I use to work for sky broadband (order status dept) as an inbound call centre agent and the amount of issues i use to deal with was terrible, the departments seem to work against each other, also untrained staff is a major issue!! i had 8 days training about stuff that had nothing to do with the job, we got told to go on the calling floor and start taken flak from customers even though we knew nothing about the systems it's crazy way to run a business!!

 

also issues with broadband orders being rejected eg (data-fix) (pre-active cancel)  sky can deal with these issues a lot quicker than what they tell customers on the phone and we were told to inform the customer it can take up to 30days?? that is just rubbish.

 

 Hi,

      What I did in the end was to write to Sky- you need to get proof of delivery(they won't reply but what do you expect) and tell them that as they have not kept to their side of the agreement you are terminating same. BT are able to grab your b/band line back from Sky and there's nothing they(Sky) can do to stop this. This does mean you will be without b/band for a couple of weeks, but hey,  what's this in a lifetime of stress if you keep with Sky.

         You will also find BT are vey keen to have you back and much more pro-active in resloving any problems(goodbye lies!!) BT are much more expensive but I guess you get what you pay for. I prefer a service that I can rely on to get 24/7 and I am prepared to pay the going rate is to ensure we do! Since BT re-provided the service there has not been a single problem!!! Nuf said.

Hi, im new to this thread.

 

I just read all of these posts and sympathise with every single one of you. Sky have messed me about so much its untrue. The activation date came and went, my connection comes and goes (at the moment its gone). My router is now faulty. I want to cancel the lot of it but apparently thats even harder than getting a good service off them in the first place.

 

Im fast losing patience with the call centres and the lies from customer services and tier 3. I once phoned and got through to one of thier off shore call centres (they do have them, they are in the phillapenes). The guy said to me, and im not kidding "unplug the phone from your socket now" - i quickly informed him that if i did that the call would be disconnected. HE said do it anyway and if it doesnt solve the problem call back. Needless to say I hit the roof. I may go to BT, its a bit pricey maybe but at least it works.

Hi Aladdin,

just like you I'm stuck with not having cable in the road I live. To anyone who does and is looking for broadband i would also highly recommend them. In all my years with cable after a few teething problems. I had constant good speeds and good service. Their customer services were good and though tech support level 1 is same ol' same old as any other at least they put there customer first and would be happy to help in a timely and efficient manner.

 I must admit... I spoke!!!! Yes spoke to a mythical T3 yesterday after I threatened them with a solicitor and with the disconnection of all my services.. Maybe things are looking up. So right now I'm on about 7.5 meg of my up to 16 meg package which isn't to bad as I know my line is rated at 8.5 as i am 1.5 km from the exchange. So now I am just waiting for them to throttle it back though to be honest. But we will wait and see... I will say that once my sentence is done with sky i will be moving away from them. If at that time if I can't get cable still then I will probably be like you going back to BT for their option 3. ( which was what had before I came to sky )

If I had to rate sky out of 10 then this would be it and why...

Line speeds  = 1 - 3      Depending on Sky's mood time of day and how much throttling they have done.

Tech services T1  = 5    Same button pushers as any other T1 read it off a screen so called tech

Tech services T2 = 3    They will actually try to help though still useless unless its a router reboot or basic line tweak

Tech sevices T3 = 1     I will give them one because of my mythical T3 call my first ever in 6 months

Customer Service = 2   What customer service? The customer comes last I mean first...lol

UK Call Centres  = 10  Up to now you cant fault this they at least speak English unlike BT etc.

Service costs = 1         In my opinion it should be free esp. when you have all of their packages and the fact of the problems a large portion of users are having due to over subscription.

 

 

 

 

Hi,

 Sorry to hear/see Sky bb is as bad as ever- we went cap in hand back to BT - and have NEVER looked back since, once reinstalled all the problems just melted away! Unfortunately, Sky are now making even greater efforts to con more people into taking their crap services. My advice is still the same; if you want to shorten your life by several years, then please feel free to begin banging your head against that Sky brick wall. We are unable to leave Sky for the TV, as our street was not cabled, otherwise I'd be off to Virgin like a shot  to ensure Sky made no more money out of me! 

Hi

It was me that started this particular thread back in October 2006. It did take 4 months to get my connection up and running in my local exchange with BT. Since January my Sky BB has been running OK with vey little disruption, i am on the free base package whereby i only do E mails and surf the net,so i cannot complain about the service.Very rarely now i might get a disconnection in the evening when the system is very busy,i just reboot the router and i am back on line again. 

I do carry out download speed checks and find my connection is between 1.5 to 1.9 MB which is good for the base 2MB package. My son has got his PC hooked up to Virgin Media on a cable 4MB no limit BB package,as he is into heavy downloading off the net the Sky/BT package is not capable. I have found that cable BB quality is far superior to any BB down a copper  telephone wire. Virgin Media are that desperate to keep their customers that if you phone up and make any complaint they will offer to put you on a  retention deal to keep your business.

