Letter to Sky
14 December 2006I was supposed to be getting Sky+ installed today. It didn’t happen. Sky’s customer support has been useless. Here’s a letter I wrote to complain:
Dear Sir,
I am writing to you in connection with my order for Sky+ and Multiroom, which was due to have been installed today (14 December 2006), job reference xxxxxx. So far, this has resulted in a steady stream of errors and incompetence on the part of your staff and systems, as follows:
- On the confirmation letter, my telephone number was incorrectly listed, despite having given you the correct number on the order. When I phoned to correct the error, using the number on the confirmation letter, I was held in a queue for many minutes and then disconnected before getting to speak to anyone. I tried again using the normal customer service phone number, and did eventually get to speak to a human but once again got cut off before getting confirmation that the change had been made. I then sent a request for the number to be updated using the online form (which has a stupidly short message limit of only 128 characters – what numpty programmed that?), and got a response saying it had been done but no confirmation that this had been passed to the install team.
- This morning, we didn’t get a call from the engineer to give an ETA, possibly because he hadn’t been given the correct phone number. I called your support number to check when he was arriving, but your support rep - who identified herself only as “Emma” - was distinctly unhelpful and, on being asked to escalate the call, refused to allow me to speak to a supervisor on the grounds that they were all “in a meeting”. I’m sure you’re aware that this was a deliberate untruth, and was obviously so at the time. Eventually, she put the phone down on me rather than make any attempt to assist. Emma’s attitude was well below the standard I would expect from someone trained to give customer support, and reflected very badly on your organization. This is all the more unacceptable given that I immediately called back again and spoke to a different member of staff who was prepared to help and find me the information I wanted.
- When the engineer did arrive, he declined to carry out the installation on the grounds that the satellite dish was too difficult to access for him working alone – despite the fact that it had originally been installed by a single engineer with no specialist equipment other than a long ladder! On calling to re-schedule the installation, I find that the lack of specialist installation teams means that the new date is the end of January – well over a month away from today. And the engineer who attended today was of the opinion that even a specialist team may be unable to carry out the installation, due to the unusual shape of the roof (I presume that he’s never previously encountered the design of semi-detached house common in this part of the world).
In the light of these failings so far, I have little confidence that the installation will be completed on the rescheduled date without any further problems. I would, therefore, like your assurances that the installation team scheduled to arrive on 23 January (job ref: xxxxxx) will be fully equipped to deal with even the most convoluted of domestic residence design and be authorised to use their initiative when it comes to solving the problem of how to use a ladder effectively. Given the inconvenience I have already experienced, I think it would be reasonable for you to find a way to bring forward the rescheduled installation, ideally to some time this side of Christmas – the Sky+ installation was originally intended as a Christmas present for my wife, hence my original choice of an installation date in the middle of the month.
I would also like you to give serious consideration to your customer support procedures, which appear to have left an untrained or inexperienced support rep with no option but to blatantly lie to customers when faced with a question she was unable to answer and no backing from her more senior colleagues when asked to escalate the call. As a former manager of a customer support department, I consider it entirely unacceptable to leave a frontline member of the team with no-one to be able to pass the call on to when a customer needs to speak to someone more senior. And expecting a support rep to trot out such hoary lines as “they’re all in a meeting” to try and fob off customers is not only indicative of a lack of imagination (you can surely come up with better excuses than that) but also suggests that your staff don’t really care about being caught telling untruths – which in turn shows a far greater disdain for your customers than the lie itself.
Finally, I expect that you will ensure that I am not charged the additional subscription fee for Sky Multiroom until such time as I am actually able to use it. I also feel it would be reasonable for you to waive any additional installation fees that would normally be charged for a specialist installation team, and/or to offer a free package upgrade as compensation for the inconvenience caused.
I look forward to your response.
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We’ll have to wait and see what happens next.
2 Responses to “Letter to Sky”
December 20th, 2006 at 14:40
Got a result! Here’s their reply:
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Thank you for your email regarding your installation.
Firstly I am sorry to learn of the problems you have encountered and wish to assure your experience is not typical of the level of service we aim to provide.
I have checked the arranged job and this is arranged for our special heights team to visit your property, they should have no problems accessing the dish.
I have been unable to reschedule your installation to before Christmas, however I have been able to reschedule the job to 2/01/07.
If this date is unsuitable please contact us on 08702 95 95 95 and we shall be happy to rearrange this to a more suitable time.
Due to the level of problems you have had I have applied a special promotion to your account of 2 months half price subscription as a gesture of goodwill. This will commence from today’s date and shall end on 20/02/07.
January 4th, 2007 at 12:45
Spoke too soon. The system has been installed, but it isn’t working. Here’s the next letter from me to Sky…
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Following my previous letter to you, I have to report that the problem is still not resolved. The special heights team arrived on the rescheduled date and installed the system, but after they had left I discovered that not all the channels were working correctly. Some investigation in conjuction with your support call centre established that the most likely cause was a misaligned dish, something that must have been a result of the installation team’s work as I had not had any prior problems. This call took place on Tuesday 2 January, immediately after the installation team had left.
The support operator that I spoke to on Tuesday agreed to arrange another engineer visit, and, in view of the fact that the problem was almost certainly caused by the first team, arranged this for the first possible date – today, Thursday 4 January. As part of this conversation, I made it clear to her that it would need to be a special heights team as that was what was needed for the original install. This was accepted by her and I was explicitly told that a special heights team had been booked.
However, when the engineer arrived today, he was just a solo engineer rather than a special heights team as I had been promised. Obviously, he couldn’t do the job, so he called the engineering department to reschedule a visit from the correct team. This has now been scheduled for 18 January.
So, despite the original delays and problems in installing Sky at my house, I still do not have a workable system. In fact, I’m now worse off than I was before as I can’t even get most of the channels that I am paying for. I called your support centre today to complain about this, and spoke to someone who refused to identify herself (claiming only to be called “Louise”) and refused to take any action to bring the rescheduled visit forward. When I insisted on speaking to someone senior to her, she hung up on me.
This is clearly unacceptable, both the delay in resolving the issue and the reluctance of your call centre staff to allow me to speak to someone who might be able to assist.
Please could you let me know what you will be doing to resolve this and ensure that my system installation is completed as originally scheduled with no further delay. I also expect that your offer of a reduced-price subscription for two months, in response to my previous letter of complaint, will be extended further as compensation for the additional inconvenience.