ISP New Connection Issue

K.C. Leblanc · 25 Sep 2017 at 23:25

I've recently moved into a new house and being a massive cheap skate I took advantage of a Sly broadband special. Line rental and interwebs £10 p/m. This was during July.

Fast forward a few weeks and I still don't have either broadband or a phone line.

Sky are being hopeless, not giving me any useful information. They just keep stringing me along with dates when ill next be updated by, followed by another date. I luckily managed to collar an Open Reach engineer outside my house who told me that the telegraph pole doesn't have enough capacity.

Any how is there any advantage to cancelling sky and trying another provider. Is there anything I can do to make things happen more quickly. I have already lodged a complaint with sky.

bremen1874 · 25 Sep 2017 at 23:43

If it's waiting on Openreach changing ISP isn't going to help much. It could even delay things further.

From what I've read Openreach are backed up all over the place.

Avalon · 26 Sep 2017 at 00:25

As above, capacity is ISP independent, cancelling everything and starting again is very unlikely to improve your situation. You may be able to haggle some form of goodwill gesture from Sky under the circumstances.

MissChief · 26 Sep 2017 at 01:13

Avalon said:
As above, capacity is ISP independent, cancelling everything and starting again is very unlikely to improve your situation. You may be able to haggle some form of goodwill gesture from Sky under the circumstances.

It's an issue beyond Sky's control and Sky aren't responsible. What do you think they'll say?

Avalon · 26 Sep 2017 at 07:53

MissChief said:
It's an issue beyond Sky's control and Sky aren't responsible. What do you think they'll say?

Given your employment I appreciate you may not like the answer I gave, or this one.

Regardless of it being an issue due to a third party who Sky are forced to contract to, the OP’s contract is between him and Sky, repeated failure to communicate the issues along with repeated failed appointments that are not communicated in a timely manner and lost work days may not be something Sky is legally required to compensate a residential customer for, but it’s certainly not unheard of for them to make a good will gesture in such circumstances, so as above, he may be able to haggle some form of goodwill gesture, thoughbthe actual issue is largely beyond Sky’s control.

K.C. Leblanc · 26 Sep 2017 at 09:29

Thanks guys, it's what I thought but I needed a quick sanity check. I'm also wondering if it's simply worth dumping sky before I'm commuted, since they're so shoddy.

I was talking to them via text on Saturday, when I reached the end of the day I asked not to be contacted till Tuesday. Not only did they try to make contact, but when told not to the complete turnip handling the chat then wanted to confirm my identity so he knew who was telling him to eff off.

I know I'm meant to go through sky but is it worth my while calling up open reach?

MissChief · 26 Sep 2017 at 11:25

Avalon said:
Given your employment I appreciate you may not like the answer I gave, or this one.

Regardless of it being an issue due to a third party who Sky are forced to contract to, the OP’s contract is between him and Sky, repeated failure to communicate the issues along with repeated failed appointments that are not communicated in a timely manner and lost work days may not be something Sky is legally required to compensate a residential customer for, but it’s certainly not unheard of for them to make a good will gesture in such circumstances, so as above, he may be able to haggle some form of goodwill gesture, thoughbthe actual issue is largely beyond Sky’s control.

Missed appointments are compensated with £10 credit to his account. I'd be very surprised if he got anything more than that. It's not Sky's fault and the issue would be exactly the same regardless of provider.

Avalon · 26 Sep 2017 at 11:45

MissChief said:
Missed appointments are compensated with £10 credit to his account. I'd be very surprised if he got anything more than that. It's not Sky's fault and the issue would be exactly the same regardless of provider.

You seem to have chosen a very long winded way of agreeing with what I said

K.C. Leblanc said:
I know I'm meant to go through sky but is it worth my while calling up open reach?

They are generally non customer facing and unless it’s a planning/construction issue requiring them to interact with you or similar you’ve got no chance.

Steveocee · 28 Sep 2017 at 14:38

K.C. Leblanc said:
I know I'm meant to go through sky but is it worth my while calling up open reach?

If you buy a car and it's not delivered in time, would you call the factory?

Even if you did get into contact with OR, they wouldn't entertain you at all as you're not their customer, SKY are. Your point of contact is with SKY so you just need to persevere and push on them, ask for the case to be escalated and go through as many levels as you can until you find someone who is able to give you a level and straight answer. Then hold on to that persons contact details.

MissChief · 28 Sep 2017 at 14:43

Steveocee said:
If you buy a car and it's not delivered in time, would you call the factory?

Even if you did get into contact with OR, they wouldn't entertain you at all as you're not their customer, SKY are. Your point of contact is with SKY so you just need to persevere and push on them, ask for the case to be escalated and go through as many levels as you can until you find someone who is able to give you a level and straight answer. Then hold on to that persons contact details.

