Are Sky more confused than I am?

[James67]

I've now got three letters from Sky. Letter number one says…

Your Broadband Broadband Max is provided under the Sky Broadband Subscription Contract which will be emailed, when you broadband line is activated to you new sky.com email address, which is your username shown below followed by @sky.com.

OK, so the strangely-placed commas make the sentence a bit confusing, but I scan down the letter looking for my username, only to find…

To login you will need the username and password which we will supply to you in a separate letter accompanied by a booklet which will explain all you need to know.

So my username isn't "show below", it's in a different letter.

Letter number three arrives. Maybe my username is in there…

We have created your Sky Broadband password which you will need to login to Sky Broadband for the first time.

Your Password is ********

We strongly advise you to change this password when you first login to something memorable to you - but if you do forget your password again - remember you can always reset it online at Sky Broadband - Home.

So I've got a password, but no username. And what's this thing about me forgetting my password again? They've only just told me the password!

Would it have been impossible for a reasonably intelligent person to actually read these letters and spot the self-contradictions (quite apart from the bad grammar)?

Anyway, on the off-chance it might work, I try logging in to Sky Tools using my MySky username and password and hey, it works! And there's an email there for me saying, "A BIG hello from Sky Broadband". I can also connect using POP. I can even create additional email accounts.

So if you have an existing MySky username and profile, it looks like they re-use those for access to Sky Broadband tools. Is that right? It certainly seems so. But if that's the case, what's that password that they sent me in the third letter all about?

The second letter they sent me gave an activation date, along with a warning that I should allow an extra 3 days from that date because of the huge demand for Sky Broadband. It seems shoddy old BT can't keep up with the demand. You never know, my activation might be so badly delayed that I'll actually end up getting my router before the line's activated.

[fihart]

For a company in the communications industry, Sky seems pretty poor at written communications like that -- and the whole multiple user name password system is apparently designed to confuse.

Basically, ignore all they've written.

The only password you need to worry about is the wireless security passphrase which is written on a label on the router itself and which you apply to the WPA settings in your computer's wireless adapter (if you decide to use wireless). The rest you need to know is in the tutorial on this site or on help files on the Sky CD which comes with the router (though ignore all the software on the disc such as the Internet Explorer update and McAfee).

Most of the rest of what they've sent you refers to logging in to their website (if you can figure out how) and using their e-mail system which may be working now but I would avoid (much better off with free webmail from Yahoo etc which are independent of your ISP so you can move suppliers and keep your e-mail address).

[MrStabby]

Yes, if you already have a My Sky account (remote record, Sky Anytime on PC etc....) then this is your username and password for your primary Sky email account.
You can then use this account to create child/sub accounts.

[Isitme]

Just to confirm that if you have an account with MySky, your username and password are used to access your email etc. Why Sky cannot come right out and say this, I don't know. They continue to use the confusing letters you outline above. If you don't have a MySky account the username password is usually included in your second welcome letter.

If you intend to use a client like Outlook or Thunderbird to access you Sky email, you will need to use the user name and password. To be honest, up until the last few days, I have had no problems with Sky email, but there are problems at the moment which are being attributed to the move to Googlemail. Instructions on how to set up your mail are to be found in this section.-
http://www.skyuser.co.uk/forum/sky-email-portal-log/

[James67]

Thanks to all those who confirmed what I suspected to be the case.

You know, it strikes me that Sky really only need to make a few changes to the way they do things, and they'd end up with near 100% customer satisfaction. And I'm not talking about costly investments - just simple things like reviewing their welcome letters to ensure they make sense, and NewsreadeR's suggestion (in another thread) that they could issue temporary, emergency connection username/password pairs, for people whose router delivery has been delayed or has had to be replaced because it's faulty.

Maybe someone ought to write to James Murdoch with these ideas.

Most of the rest of what they've sent you refers to logging in to their website (if you can figure out how) and using their e-mail system which may be working now but I would avoid (much better off with free webmail from Yahoo etc which are independent of your ISP so you can move suppliers and keep your e-mail address).

Ah well, I use a slightly different approach. I've registered my own domain name which is configured to forward email to my ISP email account. I've already updated that, so email is now being forwarded to the Sky email accounts I've set up for the household. All working very nicely, with no apparent change to people either sending me email or receiving email from me (unless they look at the full email headers).

[Isitme]

It may be in your interests to check the Junk folder in your Sky account. There is another thread running concerning this.