If I get a Sky+ box do I really need to pay Sky to install it?

[choufleur]

Sky are quoting £179 to supply and install a sky+ box. We have normal sky already. do we really need to get a sky+ box from sky? I can buy one on ebay for about half that price.

Cheers

Sky + requires 2 cables to the dish. If you have normal Sky you will only have 1 cable. So, yes, you do need an engineer.

I think you need to have a sky+ subscription as well in order for it to work. If you have one of the premium channels (sport or movies) i think it is free, otherwise its +£10 a month. Not sure how you do this if you don't get them to install it.

When you have sky+ there is an extra wire coming in from the satellite - so guess you would need somebody to install that unless you know how to do it yourself.

Be aware that a 2nd hand box may be knackered (not sure if that is what you have found on ebay) - we had one for 3.5 years that burnt out from all the use - the hard disk goes in the end. But we had this old one moved into another room and now use it as a freeview box (it just doesn't record anymore). Hope this helps a bit. There are some good techie sites on the web - put in sky+ installation and see - found one here

Do you really have an extra wire coming in??
I thought that was only for sky HD.
You can pay someone else to do it, when we moved house we paid sky £80 to come and move us, but the guy who did it said if we ever want skyHD then just call him and he'll do it for a lot cheaper.
Also I'm sure SKy only ask for £30 installation, it even says so here

Why not ring them and say you are thinking of leaving them, and get one for free!

you definitely need another cable coming in I'm afraid. They will make a dreadful mess putting it in IME!!!

You need one wire for each stream one for sky and one for +.

Try phoning a local areials/satelitte engineer. Sky sub-contract to local engineers hal the time anyway.

I'd prefer a locla engineer tbh, the last two times I had sky supposedly coming out I was told between 8am and 1pm, no-one here still at 1pm, called got transferred to a cowboy, he said be here in half hour.
2hours later, no cowboy.

Went slightly dolally on phone at sky, rearranged it, again, 8am-1pm, fella not here by 1:30, we went out, got home from school run at 4pm and he turned up!!! Had the cheek to say he called the house phone at 3 and no-one was in

Then all he did was put a wire through a hole that was already in the wall, we were charged £80 by sky, then had to call them out again to get the satellite realigned, thankfully no charge cos of the previous £80, but really anbnoyed me, and all the person at sky could say was 'well, the subcontractors.......'

We did the whole "going to cancel sky and move to Virgin" thing and got a reduced price sky HD box installed for free.

Also found their customer service excellent tbh