I have had so many problems with Sky broadband that I think it's time to call in the BBC watchdog team,
so far since August I have had a ropey connection, a double the usual phone bill, had so many promises of callbacks - very few of which have been returned and I have spent hours on hold trying to get through only for them to guess at the solution and promise me a call back..

Is anyone else having the same problems?

hopefully if we get enough replies to this thread, someone at sky may take notice and get something done...

Hi Mate, ive been having dodgy speeds with my sky broadband since we got it, supposed to be on the 16meg package and been getting 256kbps, so i unplugged the sky tv cable, reset my router and now im getting 6 meg, i dont know if the tv interferes or not but since ive unplugged its been working great, its worth a shot, might be a problem sky havent found out yet, im not plugging the tv back in till they can get round the problem, hope it works for you

Hi,
Ive been having problems with Sky Broadband ever since my account was ativated a month ago.
As soon as it was ativated my telephone went dead. So I contacted BT who got my telephone working one week later,but cut off my Broadband in the process. After two weeks of phone calls to sky, I got my Broadband back, but lost my phone connection again.
I had to get a dial up contract with aol so i could get internet access and email whilst my connection was off.
Now I have No phone, there is no dial tone, it rings, but just crackles and buzzes when you answer it. My Broadband is very slow and occasionally will not connect.
Customer services at Sky is very poor. You get directed to a technical helpline who take details of your problem and then email them to a department call Tier 3 . Your promissed a reply , but no one ever gets in contact. You can give them your mobile number and email but they still don't reply.
When you tell them theres a problem with your phone they just tell you to get in touch with BT, but BT cut off your Broadband and tell you the problems with Sky's equipment. You just can,t win.
If you asked to be connected to Tier 3 You can be queing for 45mins which costs a fortune when you have to use a mobile. All they do there is say they will look into the fault and contact you when its cleared. They don't clear the fault so never contact you.
I wrote a letter of complaint over a week ago and got no reply.
I wouldn't advise anyone to get sky Broadband. I will be cancelling my Broadband and Sky package too. Ive had enough of them. There just useless.
They only started selling Broadband to stop loosing customers to company's like Vigin media.
If they start loosing customers they might think about improving there customer service. I,m off!!!!!

Hello

I am having similar problems to Stephen. My broadband went down two weeks ago. I initially rang the number in the troubleshooting section of the Broadband booklet which I believe puts you through to a call centre in the Philippines. After being put on hold for ages I eventually got through to someone who did some tone tests on my line then asked me to plug in the modem to the test socket on my phonepoint. At this point I was told that there was a problem with the line and I should contact BT to get my line tested. I contacted BT who quickly tested the line and informed the line was fine.

I rang back and informed Sky of this and was told (after going through the same tests again) that the problem would be dealt with by Tier 3 technical support and I was given a ticket number. I was told I would be called back in 5 working days. I received no call back and then rang back and was told I should get a call within 5 more working days!!!

At this point I rang a number on the sky website to make a complaint but was told they do not have a complaints department. I was was put through to someone in the braodband department who sounded more with it than the people I had spoken to in the Philppines call centre. Apparently, I was now speaking to a call centre in Belfast. They had no records of my previous communication with Sky but explained that I probably had been talking to a diiferent call centre call centre in the Philippines.

The Belfast call centre, did further tests and also said the problem needed to be dealt with by tier 3 technical support. I got given another ticket number, I now have two!

I have slightly more confidence in the Belfast people, they are freindly and helpful. They also appear to understand what I was saying, I do not think the same can be said of the people in the Philippines.

That's it, I await calls from tier 3 technical support from 2 call centres. Hopefully Belfast will sort out my problem but based on other peoples experiences I have little faith.

If anyone can offer any advice how to get this resloved I would be most grateful. By the way I subscribe to the base package there are no issues with connection speed, I have no connectivity to the internet at all.

after months of pain with sky, we decided to cancel after zero connection time, sadly it took them ages to disconnect as well even tho they could'nt provide the service.

so id stay clear unless you get connected all will be fine

Sky were hopeless for me and I spent ages trying to get some sense out of them

To get into their router to find out the settings:

user name: admin
password: sky

that took 2 guesses...

