Issues with elderly parent's account that was closed last year

[SooBrikay]

Last summer my 94 year old mother received a letter telling her the account would be closed unless she upgraded. A Sky engineer told her he couldn't access her dish and we decided it wasn't worth the effort, so she closed the account. At the time my mother requested that Sky Protect also be cancelled. Some months later I discovered that it hadn't been cancelled so I requested a refund and closed it down.

And that should have been that. But I now find she was mis-sold a different insurance policy for her Sky equipment which has been collected every month. I have asked for that to be closed and for a refund. They want to know when my mother's Sky account was closed.

I don't have the account details, so I tried asking the virtual assistant. After lots of roundabout messages and me asking to talk to a human, it put an alert box over the comment field, telling me it was no longer working and there was an error, so I couldn't type anything. I had to refresh and start all over again. But it happened every time. 

Can anyone advise me who, where, what I should do to get some help on this please?

It's jolly frustrating, not least that the elderly are missold insurance policies by scaring them with how much it will cost to fix their Sky box if it breaks down, and not checking whether they already have SkyProtect.

Thanks

[caesarome]

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@SooBrikay wrote:

Last summer my 94 year old mother received a letter telling her the account would be closed unless she upgraded.

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If that is what the letter actually said then it is wrong if she had a Sky+ box as she could have continued to use it without the need to upgrade.

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@SooBrikay wrote:

And that should have been that. But I now find she was mis-sold a different insurance policy for her Sky equipment which has been collected every month. I have asked for that to be closed and for a refund. They want to know when my mother's Sky account was closed.

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Was this other insurance also via Sky Protect ?

[SooBrikay]

I can't remember what the letter actually said word for word but the gist was that they were closing her account. She was also very vague about the Sky engineer's visit. 

[SooBrikay]

No. It's with a company called Digital Services. She already had Sky Protect, but I guess they didn't ask her about that. I cancelled the Sky Protect and thought that was the end of it, which is why I no longer have details of Mum's Sky account. 

[Mark39]

@SooBrikay Digital Services are nothing to do with Sky. I suspect your mother fell foul of a phone call scam.

[oj01]

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@caesarome wrote:

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@SooBrikay wrote:

Last summer my 94 year old mother received a letter telling her the account would be closed unless she upgraded.

---

If that is what the letter actually said then it is wrong if she had a Sky+ box as she could have continued to use it without the need to upgrade.

Unless she had an older non-HD Sky box. I'm sure I remember reading that customers who didn't change from the SD only box would have their account closed as the box would become unusable when the SD transmissions changed.

[SooBrikay]

Yes, that's what happened. Mum's set up was in the dark ages.

What I need to know is when the SD transmissions changed. That's when we decided to end her Sky account. And yes, almost certainly a scam. I'm afraid quite a few are coming to light now we have PoA for her financial affairs.

[SKY1992bf]

@SooBrikay  The switch off occurred October last year see

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-channel-upgrade 

[SooBrikay]

Thank you, yes that's it.  

However I still need to access Sky help to get her account details so I can argue my case for a refund from the insurance company. 

Has anyone else had trouble with the chat bot ending a conversation with a fault alert that prevents you from typing a response? Refreshing simply resets it to the beginning.  It happened three times before I gave up.