So annoyed with SKY!

hickory99

Oh my god I'm absolutely livid with sky right now to the point I'm seriously considering switching to upc. We moved house a while ago and a tech had to come out and add a second cable for the plus function. Since that happened we have been having issues where the screen freezes for a few seconds and then comes back on again, more so on the HD channels and it has been happening more and more. Then last week the live pause and record stopped working. So I called customer service and the guy was very nice and got it back working, said if it happened again to call back. A few days later and it starting happening again last night in the middle of the opening ceremony for the olympic's which we had organised a big family night with the kids to watch the first half and we were going to record the rest for them. So needless to say that when it started right in the midst of the opening ceremony. So called sky again, the guy was nice too and fixed it. Hung up and ten minutes later it stopped working again! I didn't bother ringing them back that night I was too angry.
I called today because the choose sport is not working either and the games are very important to us, we love them. This time when they answered I told the guy that I was really annoyed to be paying high prices for a service I'm not getting, instead of saying sorry for the disruption he said with a smart tone "your not paying for it, it's free". I kept my composure and went through the process again and it's back working now. I asked him what if it happens again and he said we can do something else but we will have to delete all your recording and I told that I wanted to keep my recording because there a few that are extremely important to hold onto, a couple of political programs that I was on and a few things of sentimental value that my dad has saved. I asked could they not just replace the box and I can leave the old box aside and just swap the viewing card back into it when we want to see the recorded stuff and he said no that they won't replace the box until try the thing that deletes the recordings first. I'm furious.
A friend of mine had a problem like that with UPC and they danced around her and gave her 3 months discount on her bill and everything, her problem was only service related, she wasen't losing recordings she wanted to keep.
We are with sky years and never thought we would change but now I just don't think I want to stay with them

Cantona's Collars

Sounds like an issue with the cables,make sure the installer put them in tight enough,you should really insist that they send the installer back out as the issues only started after he completed his work.

Ranicand

I am with Sky but I have to admit if something goes wrong they are far worse to deal with then UPC.

UPC now have on demand and if Sky are treating you badly switch.

Cantona's Collars

Ranicand wrote: »

I am with Sky but I have to admit if something goes wrong they are far worse to deal with then UPC.

UPC now have on demand and if Sky are treating you badly switch.

If the op has upgraded to HD,they are now tied into another 12 month contract.But the threat to cancel usually yields results.

As I stated,they should insist the installer return to fix what he didn't do right in the first place.There should be a contact number for Sierra (who do Sky installs) if the op ordered direct from Sky.The contact number is meant to be on a sticker on the box & the back of the remote.

Hugh Cream

Its very annoying when stuff like this happens, its even more annoying when those responsible, or those charged with fixing the problem seem disinterested, and worse still, obnoxious or just rude in manner.
what i will say though, one persons rudeness probably doesn't speak for a whole company.
personally speaking, ive just moved in the other direction, upc to sky, and theres absolutely no comparison, upc win as far as phone/broadband but sky win hands down on tv.

also if your one of those who can only receive the basics on upc definitely stay with sky.

byte

@OP, what fixes did they suggest?

You should probably remove the recordings you want to keep onto a DVD recorder or something, as if the box is changed, or HDD formatted in efforts to fix it, then you lose everything.

theoneeyedman

can you not back up your recordings to a USB or something?(haven't sky but surely it can be done)

Saruman

Try this free software to backup to pc. Never used it so let us know how you get on if you try it.

byte

theoneeyedman wrote: »

can you not back up your recordings to a USB or something?(haven't sky but surely it can be done)

Alas, no. Despite the boxes having USB ports, they're redundant.

byte

Saruman wrote: »

Try this free software to backup to pc. Never used it so let us know how you get on if you try it.

Yeah, that software works fine, though you do need to remove the HDD from the STB of course, on both the old box and a possible replacement.

The files copies from the Sky box are useless unless inside a Skybox as recordings are encrypted.

Saruman

Yeah that's how I read it but he just needs to perform the format procedure so back up the drive, do the procedure and if it still does not work he either gets a new box from sky (fingers crossed) or an engineer to fix cabling and then he can restore to either the original box or a replacement box.

Menas

Slightly off topic....but an hour before the opening ceremony on friday night my sky went to 'no signal received'.
Reset LNB, rebooted sky box...and then discovered that the issue was with all sky boxes in my house. I was raging and about to call sky to shout at them....but kinda knowing that this was not really their issue as both boxes were down.

For some reason my brain kicked in and I realised that the only common denominator was the dish. I went outside and low and behold a murder of crows were on my roof and two of them sitting on my dish LNB arm.
Threw one small stone at them and they all scarpered.
Problem sorted!!

byte

There are plastic spiky strips that can be got to put along the LNB arm to stop birds perching there.