Cancelling Sky

The story so far...Sky decides to charge £5 a month for its previously free base broadband. It's a very slow, capped service, so we call Sky and ask for a MAC. The customer services operator decides to cancel the broadband instead. When asked to transfer the call to a manager he hangs up. Now we'll have to wait until Sky remove their service before any new provider can get onto our line. Under regulator OFCOM's rules Sky must provide a MAC to all customers who ask.

After a brief discussion about this fiasco my partner decides dealing with Sky's off-shore call centre is a hassle she can live without, so decides to cancel her entire subscription.

I telephone and ask about the status of the broadband.

'Cancelled' is Barry's reply. This time I'm speaking to a UK based customer services operator. 'Can you provide a MAC?'
'Unfortunately no, not if the cancellation process has started'.
In that case can you cancel our entire contract.
'I'll have to transfer your call to another department'.

I've researched this scenario and I know I'll be put through to 'customer retentions'. It's their job to dissuade customers from leaving. Call handlers have set options they can offer, including upgraded packages and credits. We plan to cancel whatever they offer, but I'm interested to see what Sky think their mistake - a breach of the OFCOM rules - is worth.

Laura says she'll see what she can do to help. She announces that she can order a MAC and we'll have it in 72 hours, she gives me a case reference. She apologises for the errors made yesterday and says my call appears to have been handled by an 'outsourced' agent. She'll report this because, yes, it is a breach of the Ofcom code. Its an isolated incident, all staff know the procedure.

'Er, except Barry doesn't. I just spoke to him and he said nothing could be done to rectify the error. But you've just done it.'
'I'm sorry about that, but we'd like to make amends to you. I see you have the standard box and family pack.'

In December Sky was offering new customers a free Sky+ box, free installation and £50 in M&S vouchers to join. So I calculate it costs Sky almost £200 to win a new subscriber.

Laura continued 'How about Sky+?'

Sky also offers free or reduced cost Sky+ boxes to people who threaten to leave. Accepting their offer usually ties you into a new 12 month minimum term contract.

'We can't get Sky+ here, we share a dish.'
'Oh. Do you have a BT telephone line?'

I've also read Sky is giving free line rental worth £10 a month to some customers who agree to switch their phone service to Sky.

'We don't want to buy any more services from Sky after our experience with your call centre yesterday and today I'm afraid.'
'Well to make amends I can credit your account with £10.'
'Did you say £10?'
'Yes'

Sky has broken OFCOM's rules. Their apology is worth a tenner.

'We'd like to cancel please.'
'I might be able to do a bit better, what would you like?'
'You'll have to do a lot better than £10. Six months free subscription might make amends.'
'I can't do that, but I can credit your account £30.'
'In which case will you cancel our subscription please.'

By now I've been on the phone to Sky trying to cancel for 33 minutes. By the time Laura has verified all this again with my partner (the account holder) we've spent 44 minutes on the phone to Sky. At last its over. We've given 30 days notice. Bye Bye Sky. Hooray no more irritating calls to off-shore call centres and poorly trained staff who don't know what they're talking about.

When I posted last week about Sky remotely reprogramming our set-top box to switch off, cancelling Sky didn't even occur to us. But after a 23% price increase, 40 minutes to a call centre in India and 2 terminated calls we just couldn't take any more. Funny thing is we used to pay £21.50 a month to be treated like this.

Let's hope that MAC comes through...

Price Rises Cost Customer Loyalty

Sky TV - have they picked the wrong time to test customer loyalty?

As the news about the economy gets worse, companies are struggling to maintain customer spending. Some of the big boys act as though they hope to keep our business how ever much they test our loyalty.

Three examples of companies testing our loyalty this week.

They all lost...

British Airways has cancelled my partner's Silver Executive Club membership. For the first time since 2002 she can no longer use the BA lounge during her weekly business flights. Last year she switched to flying BMI during the terminal 5 fiasco when many domestic BA flights were cancelled, so she didn't earn sufficient loyalty points. BA has saved the cost of providing free coffee and newspapers while she waits to board, but lost her loyalty and their share of an annual four figure sum spent on business travel because now she'll prefer to fly BMI - where she can use the Silver lounge.

Norwich Union upped our annual home insurance quotes by a few more pounds this month and lost both our polices. My quote from Churchill is over £120 less, my partner's £80 lower. We're £200 better off, Norwich Union has lost £550 worth of business because it made the mistake of believing we'd keep stumping up for their annual price hikes. When my partner called to cancel NU immediately offered a 15% reduction. If they could do that when the business was heading out the door why didn't they hold the price increase when they quoted - which may have saved a customer?

Sky Television. Just over a year ago Sky feared its customers might jump to a rival TV and Broadband Phone package so it decided to give existing customers their basic broadband package free. This year it has decided to start charging £5 a month. Customers can avoid the price increase if they opt to take Sky Talk. We don't want to buy phone calls from sky - or pay to use 1471. To get this and other BT type services free we need to switch to Sky telephone line rental. Dealing with Sky is troublesome enough, without giving them more of our money.

