Why do sky take so long to fit broadband

[Alex C.]

I'm not surprised - when I worked there in 2007, many thousands of people were waiting 6 months + to be connected.

[bloodrabbit]

Me and my housemate ordered Sky broadband on January 15th 2011. They first told me it could take upto 10 days, which I thought was ok. We then get a letter through saying we were going to be connected on the 23rd of March! I phoned them up to have this explained to me and I was told that openreach from BT had a back log of over a 3000 customers.

All this of course was really frustrating, but what frustrated me the most, was being told from a Sky representative that our phone line is going to be installed on the 7th of March and our broadband is then activated 10 days after. I asked the lady from Sky "why 10 days?", she simply replied "I don't know". If virgin were any better I'd go with them, but they're awful to get hold of.

[Gluggy]

As others have said assuming Sky haven't messed up the paperwork it will likely be "BT Openreach" - they are pretty much the only people allowed to enter the exchange or touch the lines, so regardless of who you sign up with they are dependent on BT to carry out whatever installation / modifications are required.

 

Personally i've found Sky's customer service to be OK, sure they've messed up a few times but it was sorted quickly and without too much drama. Dont get me started on BT though, i think the phrase "couldn't organise a booze up in brewery" was invented for them

 

Bloodrabbit - as much as i know there is a certain way (Simultaneous Provide?) that Sky and other service providers can place an order that should allow for them both go live on the same day however i've tried to get things done like this and it seems very few of the customer service reps from both BT and Sky are able / willing to do it. Without doing this Sim Provide i believe the order is treated as two separate process, with one engineer activating the line and then a second one having to be booked for the ADSL side of things afterwards hence the 10 working day wait / time difference.

[Resident]

Yeah Virgin is great.I had the same equipment since blueyonder/telewest.

Recently my remote wore out ,some buttons not working,3 weeks later they sent a new one that didn't work (not their fault ?),they said it is new so must be Ok.I demanded an engineer who came 2 days later and laughed when he saw the age of my stuff.He changed the box gave me a new remote fine.Two weeks later the box failed,this newer one has now worked for a full month.Fingers crossed.

I could tell more,but too long.

 

Virgin have had a problem with a batch of the newer Samsung boxes. Virgin sent one of these out to me father-in-law to replace his old one. It broke within 24hrs so he called them out and the engineer just replaced the box without even testing it, told him that a certain batch was faulty and that he was unlucky to have been sent one.