If the order is in delay the case will be dealt with by the Order Recovery department. Don't expect them to be phoning Openreach or yourself every day though. Openreach will have supplied a date by which they can provide an update and then you might get an indication of how far along things are.

K.C. Leblanc · 2 Oct 2017 at 20:34

Steveocee said:
If you buy a car and it's not delivered in time, would you call the factory?

Well you know what, if I'd been messed about by a franchised car dealer then I would be definitely be talking to the manufactures about it.

But if I needed advice about that I'd be posting in motors.

Steveocee · 3 Oct 2017 at 08:15

K.C. Leblanc said:
Well you know what, if I'd been messed about by a franchised car dealer then I would be definitely be talking to the manufactures about it.

But if I needed advice about that I'd be posting in motors.

Point was your point of contact is SKY not BTOR and they aren't obliged to speak to you. I suppose the car factory thing is less relevant as they aren't the same dealer. Bad analogy.

K.C. Leblanc · 5 Oct 2017 at 22:25

...and just so you people get some closure on the day sky were meant to report back to me an Open Reach engineer turned up with and sorted it.

And to make it more fun they've forgotten about the special offer I signed up under.

So yeah if you're looking for an ISP I'd give Sky a miss. Easily the worst experience I've had dealing with ISPs.

MissChief · 5 Oct 2017 at 22:34

K.C. Leblanc said:
...and just so you people get some closure on the day sky were meant to report back to me an Open Reach engineer turned up with and sorted it.

And to make it more fun they've forgotten about the special offer I signed up under.

So yeah if you're looking for an ISP I'd give Sky a miss. Easily the worst experience I've had dealing with ISPs.

They can only go as fast as Openreach give them updates and information? Any other Openreach 'fed' provider won't have gone any faster or got you up and running any quicker? That's how Openreach work. They give you a date by which they'll update you and even if you phone them any sooner they'll say 'no update until the date we said' so there's little point in calling every day or trying to get them to move any faster.

lude1962 · 6 Oct 2017 at 09:25

What ever ISP you choose they cant do anything till they're notified by openreach the line has been connected and is active.

K.C. Leblanc · 7 Oct 2017 at 19:00

MissChief said:
They can only go as fast as Openreach give them updates and information? Any other Openreach 'fed' provider won't have gone any faster or got you up and running any quicker? That's how Openreach work. They give you a date by which they'll update you and even if you phone them any sooner they'll say 'no update until the date we said' so there's little point in calling every day or trying to get them to move any faster.

It's still sky's fault that it typically takes over 20 minutes to get through to support. If you use their text support then it takes hours to get a reply. Text conversations aren't carried over the end of the day so you frequently end up having to state the details again when resuming the conversation.

I signed up using a discount code, so should be getting a reduced price. But they are now billing me at a higher rate.

So no i'm not just saying they're useless because it took open reach ages to get my line in, I'm saying they're use less because reporting a problem takes days and they're overcharging me

MissChief · 7 Oct 2017 at 20:31

K.C. Leblanc said:
It's still sky's fault that it typically takes over 20 minutes to get through to support. If you use their text support then it takes hours to get a reply. Text conversations aren't carried over the end of the day so you frequently end up having to state the details again when resuming the conversation.

I signed up using a discount code, so should be getting a reduced price. But they are now billing me at a higher rate.

So no i'm not just saying they're useless because it took open reach ages to get my line in, I'm saying they're use less because reporting a problem takes days and they're overcharging me

The overcharging is easily fixed though. Has this been sorted?

K.C. Leblanc · 7 Oct 2017 at 20:38

MissChief said:
The overcharging is easily fixed though. Has this been sorted?

Nope, I sent them proof of the offer believe it or not via picture message. Next message I got was to say the staff member was going off shift and someone else would take over. Have heard nothing else since.

MissChief · 7 Oct 2017 at 21:12

K.C. Leblanc said:
Nope, I sent them proof of the offer believe it or not via picture message. Next message I got was to say the staff member was going off shift and someone else would take over. Have heard nothing else since.

Send me a trust message and I will get back to you.

Caged · 7 Oct 2017 at 21:55

K.C. Leblanc said:
It's still sky's fault that it typically takes over 20 minutes to get through to support. If you use their text support then it takes hours to get a reply. Text conversations aren't carried over the end of the day so you frequently end up having to state the details again when resuming the conversation.

Lmao that completely defeats the purpose of having it. What a clownshow.

Call me a granddad but I like the idea of a support ticket, where the full history can be seen easily as the issue passes between departments, and there's no chance of things being misinterpreted on a telephone call.