Zoop’s Rantings On Life…

Since December 2007, we have had a ‘battle royal’ over our Sky+ subscription.

Sky+ is one of the satellite subscription services provided by sky.com, who also provide services such as Sky, Sky Talk, Sky Broadband and is overall part of the BSkyB group. Sky broadcast shows such as Bones, CSI and the Law & Order series. It is like Cable or Astro in Malaysia.

Here’s the facts:

• In December of last year (2007), Sky’s automated systems decided that, for some reason, it didn’t like our direct debit mandate and cancelled it. The first we knew of this was when our service was interrupted on Christmas Day!!

• When we rang Sky.com customer support, they said our bank had cancelled the direct debit. Not only did we have to settle by debit card AND pay a £4 administration charge for ‘payment by invoice’, BUT we had to wait FOUR HOURS for the service to be restored, meaning we missed most of the Christmas Day family entertainment and blockbuster films.

• We received a letter from Sky, advising that the direct debit was in place, again. At the same time, we also received a confirmation letter from our bank, stating that no direct debit had EVER been cancelled.

• This happened again in January, February, March and April of this year.

• In May, when we AGAIN paid by debit card and renewed our direct debit, we received a written promise from BSkyB (British Sky Broadcasting) that this would never happend again.

• We thought this was the end of it, but it has happened, this morning, with our Sky+ subscription again being blocked without warning. Hubby rang them up yesterday morning and spent over two hours on the phone to them, arguing the toss and going over EVERY SINGLE DETAIL of the last six months. He eventually got them to agree to raise a technical fault, with a promise from this staff member that full service would be restored and a full refund provided for the last six months ‘administrative charges’ of £24.

• After an afternoon out, we returned home to find out Sky+ service totally blocked this time. Hubby again rang them up and after over two hours on the phone, got through to someone in their UK call centre who was both very rude and abrupt. Hubby was told that if he didn’t pay the outstanding amount by credit or debit card immediately, then would end their contract with us and take us to court!!!! After again paying by debit card, hubby was told that no refund of the £4 administration charge was due, as it was our fault our bank cancelled the direct debit (which they haven’t).

Although their products and services are good on the whole, they are rotten to the core when it comes to ‘customer support’ , ‘customer service’ and ‘dispute resolution’.

Hubby is now looking at what we can do…stupid Sky!! One of the WORST!!!

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Tags: 24, bones, csi, join sky now, prison break, sky, sky broadband, sky one, sky sports, sky support, sky.com

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