New Sky Broadband activation start date issue

[Bunters]

Wish I had read other posts here before believing Sky promises on Broadband activation date.

It appears the bad boys are Openreach (Old BT bad habits). Sky use them as an excuse for late delivery of the service. What Sky do not do and is unforgiveable is that they do not contact customers to advise them of a delay in their service. Two things need sorting here.

1) Sky need to take customer communication more seriously. Bad things happen but communication eases everything!

2) The relationship between Sky and Openreach needs sorting out including penalties for late delivery.

Yes you guess right Sky have missed my broadband start date and it has taken three calls with them today to get any sense of what went wrong. Nobody but Openreach knows and they are responsible to no one it appears.

Sorry BT maybe you were not so bad after all..............Agh but yes you were, no incentive to recontract and 2 year contracts! you must be joking!

[TechmanagerMal]

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@Bunters wrote:

Wish I had read other posts here before believing Sky promises on Broadband activation date.

It appears the bad boys are Openreach (Old BT bad habits). Sky use them as an excuse for late delivery of the service. What Sky do not do and is unforgiveable is that they do not contact customers to advise them of a delay in their service. Two things need sorting here.

1) Sky need to take customer communication more seriously. Bad things happen but communication eases everything!

2) The relationship between Sky and Openreach needs sorting out including penalties for late delivery.

Yes you guess right Sky have missed my broadband start date and it has taken three calls with them today to get any sense of what went wrong. Nobody but Openreach knows and they are responsible to no one it appears.

Sorry BT maybe you were not so bad after all..............Agh but yes you were, no incentive to recontract and 2 year contracts! you must be joking!

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I appreciate your problems I am currently experiencing OR at its worst following an outage that has left me with half speed Superfast.

On another subject though, you have called Sky successfully on three occasions - how did you manage that - exact steps required would be helpful to us all?

[Bunters]

@TechmanagerMal  OK I will try and summarise my experience.

Thursday 30/07/20 Due date for switch over of a fully working fast fibre BT line. (Excellent BT line never a problem)

Promised text from Sky saying line activated never arrived. Surprised as I thought it was a simple patch cable switch.

Friday 31/07/20  No text,email or phone call from Sky so decided to look up order progress online to find a note saying 'Action required' clicking which gave 'Contact us'. on xxxxxxxxxxxxx Duly rang the number and spoke to a guy who said it sometimes takes longer but no sense of why or when so on pushing him he put me through to Broadband technical people. Unfortunately he did not wait to hear if anyone answered and you guessed it was an answering machine that basically told me to go away they were busy and the line went dead. No idea what this number is. I rang back on xxxxxxxxxxxx and got a nice lady this time who was very empathetic and said it sometimes takes a day longer so it should be completed by end of play. No details of what the problem is as it get handed over to Openreach. Later in the day with no update on the order status (Still saying 'contact us'} and no text from Sky I decided on a different tack and went looking for a technical number online. Didn;t find one but came across a Sky chat line where I had a long chat with a guy who tried to be helpful but all roads led to Openreach engineer not doing the job. I asked how I could escalate my problem and was given the following list of numbers to call.

TV Tech - xxxxxxxxxx
Billing - xxxxxxxxx
Broadband and Talk Tech - xxxxxxxxx
Home Move - xxxxxxxx
Mobile Tech and Billing - xxxxxxxx
Any other queries - xxxxxxxx

I rang Broadband and Talk Tech and got a lovely Scottish lass who was working from home. She was able to look up a log of some sort that said an Openreach enginner had attended on the due date (Thursday) but was unable to complete the job for unspecified technical reasons. She said another engineer visit was scheduled for Friday.

It seems from her experience these things can take a number of days to sort and may take up to next Tuesday..

At this stage I gave up, thanked her for her efforts and poured a large Gin & Tonic.

You may be wondering why I gave up a great BT broadband service 70 down 20 up consistently and no breaks over a couple of years. Simply because BT are lapsing into that old arragont company that thought they could do what they liked with their monopoly.  No incentive to stay in fact an increase for the same service and a move to 24 month contracts. They started with 12 quietly moved to 18 and now 24. Its not on BT.

I have no idea if any of this can help anyone else but it gets it off my chest.

PS Still waiting for activationnection and any contact on progress fro Sky.

PPS Had to remove all the helpful phone numbers against the rules apparently   

[TechmanagerMal]

@Bunters That list of numbers you were given tends to prove that Sky is indeed taking calls to various if not all departments otherwise the advisor would have said the usual due to the pandemic et etc.

Your issue is in the hands of OR and the availability at your local cabinet and exchange, not an ideal situation but if a Sky Employee on here spots this post they may escalate it.

[Bunters]

@TechmanagerMal  Well you may be right that someone has escalated it. I now have no broadband at all since it appears OR have cut off my BT broadband service. Sky have advised me that they will update me on 6th August. but not to worry they will not charge me. Big deal. They ignore the fact that my concern and worry is not having any broadband for at least 3 days. My contract is with SKY and this constant blaming OR is unacceptable. I am very tempted to cancel this order and go elsewhere.

