Sky Broadband not activated - "Stuck in a loop in Openreach system" - PATHETIC!

[marrow999]

Here's my letter to Sky - sharing this to see how many others have to put up with this absolute farce...


Further to me contacting Sky at the beginning of January to advise them of my moving date (22/02/19), I received a letter dated 18th January which stated that Sky Broadband and Sky Talk would cease at my old address on 22/02/19 and that the service would go live at the new address on 25/02/19. The letter also included our new phone number which we subsequently used to notify all our contacts etc.

Inexplicably, three days prior to moving, we received an email from Sky stating "Your Sky Talk and Sky Line Rental order has been cancelled". This was totally in error.
(The Sky helpdesk agent claimed that this was because the current resident at the property had refused to allow Sky to take over the existing BT line - this is not true - interestingly she had EXACTLY the same email sent to her AND so did the incoming resident to my now old address (who ironically I had recommended Sky to).

I was then told that "we would have to start again" - it was NOT POSSIBLE to do anything in less than two weeks - so 06/03/19 was set as the new activation date.




On that day, the phone line( - a different number to one given out on the original correspondence) went active. The broadband did not. (Although the Sky router logs clearly showed VDSL connection in place).
The subsequent fiasco has now continued for more than a week. The Sky agents have repeatedly said that the order is "stuck in the system" with Openreach (as if that is an acceptable justification), that NOTHING can be done to expedite this as Openreach have 48 hours to respond - their "acceptable" response after 48 hours was actually to say they'd be back in touch in 48 hours - apparently this has to occur three times before the case can be escalated in any way? This third time has no come and gone - despite the above, again I have been told there is NOTHING they can do and I must wait a further 24 hours.

So, at the time of writing, it is now 20 days since the original activation date and still I have no broadband.
Moving house, as we all know, is extremely stressful and this unacceptable level of service has made things significantly more so. If there was a physical issue with the line/the cabinet etc then perhaps this would be understandable - but this is not the case here - it is simply very very poor systems and incompetent agreements between Sky and Openreach - the agents on the phone are all apologetic and resigned to the ridiculousness of the "lines" they have to come up with.

In the meantime we are currently spending £15/day to get sufficient data from EE on our mobiles - (no offer of any mobile dongle etc has been made at any stage) and I assume we are being charge for broadband and the TV service which is clearly not connected to the internet.
It is also worth noting that during one call (the 0344 2411165 no. which is the order recovery number is often diverted to the wrong department), someone actually tried to upsell my TV package to me - not appropriate behaviour.
Furthermore, the hold "music" refers to free wifi hotspots - just go to sky.com/wifi - this webpage does not exist.
And just for completeness, the email received with regard to CISAS contains some link text that actually links to https://www.ombudsman-services.org/w...nications.html which does not exist?

Appalling service - Imagine dropping you car in to the garage in the morning then popping back to pick it up and the mechanic says "sorry, not done yet, and there is nothing I can do....no I dont know when it will be done".

If you have experienced similar incompetence please share it here.

[seawright]

Don't know why but if you had taken the opportunity to change broadband and telephone supplier when you moved you would have been able to keep your original phone number. After being told that we would have to have a new number we moved to Virgin, didn't like their set-top box so cancelled during the cooling off period and moved back to Sky keeping the same telephone number through both switches.

Not a moving home problem but we did have a problem when moving from BT to Sky. The broadband didn't work. Sky said that this was caused by a line test that they had performed. The only solution was to cancel the broadband (which took 5 days then to place a new order which meant that we were without broadband for two weeks.

It appears that Sky is not getting any better at handling these type of problems.