New broadband cancelled within 15 days... still charged €28 - locked out - can't contact service!

[geogan-eire]

I tried Sky Broadband but it didn't work for me so I left within a few days again - I called an advisor and he said it was cancelled.

I made sure to ask him if I was going to be charged - he said I wouldn't - but of course I knew I would be!

So I made sure to cancel the bank direct debit immediately

Of course as I suspected SKY tryed to take money out of my bank account (how conveneient for you's - steal the money and then have person spend next few months trying to get it back again!)

So anyway of course the direct debit failed (as I wanted it to) and now SKY keeps smapping me about failed payment.

I tried to ring, but the abosultely abysmal phone system won't let me through to a human until I REINSTATE A NEW DIRECT DEBIT - so it can steal the money out of my account again.

I'm only trying to ring to get these charges dropped and stop the messages from SKY about this!

This kind of pathetic service and sneaky and immoral buisness practice is why I left SKY in first place years ago. ONly took a week to find out you have not changed one bit.

[Daniel0210]

@geogan-eire 

Did you not expect Sky to charge you for the few days you had the service? Perhaps the agent meant not charged an early termination fee. 

You will now have to reinstate a payment method, pay what Sky say you owe then contact them. They should be able to listen back on your previous call to confirm what was said. 

By the way, you aren’t contacting Sky by posting on here. We are mainly customers trying to help other customers.

[PandJ2020]

AIUI you owe a pro-rata amount for the duration of the services.  Cancellation within any cooling off period does not mean it's 'free'.

[Mark39]

We're a customer Community, not Sky personnel.

You're charged in advance, but as you've cancelled within your cooling off period, any charges made would have been refunded. You won't be able to call Sky to sort it out until you reinstate your direct debit - they'll most likely pursue for the failed payment until then,. Or you could try Sky's social media pages.

[geogan-eire]

Sorry, I don't know who you lot think you are telling me to pay SKY first before I can contact them (since you are not even SKY employees!). That is extortion... and I think the consumer protection commissioner will be hearing about this business practice...

There is NOT A CHANCE IN HELL I will reinstate a direct debit with SKY to allow them to take money from me for their failed service which I left again after a few days of it not doing what I expected it to do.

[Daniel0210]

@geogan-eire 

We are customers trying to help you. As you've posted on the Community I presume you wanted help/advice. If you don't want to take it because it's not what you want to hear then that's up to you but I'm struggling to see how else you'll resolve it.

[geogan-eire]

You're struggling to see how SKY locking people out that they are trying to take money from BEFORE they will allow one of their account service humans to speak to that person first to find out what's going on, is not a semi-illegal businees practice?

[Daniel0210]

@geogan-eire 

That is Skys policy and has been for as long as I can remember. 

[daveNOS]

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@geogan-eire wrote:

You're struggling to see how SKY locking people out that they are trying to take money from BEFORE they will allow one of their account service humans to speak to that person first to find out what's going on, is not a semi-illegal businees practice?

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@geogan-eire There is nothing semi-illegal about Sky asking for a payment that is legitimately owed before you can speak to customer service, personally i don't like that Sky take that stance but they are legally allowed to.

I think there has been some misunderstanding when you contacted Sky to cancel, either they failed to mention the no charge was for early termination fees or you didn't hear them say that, either way you have to pay for the days that you used the service and you can't realistically expect Sky to allow you to use the service for free just because you cancelled with the cooliing off period(no provider would allow that).