Going back to SKY broadband?

[Banjomir]

Hi,

So, I made the decision to switch ISPs from SKY to Plusnet, purely because Plusnet offered me a much better monthly cost. 

This was all supposed to go live on 17th of May. Sky has disconnected their service, but Plusnet has made a mess of things and I am still waiting for them to get my broadband working.

I regret having made the switch, but never anticipated it would turn out to be such a disaster. 

Now, I was wondering, is there any chance of asking SKY to re-connect my broadband and starting a new contract with them and ditching Plusnet? 

I realise this is a stretch, but I am getting pretty desperate because both me and my wife work from home and not having internet for any extended period of time is making things very difficult for us.

[TimmyBGood · Accepted solution]

---

@Banjomir wrote:

Now, I was wondering, is there any chance of asking SKY to re-connect my broadband and starting a new contract with them and ditching Plusnet?

---

Probably, but unfortunately even if the inevitable bureaucracy is cleared, you'll still face the typical 10 working day minimum wait (and possibly much longer for FTTP provisioning if that's available at the address)

[daveNOS]

@Banjomir I'm sure Sky would welcome you back as a customer, be aware though it would take a minimum of 14 days from the order being placed to get you reconnected(same with all ISP's that use the Openreach network).

[Banjomir]

Thanks for the reply. So my hands are tied and I'm at the mercy of these companies seemingly unable to cooridinate their efforts. Next time, I am getting Starlink! 

[TimmyBGood]

@Banjomir 

Has Plusnet indicated the source of the delay?  Cabinet capacity can be an issue for FTTC, or, as I mentioned, if new provisioning over FTTP is booked by the ISP then Openreach availability becomes a significant factor.

[Banjomir]

I switched over from SKY Fibre (not full fibre) to Plusnet, so it should have been a simple case of taking over the line and doing the thing at the exchange. Plusnet blames Openreach, but Openreach can't be contacted with complaints. Has to go through Plusnet. I have bene on the phone with Plusnet several times over the last week, but I have no way of knowing if they are even chasing this up with Openreach. Incredibly frustrating.

[TimmyBGood]

---

@Banjomir wrote:

 Plusnet blames Openreach, but Openreach can't be contacted with complaints. Has to go through Plusnet.

---

Unfortunately that's correct: Openreach is contracted with the ISP rather than yourself.  Lack of adequate communication between Openreach and their ISP clients is a constant topic in this forum.

[truthifeverspoken]

I wouldnt if i was you as internet problems with them at the moment and our engineer keeps cancelling. We were told we shouldnt be working from home with it too which is a surprise to us. What use is it if you cant work from home with it. Makes no sense. Anyway ours not working now for 2 weeks and still not fixed. I am fuming 

[TimmyBGood]

---

@truthifeverspoken wrote:

. We were told we shouldnt be working from home with it too which is a surprise to us. What use is it if you cant work from home with it. 

---

I suspect the point they were trying to make is that while millions of households use domestic broadband for WfH, that doesn't make the connection a business-grade service, and as such it has no particular service level, guaranteed response time, resilience or compensation for associated losses in the event of failure.

There also isn't any guarantee of a time to fix: the Openreach target is two working days, which they report to Ofcom that they achieve in around 85% of cases.

[Banjomir]

These "policies" should be updated because circumstances for millions of people have changed. The work culture has changed. Therefore, it is really an out of date response from SKY or any other ISP to say "oh well, you don't have a business account, so back in the queue you go". But of couse, this is the world we live in...

I ended up having to get Starlink because OpenReach completely failed to connect my new service and I ended up cancelling after more than a month of struggling.

[TimmyBGood]

---

@Banjomir wrote:

These "policies" should be updated because circumstances for millions of people have changed. The work culture has changed. 

---

Certainly, but none of us currently pay enough for domestic broadband to reasonably hope for much better: the market has evolved to compete almost entirely on minimum pricing and very thin profit margins, with consequently low service levels, staffing and resilience.

[simon194]

---

@TimmyBGood wrote:

---

@Banjomir wrote:

These "policies" should be updated because circumstances for millions of people have changed. The work culture has changed. 

---

Certainly, but none of us currently pay enough for domestic broadband to reasonably hope for much better: the market has evolved to compete almost entirely on minimum pricing and very thin profit margins, with consequently low service levels, staffing and resilience.

---

I'm in a fortunate position the my employer pays for a business broadband connection but I only use it as backup because it's FTTC running at 30 Mbps on a good day. It's much better using my Sky broadband because I can get around 350 Mbps through the company VPN.

[TimmyBGood]

@simon194 

And of course in most cases 'business broadband' still arrives over the same (and equally vulnerable) copper or optical cabling and connects back through several potential single points of failure before it reaches supposedly more robust backbone infrastructure.

There's some advantage to be had from the contracted faster fault response time, but actually what most people would benefit from is redundant pathways which is why I'm surprised Sky still doesn't have cellular failover as an option on domestic broadband.