Trying to Get Sky+

Kappar

I have sky now for years since the analogue days. So about two weeks before Christmas I call up to order multi-room the new box to be a sky+ plus box. After a while on the phone and calling back a few times I get an install date of 7/01/05 (Yesterday). On the letter I got from sky it says someone will ring before 9 am on the day of installation to tell you what time they'll arrive at.

10am and still no one calls I call sky. "Someone will call you in 15 mins"
12pm still no call. I call back "He says he'll be there between 2 and 5"
5pm no one came. Call sky to book a new date but told "No he's running late he'll be there.
8pm Assume he's not coming

12pm today called and am told "He'll be there today or tomorrow he'll call you within half an hour.
2pm Still no call so I call back and told "There offices are not open today so i don;t know why that guy told you that the engineer would call you today, I'll book an installation for you for JAN 26TH" I said no I want it installed next week and I'll ring back Monday when the office is open to confirm when.

What do you think my chances are of getting this? Any advice on how to work this? Does anyone know what company sky use and can I ring them directly?

To add insult to injury I have spent about €40+ calling sky from my mobile because my land line can only call local numbers. Why do sky have a country number? This leads me to my next question:-

Sky say to get sky+ installed you need "A working land line capable of receiving and making calls" does this mean that your land line must be able to call outside the local area code?

Anyway hope someone can help

slegs

I just ordered today (Sky+ and Multiroom upgrade 199EUR) and was very surprised to find out that the next install date is Mar 4th...thats 8 weeks away. This is not very good business by Sky. What ever company they have subcontracted this to in Ireland obviously can't handle the business. :eek:

They need to look at this urgently or they will lose alot of business.....especially if after an 8 week wait the install day experience is as bad as the previous post suggests.

Does anyone know a way around this? Can you pay someone a few extra quid to avoid this pain Who does the installations?

Pls get in touch with me in PM if you can help me get my install done in the next couple of weeks..


Thanks
Slegs

DMC

The best route now is go via independent installer.

It may cost more (maybe €100) but you get the install you want done.

Before Christmas, it took me a week from calling into my local dealer, him ordering the Multiroom card and the installer putting both Sky+ and repositioning my existing box for multiroom.

bigpaddy2004

Kappar wrote:

I have sky now for years since the analogue days. So about two weeks before Christmas I call up to order multi-room the new box to be a sky+ plus box. After a while on the phone and calling back a few times I get an install date of 7/01/05 (Yesterday). On the letter I got from sky it says someone will ring before 9 am on the day of installation to tell you what time they'll arrive at.

10am and still no one calls I call sky. "Someone will call you in 15 mins"
12pm still no call. I call back "He says he'll be there between 2 and 5"
5pm no one came. Call sky to book a new date but told "No he's running late he'll be there.
8pm Assume he's not coming

12pm today called and am told "He'll be there today or tomorrow he'll call you within half an hour.
2pm Still no call so I call back and told "There offices are not open today so i don;t know why that guy told you that the engineer would call you today, I'll book an installation for you for JAN 26TH" I said no I want it installed next week and I'll ring back Monday when the office is open to confirm when.

What do you think my chances are of getting this? Any advice on how to work this? Does anyone know what company sky use and can I ring them directly?

To add insult to injury I have spent about €40+ calling sky from my mobile because my land line can only call local numbers. Why do sky have a country number? This leads me to my next question:-

Sky say to get sky+ installed you need "A working land line capable of receiving and making calls" does this mean that your land line must be able to call outside the local area code?

Anyway hope someone can help

Kapper, your phone will be of no benefit when the installer arrive's. He/she will not be able to initialize either card. What county are you in?

Regard's
Padraig

Kappar

bigpaddy2004 wrote:

Kapper, your phone will be of no benefit when the installer arrive's. He/she will not be able to initialize either card. What county are you in?

Regard's
Padraig

Dublin. No mention of this was made when I was ordering the box. I was told I needed a working phone line which can make and receive calls, this i have. Is there any means of manually registering the card?

bigpaddy2004

Kappar wrote:

Dublin. No mention of this was made when I was ordering the box. I was told I needed a working phone line which can make and receive calls, this i have. Is there any means of manually registering the card?

All the person on the other end of the phone in Sky is interested in is a sale, the last thing they are going to start to tell you about is all the phone lines which have to be ran all over your house. Your card can be activated but when Sky "call" the box, the box will be unable to respond back to them as it requires the phoneline to do this. Afterward's Sky will either shut down the card or charge you the full premium of the package on the card.

Regard's
Padraig

pbirney

I ordered Sky+ with multi-room on December 11th. I had hoped to have the installation carried out before Christmas however, because of demand; I was advised that the earliest date for installation would be January 7th.

On the morning of installation, the installer (from Sierra) rang to arrange a suitable time. He asked if I had received a card from Sky and I told him that I had only received a letter confirming the installation date, but no card. He then advised me that the installation could not proceed without the second card. I explained that I had taken time off work especially for the installation however he explained that it was Sierra’s policy not to perform these installations without having both cards.

I then rang Sky Customer Service and explained about not receiving the new card and how it prevented the installation of my Sky Plus. The girl at Sky advised to me that, for some unknown reason, my card was never dispatched to me. She arranged for the card to be sent a.s.a.p however it would take approximately three days to arrive. In the meantime, she said, the installation of Sky+ and the relocation of my existing Digibox could proceed using my existing card. All I had to do later would be to call Sky when my new card arrived and it would be authorises on the multi-room box.

I then phoned the Sierra engineer, who said that I was misinformed by Sky and he repeated that it was not possible to have the system installed without the second card.

After checking back with Sky Customer Service they admitted that two of their agents in Ireland, Finlay and Sierra, have adopted a policy of not completing an install without posession of the second card, even though it is technically possible to proceed with the install with the existing card.

