Crappy Customer Service

You get into bed with the devil and you know you are going to get screwed -- and not necessarily in a good way. Case in point, I decided to go with Sky instead for Virgin for cable services since they have more channels with American programming. This was ordered and installed at the end of October. At the time, I choose to stick with the regular free box instead of paying £100 for a Sky+ Box. Mainly because the major selling feature -- being able to record programs to watch later didn't really appeal to me.

Then around mid November, I start seeing advertisements indicating that new customers would get a free Sky+ Box. I decide to give customer service a call to see if I could get one since I had only missed out by a few weeks. Not because I suddenly wanted to start recording programs or pausing live TV, more so because the remote that came with the standard box has limited features. For example, if I want to bounce back and forth between BBC2 (102) and Fox News (510), I have to keep remembering the numbers. There is no feature that allows me to easily switch back and forth. Apparently, these are on the Sky+ Box. F8ucking outrageous if you ask me.

Thus, the call to customer service where I was basically told by both a customer service representative and manager to go f8uck off in a nice way. The offer was only good for new customers and I was not a new customer. This just enraged me!

Why? Well, I not only have cable, but I also have broadband and phone services. More importantly, while I understand that I need to pay more for various channel packages, I think it is outrageous to force customers to buy pricey equipment that they can only use if they sign up for your services. Services I might add, that are not exactly cheap.

So what are my options? Well first step is to blog about the madness. Next step is to write a letter to management. Third and perhaps the most important one is to seriously consider switching to another provider after my 12 month contracts ends because companies like Sky are only interested in screwing you out of your money instead of delivering good products and excellent customer service.