When can you cancel Sky after no service?

[rick+fowler]

Still in contract till next year.

internet went off Monday night.

rang Tuesday morning, followed all instructions didn't work sent new modem.

Wednesday, new modem still no internet. Day on phone following all instructions again. This time blaming it on the internet cable, said sending new one next day.

Thursday nothing arrived, messaged no joy, email said 3/5 days for part to arrive.

Friday parcel arrives, phone cable, little while wall adapter for phone cable, power cable, but yep no internet. What a waste of time.

Afternoon an openreach engineer arrives says he's been sent to check everything is plugged in right. He did all his tests, spoke with call centre in India, they couldn't fix it. Got put through to uk sky call centre and escalated to stage 3 as they couldn't fix it. Openreach closed the job as said nothing wrong with their equipment.

sky would be doing work in background. Get a text Friday night to call,  be told it's an openreach issue & they be 48 hours. Argued this given information above, asked speak tech team told don't have phone, asked manager told no 48 hours finally he's find out put me on hold the cuts me OFF.

so my question is can I cancel my broadband and house phone because we've had no service and they still haven't fixed it after all of this. With out charging us even though we're in contract because they have broken the terms?

I know we can't cancel under the low interest speed as the small print excludes loss of service.

any advice very welcome as so fed up now as we have no internet, tv upstairs won't work as it connects via WiFi, house alarm, house cameras Alexa, all run off WiFi 

[Daniel0210]

@rick+fowler 

If you were able to cancel and moved to another isp using the Openreach infrastructure the problem would just move with you. 

The below link explains the Ofcom agreed auto compensation scheme which Sky operates for when there is a TOTAL loss of Sky Broadband or Sky Talk.
https://www.sky.com/help/articles/auto-compensation

If you have a total loss of service and it isn’t fixed after two full WORKING days from when the fault is first reported to Sky, you will become eligible for it. It’s applied 30 days after the fault has been repaired and will come in the form of a credit appearing on your Sky account (new rates apply from 01/04/24 of £9.76 per day).

[TimmyBGood]

@rick+fowler 

Cancelling and then ordering service elsewhere starts a ten day minimum lead time before activation by any other Openreach-based ISP.

Unilateral cancellation within a minimum contract term would also trigger a financial penalty: typically around 60% of the remaining subscription over that term.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/charges-for-ending-your-sky-contract-early 

Unfortunately an ISP experiencing a fault isn't actually a breach of contract, but a subscriber not making a contracted payment is.  

[rick+fowler]

That's stupid they can leave us without any service which nobody can seem to be able to fix. Openreach have been and it's not their issue but Sky say it's not theirs. So if nobody is taking responsibility for it then clearly I'm within my rights to leave as the issue is with Sky.

[TimmyBGood]

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@rick+fowler wrote:

 So if nobody is taking responsibility for it then clearly I'm within my rights to leave as the issue is with Sky.

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I'm afraid not, no: that isn't how contract law works (and, as I frequently post, they can probably afford better lawyers anyway)

There's actually no way to 'cancel' unilaterally while within a minimum contract term, and ceasing to pay just precipitates an increasingly unfortunate sequence of events.

Outside a minimum term you can just order service from a different ISP, but as noted above the fault will almost certainly move with the circuit to the new provider.

[jamesn123]

@rick+fowler 

Sky have not broken any terms. Your contract with Sky does not state any minimum fault resolution time so as long as Sky are actively engaging with you on the problem (which it sounds like they are) there is no terms broken within the contract and you'll have to be patient while the problem is investigated. Otherwise you'll be looking at cancelling in-contract which would incur fees as @TimmyBGood mentioned/

[talis]

i have the same problem currently, been going on for months, keep constantly loosing connection and keeps disconnecting, had sky engineer out also had open reach engineer out they turn round and say there isn't anything wrong and close the case then ring any again to be told there is a fault but still to this day no further forward and they won't let me leave so i'm paying them all this money for a service i'm not even getting it's really annoyed me