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| Finally an excuse to reference this piece of junk! |
Fellow Sky television subscribers will probably have experienced the terrible build quality of Sky Set Top Boxes (STB). Thomson Sky(+) HD boxes are probably the most notorious of these, and very few of the original 2006 boxes are still functioning; the build quality was so bad that Thomson have now lost all Sky contracts.
As a customer of 10years+ I know too well how bad Sky hardware is, and in October the Thomson HD box under my TV that had spent more time being power-cycled than displaying 'quality programming' finally died from tuner failures, and I paid £65 for the privilege of Sky replacing their 5h17 hardware with a refurbished box (a box that had already broken in another persons house and had been repaired).
Well this refurb is a pile of donkey turds, so I fired off an email to
Jeremy Darroch the guy in charge of BSkyB (click the link to email a complaint of your own). Often when you contact him somebody sorts everything out for you, but being me the complete opposite happened.
Today I get a call from Sky. I think 'Yay, Sky will give me a shiny new STB that might work for 6months before breaking'. Notice that I didn't expect a STB that works, this is Sky we are talking about, a company that purchased the Amstrad brand to 'improve' quality. How poor does your brand have to be if a rebrand to Amstrad is seen as positive?
Well I was obviously being optimistic because this is not what happened, instead the 'lady' on the phone described her job as 'I'm phoning to defend Sky from you slagging off their boxes'; nice to see impartiality is being taught to Sky's telephone operators. With a job description like that she obviously denies that Sky hardware sucks gonads, tells me I am a liar because I've only had 1 replacement Sky box which means I obviously don't have any problems with their hardware, and finishes off by claiming I threatened her and was abusive. If you've ever had an argument with a call centre you may be aware they are trained to say this when they are 'losing' an argument. By accusing you of threatening them they instantly disarm you, and you become worried that they will report you to somebody; often it is a good sign because it means they are worried that you are making some valid points, but with Sky it means they hang up on you or you hang up on them.
The woman did phone me back to offer a 'free engineer visit'; when Sky hire some engineers they might be able to provide that service, but at the moment they just have installers. An 'engineer visit' is Sky code for replacing your naffed box with somebody-elses naffed box that has been re-jiggered to work long enough to survive the 3month warranty period. So I told them where they could shove that.
So yet another failure of Sky customer service, they managed to tell a 10year+ customer they were a lying aggressive and threatening individual, and made it clear that around £10,000 of subscription and hardware payments does not entitle you to £50 of metal and plastic as a good will gesture.
