A post in praise of SKY customer services

[Guest fluffcat1]

Just thought I'd share a good experience from SKY customer service as they are definatley improving...

My parents had 2 SKY+ boxes, both PACE 3000 PVR1, 1 a cast off from my brother who had upgraded to a newer pace 3100 box as it matched his units better ( they're smaller). Their SKY+ was fitted middle of 2002 so was well outside it's 12 months and I'd advised them not to take out sky's 'insurance' at £15 p/m for a box replacement.

Last week the main box started tripping off when changing channels - there'd be sound and no picture, but forcing a firmware update 'fixed' it for a few hours, the other box would not come out of standby intermittantly if you knocked off the power at the switch, but would power up fine a few hours/days/weeks later if it felt like it :evil: .

Anyway, they've had sky for about 8 years, sky plus for nearly 4, medium package, subscription for both boxes is circa £40 all in for the two per month, but with two dodgy boxes sky service wanted £300 for two new sky plus pvr3 boxes or £65 +vat to service each one, and the last time I bought a box offline it was £199, which is a bit steep, so they were a bit stuck :-(

So on friday I rang through to sky to pretend to cancel and see what they'd do, after negotiating the IVR slalom that is their indian call centre telling me to take out the viewing card, press backup etc, eventually I spoke to a retentions person in Glasgow - the people you speak to when you want to cancel / change your subscription, explained the situation, that they were going to cancel as they had no working box, and after consulting his supervisor he offered 1 X Pace 160gb PVR3 box F.O.C and cancel the second subscription or tie the two together as one job and service them both F.O.C - so I jumped at that, and this morning an engineer arrived with 2 brand new pace 3100 PVR2's as based on the symptoms I'd logged they were BER!

So a good result for my parents. Sky customer service gets slagged almost as much as Orange's does these days, but when presented with a loss of monthly revenue Sky decided to take a hit in the short-term and supply new hardware out of warranty even though they have a virtual monoply where my parents live - no cable, poor freeview reception, and I think Orange C.S could learn from that - it's in Orange's interest to protect their revenue stream (i.e customers running up bills) by *keeping us happy*. Seeing posts from people being offered poor upgrade deals makes me think Orange have lost the plot somewhat with their customer service.

Richard

[Guest awarner [MVP]]

A friend of mine had a nightmare experience with SKY a couple of weeks ago.

The muppets filled out his name with the wrong initial so he could not

correct his account or cancel it setc as his name did not match. :roll:

This only came to light when he followed up a "recommended a friend" offer.

[Guest shadamehr]

As bad as Orange are, they have NOTHING to learn from Sky - go visit the Digital Spy forums for proof.

If you call a twenty minute wait just to get through, nearly every time a user calls Sky, an improvement over Orange, your welcome to it.

As a long term Sky+ user, let me tell you that NO ONE could learn anything from Sky Customer Services.

[Guest fluffcat1]

As bad as Orange are, they have NOTHING to learn from Sky - go visit the Digital Spy forums for proof.

If you call a twenty minute wait just to get through, nearly every time a user calls Sky, an improvement over Orange, your welcome to it.

As a long term Sky+ user, let me tell you that NO ONE could learn anything from Sky Customer Services.

I was just recounting my experience - would you not agree that my encounter was a model for good customer service? Have you rung orange lately?....Their new indian call centre ( opened beginning jan a UK call centre worker told me) is *worse* than sky's!!....yes, you get through quickly ( and to be fair I was also through to someone within sky within 2 minutes at 9pm on a friday night ) but if the person on the other end of the phone can't understand your request then call stats mean nothing...

Richard

Edited February 19, 2006 by fluffcat1