In lieu of anything funny, here’s an email I sent to Sky CEO Jeremy Darroch today. I was aiming for ‘chummy’ but I think I overshot and landed squarely on ‘arsehole’.
“To Jeremy Darroch
Subject: Sky Signal Problems
Dear Jeremy
I am Sky customer number XXXXXXXXX and I thought I’d drop you a line about my experience with Sky over the last 17 months.
First, we need to talk about your Sky+ boxes. I’ve lost count of the number we had in the first year, but I’m sure your records will show exactly how many. Some seemed to have reception problems and some switched off at various random intervals.
Recently, while watching ‘The Apprentice’, I turned to my partner and asked “How does Alan Sugar make any money these days? Amstrad haven’t made anything commercially successful for about 20 years.”
Then I remembered that Amstrad make Sky+ boxes. You and I are putting his kids through college.
I didn’t sign on for that, Jeremy.
Though I lost an unwatched season of ‘24’, lots of ’30 Rock’ and plenty of kids television that I had on various hard drives, we finally got our hands on a working box. All was good.
Then summer came and we kept losing channels. There may have been another Sky+ box and another few quid from you to Lord Sugar.
Then a breakthrough. An engineer nailed the problem.
“It’s your neighbour’s tree. Now it’s got leaves, it’s in the way of the satellite and the dish.”
I don’t know if you’re aware of ‘line of sight’, but it’s okay. I’ve got it covered. I’ve watched “Independence Day”.
I’ve drawn you some diagrams:
It should work like this –
But this is actually happening:
“So you can just move the dish a bit higher and it’s sorted?” we asked.
“No, can’t do that. Health and safety. A bloke died falling off a ladder,” replied the engineer.
“Oh. That’s sad. We’re having some scaffolding put up in the next few months. Could you do it then?”
“No problem. Give us a call when you have it up and we’ll move it for you.”
We muddled through with intermittent signal problems over the next few months until the scaffolding arrived and we called Sky out again.
“The previous engineer told us that he couldn’t move the dish because of health and safety.” We explained to the new engineer.
“That’s rubbish,” said the new engineer. “We can move the dish any time.”
“Oh, that’s a tad annoying,” We replied. “Can you move it now then?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“You’ve got scaffolding up.”
“Right,” we smiled politely.
“I can turn the dish a little bit for you, if you like, see if that helps?”
And it did help. Until Friday.
The good news is that, despite the harsh winter, my neighbour’s tree is doing really well. We can’t get any channels now.
Okay, we can get E4, but that’s not a real channel, more a ‘Friends’ box set on an infinite loop.
I phoned Sky up again Friday evening and they said the earliest they could get an engineer out to move the dish is Wednesday.
Here’s the view of the telly this morning when I was hoping against hope that I could watch the finale of ‘Lost’:
Admittedly, it was ‘Lost’. I’d probably have about as much idea of what was going on if I’d just stared at the blue screen for two and a half hours, than if I’d actually watched the episode.
Still, it would’ve been nice to have the option.
The kids miss watching Peppa Pig. I miss them watching Peppa Pig. Them watching Peppa Pig means I don’t have to ask questions like “Who’s put jam all over my DVDs?”
For the record, your staff on the end of the telephone have all been first rate. I once even spoke to Shay Given’s cousin, which was the highlight of what was a very dull day.
Still, it would have been nice to have had the equipment installed correctly or the issues sorted out way back when they first started. I’ve lost the ability to watch a lot of programming over the last few months.
So fingers crossed for Wednesday when hopefully I’ll have all the channels I pay for.
Thanks for your time
Best Regards
Dave Turner”
Apparently Sky have phoned to chat to me about it, but I was at work…
UPDATE:
I sent them a second email
20 Comments
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You mean you actually pay Rupert murdoch to feed you his crap! FreeSat.
Ah, but the broadband/phone/tv deal is very reasonably priced.
Just broadband/phone? Not so reasonably priced.
Best line: “I didn’t sign on for that, Jeremy.”
