A little over a week ago, while I was in the midst of collecting stories from relatives to work into a eulogy for my father who passed away the week before, I became locked out of my Sky Yahoo email on every device after succcessfully changing the account password. As you can imagine, this happened at the worst possible time.
For background, I have had this email account since Sky launched broadband, some 15+ years ago. In fact I worked at Sky HQ for over 8 years and there is probably still some of my DNA in Osterley from the blood, sweat and tears dropped on the floor from the long hours and late nights dedicating a significant amount of my life to a job I loved. However, I moved to Australia in 2012 so it is a long time since I had a Sky TV or broadband account, staff or otherwise. I have however used that email account every day since I got it, with no prior issue.
This is not a password problem as I can log into my Sky account and even see my personal details, but when I go to email it says "Access Denied" and states "You do not have permission to access [domain] from this server". Ditto when trying to enter the new password on my phone - I get that message before I even see a screen to enter a password into.
Of course I turned to this forum and the Sky website for a solution. A few people in this forum have found that the problem inexplicably resolved itself after a few days, but on the Sky website it directs people to call them and specify their public IP address for Sky to fix it - see https://www.sky.com/help/articles/problems-accessing-sky-yahoo-mail-error-access-denied
As I do not have an international calling plan, I could not find a way to contact Sky immediately, but went to a relative's house earlier this week (a few days after the funeral) to try to sort it out.
I called Sky 4 times over a period of over 2 continuous hours, almost all of which was spent on hold. The first time I was cut off after speaking to someone who put me on hold for over 20 minutes. The second time I was told that Sky had no record of an account with me and I was given a differerent number who I was told would "definitely be able to sort it out" for me but who they said they could not transfer me to. When I called that number (call number 3) it was the same IVR as the first 2 calls so not a specialist help team that I was assured I would get through to, and I was cut off after 20 minutes without even speaking to a person. The fourth call I got through to someone but again again they could not locate my account and I got cut off after they put me on hold for nearly 30 minutes. On two of these calls I provided an Australian number for them to call in case we were disconnected, but (what a surprise) I never heard back.
In some ways I am not surprised - I am not a paying customer and the access denial is probably an increased security measure as my IP address is not in the UK. I just wish I had reasonable notice that Sky would deny international access and I could have established a new personal account with another email service. In short, I feel horribly mistreated by being denied access to an email account I have used for 15+ years.
I have finally found a way to get into my email, which is via a VPN, even though all the articles suggest turning off VPN to solve the issue! I only have a VPN on one device and it's as slow as anything but I am using that to make sure I don't miss any emails. I have set up another email service and have started to change the dozens of subscriptions, utilities, govt departments and so on that have my sky.com email address.
I know this has been a long rant, but I have two requests -
First, if anyone from Sky reads this and actually cares, please tell me how to sort this out, ideally without me having to call another UK Sky number where I am going to spend another 2 hours without you being able to help. If Sky mail is no longer going to work overseas, you should also tell users that this is the case. I am sure I am not the only person in this boat.
Second, if anyone knows how I can redirect my sky.com emails to my new account for a few months while I change my email address, that would be appreciated.
