Just signed up to Sky, Confused about "cooling off" period.

[junglebungle]

Hello all

I have signed up to sky bb and sky talk, which is about £21 a month.

A engineer will be visiting me on the 15th of June to activate my line, my router kit has come etc.

My question is, what is the DEFINATE cooling off period where i can CANCEL everything with sky, IE: the BB and the Line rental, i was told by sky online chat support its 30 days... also the terms and conditions here : Sky Terms and Conditions - New to Sky

State:

30 day Broadband and Talk Satisfaction Guarantee: You can cancel your Sky Broadband and Talk services at any time within the first 30 days of all your services being activated. You'll receive a pro-rata refund for any subscription you've paid but not any set-up charges or non-inclusive call charges. Your statutory rights are not affected. Guarantee does not apply to Sky TV or existing customers changing their current packages.


But other places say once the line is active i am tied into a 12 month contract, i hope this is not the case as i am only getting the broadband because i was with virgin before and my line is capable of 10meg, but i was maxing out at 2 meg with virgin..... they was adamant the line was fine etc and the exchange, but my friend who lives downstairs is on a 12meg line with virgin..... makes no sense...

So if i do infact only get 2meg again i will be cancelling the bb as 2meg in this day and age of internet is no where near fast enough for the things i will be doing, (gaming downloading streaming)

I just wish i was in a fiber optic area well i am, but the road i live doesn't have it!

Any help would be much appreciated as i'm pretty confused.

Regards

[Scubbie]

Distance selling laws are on your side.

You can cancel up to 30 days after everything is installed. Sky are asking that you pay for any line rental fees, call charges and BB fees for the period that you have their service available.

After this you will be locked into a 12 month contract.

Under normal circumstances I would ask you to post your stats so members can give you a clearer estimate of your line speed. This is not easy with Virgin as your previous ISP as they have their own Cable system and Sky will use the telephone system.

When your BB does go live, post the stats and members can give you some idea of what you can expect. In the mean time take a look at the link below and see what you can do with your setup at home to get the best from your new BB connection.

::. Kitz - Improve your adsl connection speed .::

[Isitme]

But other places say once the line is active i am tied into a 12 month contract, i hope this is not the case as i am only getting the broadband because i was with virgin before and my line is capable of 10meg, but i was maxing out at 2 meg with virgin..... they was adamant the line was fine etc and the exchange, but my friend who lives downstairs is on a 12meg line with virgin..... makes no sense...

That suggests you were not on Virgin Cable. Are you on Virgin ADSL, using your phone line? If so post your stats from your Test socket. If the person downstairs from you was getting 10Mb more than you it suggests your line, either internally or externally, has a fault. If it is internal it is usually easily fixed, external may be another matter.
How to test your ADSL in the Master Test Socket

How you get your stats will depend on the make of your router. The instructions for a variety of routers can be found here -
SkyUser - How to get your Router Stats - Non Sky

[junglebungle]

Thanks for the replies, i remember from before when i had virgin i had a very high attenuation figure, and i was connected to the master socket the whole time.
Yes it was ADSL as i stated in first post that fiber optic is not available for me.

I can't test anything yet as my line is not activated, i did a letter from sky today which states this:

IMG-20110609-00088.jpg:

So clearly it says im writing i am not allowed to cancel AFTER the engineer has been round to install the line, so therefore im stuck really, because if i do get it installed and i get 2meg again i'm stuffed... hmm i don't know if i should carry on with the order now.......... But the terms on their site say 30 days, this is rather annoying.

[junglebungle]

any ideas?

[Scubbie]

any ideas?

How did you sign up to get Sky Talk & Sky BB?

[junglebungle]

On their website?

[Scubbie]

In this case you are covered by the 'Distance selling regulations'. You actually have 30 days to cancel. You may be charged for installation and any subscription fees to cover the period.

You also do need to understand the principles of ADSL and how a BT style connection differs significantly from Virgin's Fibre connection.

Whilst we can suggest many things to help, there are always some things outside of our control. For example Basingstoke has a lot of Aluminium wiring, which is poor for ADSL.

Correction: You only have 7 days to cancel under distance selling regulations (see post 10)

[SkyCST]

Im pretty sure, not certain as provisions isnt my thing.
But pretty sure that for broadband you have 8 working days from the service going active.

Few months back we had to revise the broadband contracts and this is what me and a manager found to be correct. Which cancellations then confirmed.

So....dunno if its changed in the last 2 months or so but ive not heard anything,.

[Scubbie]

...So....dunno if its changed in the last 2 months or so but ive not heard anything,.

UK Law is paramount and cannot be trumped in this instance.

...so I've just been double checking things.

It appears that where others have previously mentioned 30 days on this forum (and I've followed like a sheep and repeated it) the information was wrong.

You are actually allowed a 7 day cooling off period. Please see the link below and also the document that it links to (3.22-3.26 covers your rights to cancel):

Distance Selling Regulations* - The Office of Fair Trading

So apologies: 8 days does appear to be the limit.

Now considering that DLM can take up to 14 days to complete from when you are activated (around 3 days to start & 10 days to process), how can you be sure that the service you have requested is going to be suitable?

I wonder if you could use this piece (taken from the bottom of page 18 in the document):

Different rules apply to services where the consumer agrees that the service starts before the usual cancellation period expires. These rules are as follows.

• Where you have supplied the required durable information before the service starts and the consumer agrees to the service starting before the end of the usual cancellation period, their cancellation rights will end when performance of the service starts