Beautiful :’)
Have you looked at Virgin Media? The best thing is if you complain about them via Twitter they have a team that searches for their keywords and they will DM you within hours to ask how they can help.
Plus, no tree issues and their broadband is fabulous.
Thanks for the tip. Do they do Nick Jr?
Yes. If you’re in a cabled area they are a fine alternative to paying Murdochs direct.
Erm – to be fair to Alan Sugar, he doesn’t own Amstrad anymore – Sky bought it off him.
Still – why are you giving Murdoch money!?
Really? Already some good has come of this. I’ve learnt something new!
It’s the kids! They need Nick Jr! Though I do feel slightly dirty giving Murdoch money.
Nice letter, dude
Cheers
Virgin do have Nick Jr on their XL package
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/tv/channels/index.html
Clearly you would never want anything less than the top package anyway.
They also have a pretty awesome on-demand service
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/sites/video-on-demand/#
Of course, it’s all very dependent on your street being cabled up.
Personally, mine isn’t so I do ok with Sky but then, I did have to spend £450 on tree surgery.
Cheers! Looks like they do cable on my street…
Definitely go with Virgin. Have always had problem with Sky, and Sky+ in particular, but having had Virgin at uni we never had any issues. And this was a house full of drunk students.
Also, Sky has Sky Anytime. Virgin has ‘Virgin On Demand’, surely the most brilliant service ever invented?
This is the best complaint I’ve witnessed since my brother called up the BBC’s 24 hour complaint line to give them a point-by-point account of why they should take ‘Parkinson’ off the air.
May you enjoy similar success! (Parky went to ITV just after. You can call it co-incidence, I say there are no co-incidences)
[...] 3. An Email to Sky [...]
I have been a sky customer for 8 or 9 years now, had no problems with late payments or non payments – i’ve always provided money for food for the murdochs, but now that i wanted to upgrade to a more expensive package (£40) month – the sky multiroom. I currently have sky hd in sitting room, i called them up and they said i had to pay £49 + 60 to have a BASIC SKY BOX (SH*T BOX) the ones that were introduced 10 years ago and are no longer seen anywhere lol. i find this absolutely ridiculous, and have complained but still they are reluctant to budge and give me this worthless box for free. Therefore i have wrote to mr darroch the boss and hopefully get a decent reply. Surely the £10 extra a month would entitle me to a box of some sort to view my additional paid service on?? Sky have sunk to an all time low, these basic boxes are going on ebay for less than a quid, and they want me to pay 49 quid for one?? joke!. i will quit sky, but will not pay £49. Am i being unreasonable here??
[...] 8. An Email To Sky [...]
As an employee of Sky I’d like to speak up in support of Dave, there are a number of things wrong with the company first and foremost consistency in the information that is given to customers. Sadly you’ve been one of the many people who have been told what they want to hear and when they do comes some poor sod has to you it was a lie.
To Dave and everyone else I sincerely apologise, our in-house stats show a customer satisfaction level of 52%. A figure that will remain unpublished as it says 4.2 million households are unhappy with what they have; a staggering number for such a large company.
Worse, BSKYB continue to sub-contract installs to companies who:
A. Under train and under monitor their engineers
B. Further Sub-contract their work to smaller companies making it difficult to follow-up on mistakes and discipline retrain those who have made them.
C. Rush jobs to get through installs quicker and then sky send an ‘in-house engineer’* to tidy things up.
Dave, I’d love to tell you to stay with Sky and your problems will be solved but, our hands are tied in so many different ways that I can’t promise this situation won’t happen again. It only takes 1 person to cause such a mess and we work by a call centre system and scheduling system which makes it difficult to get satisfactory results
Its not enough but, for your time, your energy and your money. I apologise
*Lovely hard working guys who are passionate and caring about what they do, they are the company.
Dave,
I also would like to contact Mr Darroch on a matter that his employees can not seem to handle in a straight forward way.
Could you please let me know his email address?
Regards,
Kevin
[...] An Email To Sky [...]