Back to Sky and "touch wood" i pray and hope my BB carries on without any problems.If i do have to contact Sky technical services i will never phone them up on their technical help lines as is seems that they are as bad as ever. I found that E mailing their technical support people and targeting a named person was the best option as they did respond back via E mail to any complaint. I now what you are going to say ! how can i E mail them when my BB is down ?,use somebody els`s computer or E mail facilty. 

I forgot to mention ! when Sky messed me around for 4 months with no BB,i got £60 back in credits and 4 months free Sky TV (full package price). Not bad as i carried on using my cable BB on a retention price while this was going on ?.I hope it does not seem that i am gloating a bit  ???.

To summarise,if you are a Sky TV subscriber then i would recommend going for the free base package, but i would not pay for it.If you want consistent quality then go for cable BB and pay for it.  

ive got sky broadband and have had it since march this year it is worth its money but i break down quite alot and you try getting someone at sky to help you with any problems you have. its always someone elses problem not skys.no one at sky know which hand does what

Hi I just had to add my 2 penneth worth in to this thread...

 Hi I have been an IT consultant and genterally in to pcs for the last 36 years so im an old timer here. I have had skys so called broadband now six months in... I wish i'd never bothered with. In that time I have lost count of the phone calls I have made to sky customer services and sky's technical dept. Promised calls that never appear. As for here is your reference number someone from T3 will get in touch is just a blatant lie to date in all occasions i have been told T3 will phone they never have once.

The line " its after 8 o'clock no one is here now to deal with your request is also a joke " there is someone there 24 hours a day... my ticket was closed out at just after midnight on one occasion when a few hours earlier the tech 1 girl was spouting that no one was no available to sort the problem till at least tomorrow morning and i should ring in at 9 and ask for T3 to get them to sort the problem. 

I actually managed to pin down a manager who admitted sky is throttling connections and using connection sharing in each of the local exchanges. I have come to the point now where sky's name to me is mud... I have no faith in them there equipment or anything that is part of sky. Sky's main problem is the package they brought into service was so good it was massively oversubscribed, now with all those subscriptions they can't handle the volume traffic. 

In my opinion there service is a joke, there business ethics are very suspect to say the least, I have caught them on several occasions blatantly lying to me... Good codes of conduct.. Ha! I've yet to find them and  customer service Nil!  

 

SO IF YOUR THINKING SKY THINK AGAIN !!!!! 

Totally agree with all of you, we signed up to this and paid our £40 connection charge and got the router very quickly, then got a leter stating we would be connected on the 31st August 2006, nothing happened so for the whole of September we kept ringing Sky and when i got my phone bill i was horrified to see it had cost me £25 in phone calls to them. They then said there was a cabling fault at my local exchange and BT were working on it. We have now been told that this problem has been fixed but we still have no broadband and guess what Sky cannot give us a date when it will work. So i have now told them to cancel it and give me back my money, they said i have to write to them and cancel a service i have never had. I also hate the fact that when you ring them there staff are reading from a script and i get asked the same stupid questions like is your router plugged in and switched on!!!!

unbelievable now had 2 phone calls from sky saying they are looking into my problem , now on tier three. broadband staying on at about 4 meg see what this weekends like hee hee

My experience is the same as yours - we now have no internet and no means of getting it as Sky cannot - will not - give a date for connection - we have been waiting weeks!!!!!!!!!. My advice to anyone is : DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES THINK ABOUT USING SKY BB. It will cause you more grief than anything else in a lifetime.

hi my sky broadband is slightly better. the activation went fine,but o so slow. i was told my download speed would be 13.5 meg the best was once at 6 meg then it trails off to less than 56k!!!!!!!. i also have rung sky and waited approx 2 hours with a promise of being rung back within 48 hours (that was 2 weeks ago still waiting lol) hope this reply goes before connection goes again luckily i have a screwdriver thats perfect 4 the reset switch

Yes i have got Sky broadband and it is rubbish it does not work !. My order and delivery of the router went ok to plan,but i was supposedly to be connected through my BT phone line on the 5th September. Since that date it has only worked on two occasions for only approx 6 hours each,now the connection is completely down and has been for over the last 10 days.
I have spent many hours phoning the technical help support line on an expensive 0800 premium rate spending ££££`s and being put on hold for up to 45 mins at a time,with 5 promises of someone will call you back but they never do !. I have given up calling them now as they are an expensive waste of time.
I have since found out from BT that the Sky equipment in my local exchange caused a fault with my phone line,so i could not receive phone calls for over 10 days,BT have now removed the Sky equipment from my line so the phone could work. So there we are ! after nearly a month ! no broadband ! no answer or date from Sky when it will be fixed.
Luckily i still have been connected to NTL via a cable broadband line,i have now gone back "cap in hand" to NTL and asked to carry on with their subscription. I thought NTL and AOL were bad but Sky makes them both look top of the premier league.
I have also written two letters of complaint to Sky`s customer care dept in West Lothian,but again they do not reply. My advice to anyone thinking of subscribing to Sky broadband is don`t ! stick with your current ISP and wait at least a few more months until Sky have ironed out the installation bugs in the local exchanges.