[Bunters]

 Let me say at the outset that I am still convinced Sky people are intrinsically good. Their processes however are apalling.

Despite numerous emails and phone calls I am still without a broadband service from either Sky or my current supplier BT. I am without BT because Sky asked Openreach to disconnect me???

You are all going to like this one especially @TechmanagerMal .

After many calls I was lucky to come across a very nice Scottish man who explained that after investigating  the problem with Openreach he unfortunately had some bad news for me.  I expected further delay but was astounded by his next statement when he said Sky would not be able to supply the Fibre broadband they cheerfully sold me! So I had a 70/20 BT fibre line but could not have a Sky one. So much for Sky due diligence when they sold it to me.

I am now awaiting Sky to provide me with a basic copper service so that I can invesigate getting someone else to provide the fibre service or crawling back to BT.  You will have guessed though that providing a copper service is not straightforward either as a nice Scottish lady rang and told me today. She said it takes a lot of time because the current fibre order has to be cancelled and a new order raised.........etc etc.. They will update me on 11/08 so I said you mean I will not have a service until at least 11/08. Oh no she said it will probably take longer than that!!

Time for somee G&T's and think about how to best compose an email/letter to Jeremy Darroch.

[Twombly]

Hello,

I'm in a similar position. I moved house and took my sky services with me. My activation date was 24/07 and I still haven't had my broadband connected. Sky told me there's a broken floor which has uncovered some asbestos at the local exchange. After 2 weeks sky still can't tell me when the repair work will be completed. They keep telling me openreach will update them in 48 hours and every 48 hours I call and they tell me what I already know. Surely an update would suggest new information? Isn't the first questions you would ask be something like can it be fixed and how long will it take? 

I'm getting another update on Monday and I pretty sure I know what they're going to tell me. A sky representative told me a sad story about somebody who hadn't had their broadband connected since March so my 2 weeks is nothing to complain about. I tried playing the critical worker card and the response was 'at least you're not sick!' 

Apparently it wouldn't matter if I was. I appreciate everyones a bit stretched at the moment but openreach would still have done an analysis of the situation and would know a ballpark timeframe in which they could complete the work. 

[WalshC]

I'm having a similar issue and it's infuriating.

This is a new fibre line, although the phone line is existing, and I had an activation date of 15th October.

The broadband still hasn't been activated and every time I call they tell me that Openreach have discovered a fault on the line, an engingeer will investigate and they push the date back by another 3-4 days.

All of these updates are readily available when I call up but there's nothing in my message centre.

Openreach are so completely non-transparent and seem to face almost no consequences and no one at Sky seems to be pushing for this to be activated.

I also looked to make a complaint and it just takes me to the same phone switchboard which you call for all other queries and can't be done online so I'll be having to get out my pen and paper and send it in. Absolute rubbish.

[Bunters]

@WalshC This is so typical of my experience with SKY broadband. I gave up in the end and moved to EE. Sky do not  understand customer service and most certainly do not understand the principle of quality embodied in the goal of  "Get it right first time, on time and every time". They seem to think that throwing money at it in the form of automatic compensation is the way to fix things. The major and refreshing difference I found with EE was that I had a single point of contact with a direct email and phone number. The person looking after me was very efficient, responded quickly to emails and had the authority to get things done.

I might add these comments relate purely to Sky broadband and not Sky TV where I have had the opposite experience thankfully. The comments also do not reflect on indiviual Sky people whom I have always found very personable. Sky broadband problems are purely down to poor procedures and lack of problem management, not to mention what looks like a non existant or toxic relationship with Openreach.

[Deanna1991]

Can someone please help me?

I

ordered sky in jan and they pushed the broadband activation date so many times now. Today I got a text saying they'll be in touch on 17th as there's no space in the green cabinet, but an hour later I got a text the internet is now active. It's still not working though, the green light for WiFi is there but nothing for internet. Is this normal and how long after the sms do the services usually come on? Working from home and really stressed now 😞

[jamesn123]

Hi @Deanna1991 

This can sometimes happen if too many people in your area subscribe to fibre as there are only a certain amount of fibre ports on the cabinet. It may be that you need to stay on ADSL broadband until there is more space in the cabinet. 

I've flagged your post to Sky so look out for an email or message on the forum. Hopefully Sky will either be able to advise you of an activation date or put you back on to ADSL broadband

[Deanna1991]

Hi

they sent a text this morning that the broadband is active now. But its still not working and the internet light on the hub is off. Do you know how long can it take after the text for the service to be up and running? Or there's an issue with it, as it should be straight away after you get a text from sky saying it's active. Thanks a lot

[Deanna1991]

Also, I just moved in here so there's no adsl or any connection yet. 

[ML5073]

The same thing has happened to us- after over two months of waiting for broadband activation pending I'm told there is no ports in the green cabinet and OpenReach have rejected my order....

I have also been asked to let the cancellation purge/ off of the system then call in for an ADSL line/ after which I should request to migrate to Fibre. 
interested to know what to do, really and whether @jamesn123 you have had an progress?

[ML5073]

Apologies @jamesn123 - this request on progress should have been irected to @Deanna1991 

Thanjs,

Mark