HIya,
i have had the exact same problems you have been describing with sky bb.
i got so frustrated that i wrote a letter of complaint asking for reimbursement cancellation and money for my phone bill and i got it BUT only because i informed them that i was also sending a copy of the same letter to trading stansards if i did not have a resolution within a week.
i got my money back i cancelled my subscription and have since joined virgin media .. there speeds are better they have better staff and they are cheaper than sky AND THE MAJOR BENEFIT IS IF YOU DO HAVE A PROBLEM THEN THE TECHNICAL SUPPRT CALL IS FREE ...

Let me know how you get on and good luck getting ure bb sorted trust me u need it ;)

I know exactly what you mean. I have come across the same problems. Whenever I speak to the Belfast office it feels like you might be getting somewhere.But then they say an engineer will call you back, surprise surprise, no call received.

I think I have just got used to the idea now that BB maybe down one day, but to put up with it because one or two days later it should be working again. But this is not good enough!!

The latest consideration is a SKY service that is being offered for £5 per month, where if you have a problem with the wireless box you get to speak to an engineer rather then the call centres? They will also replace the wireless box and filters free of charge if any faults found. Has anyone gone with this service and would they recommend it? I like the thought of speaking direct to the Engineer -But should we be paying extra for this service?

Also, can anyone advise whether they leave their wireless box switched on or should it be turned off overnight?

dtr3197:Sky were hopeless for me and I spent ages trying to get some sense out of them

To get into their router to find out the settings:

user name: admin
password: sky

that took 2 guesses...

Most routers are like that, Netgear ones default is admin : password and linksys ones (from memory) are admin : admin.

---

'Now, I have become Death, the destroyer of worlds.'

ok first of all to address the many threads on skybb on this site the fact is there is a little exaggeration going on. The rates for the sky support line are 7.5p per minute weekday peak, 3.5p per minute weekday off peak and 1.5p per minute at weekends. Honest is also a virtue dear subscribers.

Next if u get a subscription for free to a service what do u expect? A simple test on BT's wholesale site will tell u around about the actual speed u can really get by broadband. Is it so bad for Sky's customer service department to try to upsell? They are trained in customer services, not technical. They will tell u u r in an LLU area and it is possible to get speeds of up to 16Mbps because according to the information in front of them u r.

A smarter move would be to call the tech support team, (holding times less than a minute currently and ask them what speed will you get. They will try to help you by giving u an honest answer (they don't work on a sales bonus). The UP TO 16 Mbps must be stressed and there is no above a certain speed published so lets be honest many of these problems are down to naive buying. Would you buy a car if someone told you it costs above 5 grand? No, you'd ask the price. why is it so hard for people to understand that if u ask sky ur predicted speed they will transfer you to tech support who will be able to tell you the speed you will get.

Another thing is why do so many people say they hadn't had these problems with their previous provider? Why did you change in the first place then? Oh yes cos it's cheaper. You get what you pay for. And in regards to non-trained staff, have you ever tried to tell someone who doesn't know what a start button is how to make their ethernet adaptor work??? I rest my case. Patronising just grows with experience. Please everyone put ur children on the phone , they still have the capacity to learn new things

Kelly280:I know exactly what you mean. I have come across the same problems. Whenever I speak to the Belfast office it feels like you might be getting somewhere.But then they say an engineer will call you back, surprise surprise, no call received.

I think I have just got used to the idea now that BB maybe down one day, but to put up with it because one or two days later it should be working again. But this is not good enough!!

The latest consideration is a SKY service that is being offered for £5 per month, where if you have a problem with the wireless box you get to speak to an engineer rather then the call centres? They will also replace the wireless box and filters free of charge if any faults found. Has anyone gone with this service and would they recommend it? I like the thought of speaking direct to the Engineer -But should we be paying extra for this service?

