoint et al don't come around to your house every week and do your washing for you do they? That's a product sky is a service, if you can't avail of the service you're paying for, (almost €100/month in so cases), then they should fix it for a very minimal cost.

Eh? Would you insist on Bord Gáis repairing your faulty boiler? You're paying for their gas but it's your boiler. Anyway, enough analogies :rolleyes:

brian_gall85

For a start we aren't fortunate enough to have piped gas in this part of the country but if we did then I'd expect the pipes that lead into my house to work. I mean what I do with the gas once I receive it is of no importance to Bord Gáis.

To get back to the original question, once you have agreed to the call out you're pretty much going to have to pay it but there's no harm in asking.

The same goes in all works of life.

cc

As an alternative, if you can get UPC and are happy with their channel line up, you only rent the equipment, the upside is call outs and replacement of faulty equipment is free.

cheesypuffs

I just made the call yesterday and was told about the €100 charge. Luckily, my brother has a box he will let me have, but if that doesn't work, I will cancel the account unless they waive the charge. It's already a pricey service, and all this giving you a free box and dish lark doesn't wash with me. Would you buy a satellite dish and receiver if they didn't give you one in order to get their pricey service? Of course not, it would be prohibitively expensive, and you could be damn sure that Sky would not have a fraction of the customers they have. If you'll pardon the pun, it smacks of your first fix being free..

mickko

Tarabuses wrote: »

They are receiving part of the €30 you pay.

No they're not, RTE receive no revenue from Sky.

mickko

twinklerunner wrote: »

My last word on this is that we can't have it every way. We have a low corporation tax rate here, thereby bringing additional employment & business taxes to Ireland and in turn depriving other countries of same. We can't then complain about Sky paying vat to the UK authorities .. when they're based in the UK.

There's simply no comparison.

The low corporation tax is a government incentive to encourage large corporations to invest in Ireland and with great economic results for the country.
It may be unpopular with our neighbours, but it's above board and a smart business move by our government with great benefits.

Sky are getting away with charging extortionate rates to its Irish customers and paying no VAT here because they are broadcasting into the state via satellite, and therefor enjoying no regulation.

After a decade of this, and denying the Irish exchequer of VAT on many many billions of euro, Government needs to rectify this and ensure Sky pay VAT to the Irish state, same as any other business operating a service here.

inocybe

I'm in the same boat, the plastic bracket on my sky dish has been broken for ages, years actually. I have it all taped up and it works fine until temperatures reach mid 20s and the tape won't hold. We used to get by those few days a year by watching from the planner. That doesn't work anymore without a satellite feed, and I've just been on the phone to see if they can bypass that....NO. I was told at least 60 euro for an engineer, which I don't have, the bloody plastic thing probably costs a couple of euro. Any idea where I could buy such a thing myself?

brian_gall85

Call them and ask for cancellations if you are anywhere near/outside your contract with them.