To be absolutely furious at sky?

[cerealnamechange]

My internet has been broken since Thursday morning. I've rang them every day multiple times a day to try and find out the problem and no one seems to know, all I'm getting it 'there is a fault with the system and it's been escalated to another department who will try and fix it', however they have no phone number for this department and can only communicate with them by email. I admittedly got very short with them earlier after I told them that we have someone in the house with university deadlines coming up who's university is closed and we have someone working from home and we live in the middle of no where and the reply was 'well, isn't there someone else's internet you can go and use' and ' well, you're company should be providing you with internet anyway, we are only for home use'. I honestly have steam coming out of my ears and still no one has any idea when it's going to be back on 😤😤

Yes, I'm afraid YABU. Services do get interrupted and it can take a while to get fixed. That's not just Sky, that's any broadband provider. Getting cross won't get it fixed more quickly. You do need to look into alternatives such as mobile broadband or library or cafes with internet. I also live in the middle of nowhere, and have very unreliable broadband, but I plan for that and have back ups in place.

YANBU it is shit service but none of them is any better so there's no incentive for them to improve.

Yabu, as pp said, these things do happen and if you live rurally then even more reason to have a back up plan. As for getting short with the staff members, you're onto nothing there! Don't speak to staff like shit and expect them to go out of their way to help you. These people are there to do a job, not for you to take out your frustrations on.

I just don't understand why such a big company like sky would take over three days to fix a problem and they still don't even know what it is. Usually we would either be at uni or work so it wouldn't have such an impact to need backup broadband . Their whole attitude is just 'well, there's nothing we can do'.

YANBU - it's crap.

If there is a fault then they have to contact open reach, sky own none of the infrastructure. Engineers aren't always available same day, and with what's going on at the moment they may well be very short staffed. As frustrating as it is, you should have taken other steps to ensure a connection. Trust me, the call centre staff, who are no doubt over worked and underpaid are really not there to listen to your rants/frustrations. Perhaps take this as a call to look at your package and pay more for extra benefits.

We moved from sky when we lived a little more rurally as the internet kept ‘going down’ and there was never anything they could do...the worst we had was almost 2 weeks. The problem is that BT still own all the boxes, and I am convinced that Sky users are switched off every time BT goes into them.

We cancelled Sky, got BT and it never went down again

SKY are appalling.

We recently had two weeks without internet and they failed to turn up to three separate appointments. Eventually someone showed up and contacted OpenReach who were equally appalling. Their customer service was appalling - loads of platitudes but nobody could give me any reasons as to why I waited in for three days only for nobody to turn up!

We switched to BT and saved ourselves £15 a month.

There is a fault with my account that for some reason there is a restriction that they cannot lift and they don't know how to remove it. It's nothing to do with infrastructure.

When you say broken...I know you're saying they don't know what the issue is, so you don't either, but is it that the box won't work? Or does it just not appear to connect? Do you have anything routed via cabled connection or all WiFi?

Just seen your update, phone and remind them that you aren't liable to pay if you cannot access the service. And if there is someone else you can speak to, usually a manager appears out of the woodwork who can make some enquiries.

Write to the CEO:
[email protected]

I've spoken to a manager who also says there is apparently nothing they can do. I've tried asking if there is any way they can provide temporary internet or any other way I can access broadband and there is nothing whatsoever they can do.

Sky rent capacity off BT Openreach and BT Engineers fix the problems.

Openreach engineers fix a fault, BT have no engineers. Tbh with the level of service you clearly need I can't understand why you chose a cheap provider. Shop around, there are so many connection guarantees with other providers, but you will pay for it.

@cerealnamechange it once took a week for BT to fix the phone line on my mums phone, even though I told them that she was 87, and the phone was her only means of contact as she doesn’t have a mobile or the internet. Sky does run through a BT phone line, so perhaps the problem is more on that side and that’s why you’re getting nothing sorted?

Your work could provide you with internet. I’m my work lap top runs off a data sim.

You can also tether devices to use data via your phone.

YABU. Services go down and they don’t have magic solutions to fix them straight away; they need to find the fault first to then be able to fix it.

Harassing the call centre staff and being rude to them is awful behaviour; it’s not their fault and they are trying their best to deal with difficult people like you.

The problem is that there is mistaken restrictions on my account and no one seems to know how to get them off. Working from home is because of corona so it wouldn't usually be an issue.

I think it's awful to leave someone without a service they've paid for for days on end!

Do you think they’re doing it deliberately?

we are only for home use

BT told me the same thing when they “accidentally” blocked my account and couldn’t reverse it. I told them that I needed to work from home, and they said that they’d have to report it and might cancel my services because it was a breach of contract to use my home services for work

It took about three weeks to be resolved, hopefully Sky will do it faster for you! I still can’t believe that it took so long to fix something they did

So it’s not broken, they have just cut you off and can’t reconnect you until they find out why. That is very frustrating.

Can your DH not hotspot from his work phone? Ours all have unlimited data and we are expected to do this when working outside of the office, lots of meetings etc don't have good enough WiFi or its not encrypted to the correct standard, unless they are paying you for it your employer can't expect you to have broadband not everyone does.
As for sky I will never ever use them as a service provider again, they could be giving it away for free and I wouldn't want it.

We live rurally, too, and our Sky broadband is maddeningly slow (less than 1Mbps much of the time) and is forever dropping out. The land line phone sound quality isn't good and our mobile signal is rubbish, too. A BT Open Reach engineer put a new line in recently but he said there was nothing they could do to improve the broadband speeds. We also just went nearly 4 weeks without the telly service. That's how long it took to get an engineer. We asked for and got some money back for that, but it'll just be swallowed up by the £65 engine visit charge.

I know some of this is down to being rural but it does get frustrating at times when Sky/BT can't help. No point shouting at the staff, though. When my husband works from home, he tethers his laptop to his work phone's mobile hotspot, apparently. All too complicated for me.

Roll on all these upgrades to rural broadband!