Also, can anyone advise whether they leave their wireless box switched on or should it be turned off overnight?

it's a nice thought but the engineers don't know jack. most of the problems are caused because they just know how to plug in a few cables and leave. woohoo they just got paid £50. what strikes me as funny is the people asking for engineers to come out. what is the point. they are tv engineers who probably need the guidance cd more than the customer.

Sorry for the length, but this needs to be put into perspective ...

There are literally thousands of people all crying out for service - not just from Sky -and being fobbed off with poor or non-existent customer service or simply no service at all.

The problems are very simple and for anyone in the IT industry for anything longer than 10 years will know about this.

The Internet relies on CABLED connection to make it work. Other than a few areas that have cable physically laid in the ground by companies such as the former NTL, the only option for this is BT.

Now some idiot in government decided that BT should not have the 'monopoly' on the cables that go to virtually every property in the UK and forced them to allow others to offer 'phone services on BT's cables. It would not be long before the ISPs started playing in the same pool.

UNLIKE voice communication, Internet Service Providers have no concept of 'up' time and 'service level agreements' which make them seemingly immune to actually providing a service that customers pay for. In this case, Sky CANNOT provide a true 'end-to-end' Internet solution and are reliant for part of their service on cables that are owned and run by BT.

So let me put it another way. If you have an ISP who depends of BT's infrastructure in any way, you will be limited to the speeds that BT systems can operate. A variation on this theme also came about with the dreaded LLU (Local Loop Unbundled) service which effectively takes the BT cable that runs from your home to the BT exchange and takes the exchange end of the cable out of a BT server and plugs it into a 3rd party's equipment which is held in the exchange. At this point, BT no longer 'owns' the line between your home and the exchange and they will regard you as 'disconnected' from their systems. This is a favourite of certain ISPs as it effectively ties a customer into their service unless you pay to get reconnected to another system.

All this is supposed to be progress, but actually makes it a backwards step for anyone who is seriously dependent on their connectivity to work and live.

Everyone wants 'FREE' or 'CHEAP' and then complains when it all goes pear-shaped. There is no such thing as a free lunch. The truth is that with the sole exception of certain cable providers the only real serious ISP in the UK (and the world for that matter) is a telephone company who has the infrastructure in place to provide a true end-to-end solution. Anyone else is merely an "also ran" who will never give you the service quality and experience that you really need.

---

For every positive action, there's an equal and opposite government plan.

Hi There Landshark.

Nice to see a straightforward honest reply - I couldn't have put it better - And it's interesting to see the "Sky Saga" continuing in this thread (having had the last word in the "sky -has anyone got it yet ? "  thread).

And I do like the reference to "free or Cheap" service -  How true that is

Regards

 

Eric-isp

 

 

 

My Sharky-pleasure Eric-ISP!

---

For every positive action, there's an equal and opposite government plan.

Its is reassuring that I am not the only one who was stuffed by Sky BB.

I took up the 16MB in Oct 2006. The order person told me it would take about 10 days and there should be little or no disruption to my BB service so I was happy to go ahead.

A week passed and no contact. A week and one day I get a letter saying there was a problem with my order could I call this number to discuss. They said more that one order had been entered and it cancelled my order and would take a month or so to sort out. I still had BB so I did not worry. The day after my BB was cut off.

I nned my BB for support in my job. So I phoned and asked them to sort it out. anyway 6 weeks pass, many phone calls etc.. and they fiannly got me connected.

2 weeks later I phone as I had a few outstanding issues with the service, paid 16 got 2.3 MPS, no email + others. They said your BB has been cancelled. I said you have only just connected me please do not. they said they would not, 2 weeks later I was cut off.

I then was told I need to place another order. So I did. I got another BB box ( I know have 3 but thats sky). I phoned 1 weeks later. your order has been cancelled as you already have sky BB. After another week of irrate calls I gave up and went with BT. You get what you pay for. Sky you pay naff all and get naff all service. BT you pay a lot and you get great service.

I have now made complaints to Otelo and they are progressing my claim.