Re-applying / Welcome Back Team for SKY stream

[Chimpishuk]

Good Day Folks, 

I had been a loyal customer of Sky for over 20 years starting out with a Sky+ box, follwed by Sky Q and eventually Sky Stream.  Due to personal circumstances (divorce) last year I had to tighten the purse strings and The Sky Stream was cancelled. a long with the gigafast broadband.  Since then I have signed up for a number of mobile / tech products with Sky such as a 15" Macbook Pro, Samsung Tab S9 Ultra and an iPhone pro.  So you could say my purse tightening requirements are over thankfully.  I decided it was time to rejoin Sky Stream since I already had three pucks and assumed it would be a simple case of signing up online.  Unfortunately, I was met with a prompt stating that I was already a Sky TV customer which is definitely not the case.  I called Sky today and spoke to a pleasant person in the welcome back team but she was also faced with the same dilema of my account stating I was already a Sky TV customer and that my case would have to be escalated to the dreaded back office team with no realistic timescales for resolution.  I wondered if anyone else had suffered this misfortune and what the potential feedback and fix was provided.  The only difference is that I have Virgin Media 1150Mbps service instead of Sky's Gigafast but I fail to see how that would cause any issues. 

Any input would be gratefully received as I'd like to get my stream service back up and running asap.  As much as I've used digital freeview and GoogleTV I can't help but miss the Sky interface.  

Please halp.  TIA. 

[Chrisee]

@Chimpishuk normally customers re-joining Sky under 18 months after they left are not able to access the "New Customer" offers. Its been policy for years and while someone at Sky might wave it for you I think it is unlikely but nothing ventured...

[GD1]

@Chimpishuk  You would only be considered a new customer after 18 months of being away, therefore anything under that you would still be seen as an existing customer so may not get any new customer deals but you should be able to reinstate your TV service.

[Chimpishuk]

'm paying considerably more than I ever did for their Sky Mobile contracts so you would think they would offer benefits.  I'm not even discussing new joining beneifits here though, I can't order any TV services full stop.  

[Chimpishuk]

However, we're now dealing with an American company so I should set my expectations appriately low.  

[Jason+Golding]

@Chimpishuk I would speak to the executive office. Phone sky and ask to make a complaint, it will and can be resolved. All you are asking for is to rejoin as a customer, you're not asking for any new customer deals. Crazy 

[martswain]

I was sold Stream on the basis that I could dip in and out but on both occasions when trying to restart my rolling subscription there have been issues and these had to be referred to back office support.

First time it took 4 days to sort it, second time 7 days.

I never did get a full explanation but did get £10 each time for my inconvenience as I have been with Sky since 1999.

I own my puck so that was not the issue.

[Chimpishuk]

Good to know.  Well, not the bit about having to wait, but that it can be easily fixed by back office team.  I like Sky but theres always some silly issue and you never get the same story twice. 

You would think they would be all over retention and welcome back but it appears not. I have my own pucks too.  

Hopefully ill be up and running in 5-10 days. 

[Chrisee]

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@Chimpishuk wrote:

However, we're now dealing with an American company so I should set my expectations appriately low.  

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The policy of not treating  returning  account holders as "new customers" until 18 months has passed predates the Comcast take over. 

[Jason+Golding]

@Chrisee Your missing the point, the OP never mentions wanting to be treated as a new customer, you did. They simply want to restart their subsctipton and pay the going rate. Why is this so difficult - sky offer monthly contracts - if i subscribe to netflix or apple tv plus and decide to cancel and then subsequently resubscribe its incredibly easy as it should be 

[Padam_Padam]

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@Jason+Golding wrote:

@Chrisee Your missing the point, the OP never mentions wanting to be treated as a new customer, you did. They simply want to restart their subsctipton and pay the going rate. Why is this so difficult - sky offer monthly contracts - if i subscribe to netflix or apple tv plus and decide to cancel and then subsequently resubscribe its incredibly easy as it should be 

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Sky have made it difficult for both themselves and their customers by maintaining control of the hardware. After their u-turn of customer ownership of the pucks, they seem to have shot themselves in the foot when it comes to stopping and starting subscriptions. Dumb. 

[Jason+Golding]

@Padam_Padam Totally agree. Who would have a monthly contract and then say you have to return thr hardware on each occassion. To my mind, they clearly dont want month to month customers. The cost of those stream boxes will be £20 max. Why not allow customers to keep the box, and make it a condition that they are not allowed to sell the box, it remains property of sky and can be asked for back at anytime, with a £100 penalty if not returned 

[Padam_Padam]

@Jason+Golding 

I don't think Sky will go back to the customer-owned puck idea. At least not in its current form. 

I think they want and need to keep their product as a system/service, not just a streaming device. The whole thing with Sky Stream is that it's a platform - an operating system and a service, controlled by Sky, it's not just another box with some apps on it. 

By keeping the pucks as loaned devices, Sky keep control of their product. They can keep mass-producing them to a budget, swapping them out relatively easily when they fail. They can keep charging the activation fee for each one added to a Whole Home sub, and still get the device back at the end of the customer's contract. Better for Sky and better for the environment (in a round about sort of way). 

I personally think the biggest problem is with the whole internal IT systems at Sky. Their entire ordering process, SkyID system, product linking format, marketplace, etc is a messy jumble of ideas, many of them legacy processes from way back in the Sky+ days. This is why the mythical 'back office' team have to get involved in situations like the motivation for this very thread. They're the only ones who understand how to untangle the mess.

A restructure of how Sky Stream is ordered, activated and maintained by a customer would help massively. It's not rocket science, but right now it seems you need to have a degree in such to make sense of how you set up and tweak your subscriptions. Sky customer service are largely in the same boat - many of them are still only trained on how to work with Sky Q subs (and many of them still have Sky Q) so they are left to flounder when it comes to Stream. 

Sky could learn a lot from looking at the simplicity of NOW. It's so easy to activate, maintain, add to or cancel subscriptions direct from the website, the same as with Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+ etc. But again, they are just relatively simple app-based services, not a streaming platform with a convoluted operating system attached to a bespoke piece of hardware.  

[Chimpishuk]

My puck/s are now working.  Except discovery doesn't seem to want me to claim my free sub. It says to sign in, then says your account is already paired with sky. Then when I try to play discovery content on sky it says I need to go to the app and pay for a subscription. As for paramount, when I launch it, it kills the puck and I have to power it off. The apps have been refreshed and I'm running current firmware. I read a bunch of threads that confirm similar behaviour.  With sky blaming discovery and paramount and viceversa. 

Damn you sky. It was all going so well. At least Netflix works.  And I got sky, fastforward, boxsets, cinema for 45 pcm for 18 months.