Sky Talk Contract Breach?

[silentmovieman]

I switched to Sky from Virgin in December 2014 after having nothing but problems with my tv signal for the best part of the year (i switched tv, broadband and telephone).

 

Almost immediately i was getting crackiling down the telephone line and so I contacted Sky who after running tests over the phone arranged for an Openrach engineer to visit my house and see what the problem was.

 

Long story short I have now had six different engineers out all of whom have agreed that there is no problem with the reception in my house and all of whom have then gone to the exchange and/or the cab and supposedly fixed the problem. Lo and behold I am still having the same issue.

 

Now I am of course going to contact Sky again but dont really see much point in having another engineer out to just do the same thing again. With this in mind could I argue that Sky are not fulfilling their end of the contract that I have with them as they are clearly not providing the service that I am paying for?

 

Furthermore could I request that they cancel my contract with no penalty due to the fact that they have failed to provide the service as promised?

[MaxxPower]

One thing to keep in mind is that you'll likely have the same issue from any other provider as well since they'll all use the same line and all will have to call an Openreach engineer to attempt to fix the problem.

You should certainly call up and complain to see if you can maybe get some discount applied, or line rental/talk package costs waived until the issue is resolved, but getting the contract cancelled and switching to another provider likely wont achieve anything in the long run for getting the issue itself fixed.

[silentmovieman]

I was considering going back to birgin for the phone as i never had any problems with the service down their fibre optic cables it was just the tv service that was bad.

[silentmovieman]

Contacted Sky today and got them to agree to waive any cancellation and termination fees so now all i need to do is figure out the best provider to go to, I'm guessing itll have to be Virgin as theyre the only ones offering cable phone lines

[silentmovieman]

According to BT they would not use the same connections as other providers who use BT lines such as Sky and therefore I may not have the same problems. Does this sound right?

[MaxxPower]

BT are saying they wouldn't use the same connections as other providers who use BT Lines? So....what are BT using then?

[silentmovieman]

Theyre going to install a brand new line so hopefully that will fix the issue. My understanding is that each company have different connections at the exchange

[silentmovieman]

So i now have my bt phone and bb set up and have no issues which is great.

 

However in a loosely related issue I wonder if you can advise on the following -

 

Am I able to downgrade my Sky tv package? I have been with Sky for 4 months now and am on the family bundle with multiroom. I have spoken to Sky via their online chat and they tell me that I am unable to reduce my tv package for the first year. Other forums however seem to indicate that I should be able to downgrade my package providing I give 31 days notice of doing so.

 

Which of these is right?

[MaxxPower]

Technically both. You can't downgrade your package during your minimum contract term. Once the minimum term is up however, you can downgrade the package with 31 days notice.