The issue seems to revolve around the delay the agents experience in getting paid by Sky for an incomplete installation. If the second card is authorised on the day of installation by the engineer, then Sierra are paid straight away for that installation. Otherwise they have to wait until the second card is phoned in to Sky by the customer at a later date. The engineer also explained that in some cases this second card is never phoned in to Sky by the customer and the multi-room box ends up being installed illegally at another address! In these cases, the job remains incomplete and the agents do not get paid by Sky.

Sky did offer to split the job in two and have Sky+ installed on the day and to schedule a second visit by the engineer for the relocation of my existing box. The problem with this was that I would have to pay for the second visit myself as it was not within the "parameters" of the current offer! I finally had to opt for a re-scheduled installation date of January 25th. :mad:

~Paul.

Kappar

I am looking into getting having the national calls reinstated on my phone line, I didn't want them removed in the first place but was told that in order to remove mobiles and premium rate i had to remove national, they problem is eircom charge €25 to do this to your line and I am not sure if I will have to remove the call barring and then reinstate it for the mobiles and premium rates costing me money which i would rather not give to eircom. Anyone know if this is the case?

Also Paul, Sky didn't send me my card either I presumed it was lost in the mail but now looks like they are just really really stupid.

Tony

pbirney wrote:

The issue seems to revolve around the delay the agents experience in getting paid by Sky for an incomplete installation.

This is a major problem for independents and not just on incomplete installs. Sky will promise the sun moon and stars on the phone but are not in a hurry to pay for the work and products needed. They still do not see that such a policy dramatically hurts their sales here as retailers are not motivated to sell sky and are more inclined to use resources on other products which actually make money.

slegs

I got my Sky+ and Multiroom installed on Saturday morning. I have to say that I am really happy with the job that was done. It was really a neat job with the coax going from the dish at the back of the house through the attic and down the front of the house tracked/hidden along the drainpipe.
They also ran the phone cables really neatly which I was pleased with as this is usually an ugly thing visually.

I am really impressed with Sky+...the functionality is amazing. Got it all hooked up through my Technics AV amp as per the instructions on www.hummer.co.uk . The dolby digital is impressive on Movies and the dual recording feature is really cool. I watched Apocolypse Now on Sat night on playback while recording two other shows and it was perfect (don't know why but i expected the quality to be not as good as a live stream). The picture quality is top notch on live or recordings...much better than I had expected coz I had read some complaints about picture quality on Digital Spy.

One piece of advice I'd give is that I think it is really important to keep the box cool and not to overwork the hard drive. This comes from my IT knowledge as many of the problems I keep hearing about seem to me to be connected with failing hardware (Sky+ board components / hard drive). I know that there are known software bugs also but the randomness of the different box setups that get different errors really suggests hw failure. To this end i am disabling instant rewind as I think any feature that invloves constant writing to the HD can't be good. The drive just has to fail earlier than if it is not enabled. Also i have moved the Sky+ box away from the Amp and DVD player as after a few hours it was getting hot sitting near these boxes. I now have it on the floor under the open cabinet (one of those widescreen stands). I placed it on an old metal cover panel from a computer which works really well as it seems to keep it even cooler.

I have ordered the Samsung Spinpoint SP1604N 160GB and I am going to try the upgrade after a couple of weeks. Seems to be fairly straightforward once you have the right drive.

Will let you know how I get on...

Anyway, I want to thank Bigpaddy2004 and his colleague who came on Saturday and did a great job. It is heartening to see that there are people out there who take pride in a good job! Thanks again.

Tony

slegs wrote:

Anyway, I want to thank Bigpaddy2004 and his colleague who came on Saturday and did a great job. It is heartening to see that there are people out there who take pride in a good job! Thanks again.

Good on ya Paddy

bigpaddy2004

Thank's very much Paul for your praise!! It come's as standard for all Sky customer's.

ixtlan

Yes, Sky+ is excellent.

On the matter of hard drive upgrade, I've had a maxtor 160Gb drive in for about 4 months now with now problems.

You have probably read through the digitalspy forums but here's some advice anyhow.

When you remove the ata cable from the old drive, be very very very careful. I almost pulled the ribbon cable off the connector. Best thing to do is use a small flat-head screwdriver to lever it gently off the socket, one side then the other etc etc.

After the drive went in, the fan stayed on all the time. Many other people reported this also. I found this to be a little too loud, so I removed the panel at the back that is designed for extension hardware, and left it off. Then I placed a standard PC 8cm case fan over the opening and connected it to a variable power supply running at 3V, rather than the usual 12V. Then I disconnected the internal fan, just pulling off it's powersupply cable from the circuit board. This is very quiet and must be close to as good as the internal fan.

Ix.

slegs

thanks for the fan advice...I will keep it in mind when im upgrading

ixtlan

yes, don't get too paranoid about the noise. I am very fussy. The PC case fan is quieter than the internal fan, but for you maybe it won't be an issue.

I would be interested to know if the fan does indeed stay on.

Actually it's kind of a good thing for some fan to be on as it's very good to disscipate that heat. The drive will last longer because of it.

Ix.

byte

I am looking into getting having the national calls reinstated on my phone line, I didn't want them removed in the first place but was told that in order to remove mobiles and premium rate i had to remove national, they problem is eircom charge €25 to do this to your line and I am not sure if I will have to remove the call barring and then reinstate it for the mobiles and premium rates costing me money which i would rather not give to eircom. Anyone know if this is the case?

We had mobile and premium numbers disabled on our phone, not national or cross-channel calls. Our service provider is Esat though if that has any bearing. I think they charged ~€30 to disable mobile and premiums.