So we decide to switch my partner's Sky basic broadband to o2. It's faster, gives unlimited downloads, free wireless router, no connection fee, free UK based customer service and its only £2.34 a month more than Sky's new charge (£7.34 to O2 customers). Even better sign up via a cashback site like Topcashback and you get paid £25 to buy which is effectively 3 months free.

Phoning Sky for a MAC - the code you need to transfer the line from one broadband supplier to another is less easy. Sky seems to have moved some of its call handling off-shore. After 22 minutes the call is put through to an officious customer services representative who decides to cancel the broadband rather than issue a MAC. When asked why he has done this he becomes defensive, and then quite hostile. When I ask him to transfer my call he terminates it. Again we call back and then after 20 more minutes on hold the call is terminated.

My partner and I have a quick chat about how much we hate phoning Sky. Then we hit on an idea. What if we only ever have to phone Sky once more? Let's cancel the subscription. How good would that feel? This would not have crossed our mind if Sky hadn't decided to start charging £60 a year (12 x £5) for its slow, rubbish broadband, had spent some more money training its staff and decided not to outsource its call centre. Sky is going to discover the true cost of these three cost-cutting actions - because they're about to lose £258 of existing annual subscriptions and £60 of future broadband fees.

Norwich Union loss = £550

Sky loss = £318.

Savings to annual budget.
Sky £318 (less o2 broadband £63.56 after cashback) = £254.44
Norwich Union £550 (less Churchill policies £335) = £215.00

Total saving = £469.44

Of course wherever there are losers there are winners. BMI for its punctuality, o2 Broadband for its UK call centres, uncapped service and customer discount and Churchill Insurance for its introductory discounts and market leading rates.

When companies test our loyalty make sure to add up the real cost.

Sky TV Turns Subscribers Green

Sky TV controls it's subscribers remotely

I'm reading a book called 'Nudge' at the moment, which describes how citizens can be 'nudged' rather than instructed or legislated over to make the right choices and actions.

Coincidentally I simultaneously encountered the theory in action this week. The Sky TV set-top box keeps turning itself off. It's annoying, it's an older box and it takes a while to reboot and pick up the listings and when it's default position is 'off' it doesn't send a signal to the second room it's linked to.

My partner thinks the Sky box may be broken. I google 'Sky box keeps switching off' and discover we are not alone in our problem.

According to numerous posts all over various forums on the web (including digitalspy) every one's Sky box has developed a mind of its own.

Sky, it seems, has automatically downloaded a software update onto its subscribers' equipment to turn off their receivers when not in use in a bid to save electricity and boost the company's green credentials. Customers are puzzled because they haven't been told.

Subscribers can over-ride the 'auto-standby' feature by going into the settings menu and selecting option 5 - as we've now done.

There is much debate online about how much electricity Sky's action is really saving and how green it really makes Sky TV.

Some say the box on standby consumers 0.1 amps of electricity per hour. Multiply by 9m subscribers and you save enough electricity to power 57,000 homes.

Others moan that Sky should have given them the option to select the auto-off option. Green advocates ask how many subscribers would have enabled such a feature.

This is what the Nudge book is all about. Should our boxes be automatically turned off without our co-operation - in a Big Brother kind of way - or should we be nudged into action in a more self selecting way? Perhaps if we'd been 'nudged' into the benefit we would have complied, rather than simply disabling the annoying feature once we'd worked it out.

Data protection - is it working?

My partner's 87 year old mother was distressed by more than a dozen 'silent' telephone calls yesterday.

We signed her up for the Telephone Preference Service (TPS) a couple of years ago so that she wouldn't receive nuisance marketing calls (So called 'silent' calls are when the sales company's computerised switchboard dials your number but they don't have any free salespeople to pick up the call - so the computer keeps dialling you until they do).

We asked her to dial 1471 and write down the number the calls were coming from. I put the number 08716641456 into google ('I didn't know you could do that!' exclaims my partner). Someone has helpfully listed it as belonging to Satellite Direct UK. I'd heard of these people recently on BBC's Watchdog. A quick trip to the BBC's website. Satellite Direct has been harassing Sky Television subscribers posing as Sky and trying to sell insurance for the dish and set-top box. Sky brought a high court action against them last year, but it seems they continue to operate.

But surely Sky Customers who are registered with the Telephone Preference Service should be protected from these unsolicited nuisance calls? In theory yes, but apparently not. The Information Commissioner has reminded Satellite Direct to observe their responsibilities under the Data Protection Act (and respect the TPS list of registered people who don't want to receive marketing calls) but it continues to ignore him. The Data Protection legislation sounds like a good idea - but is it working?

Do bosses of companies who fail to comply with The Law face prosecution and imprisonment? No. But surely they face huge fines for breaches of Data Protection Law? Nope. So how much can they be fined? Nothing, zero, zilch. All the Information Commissioner can do is remind them of their obligations under the Act.

An 87 year old lady is at home alone scared to answer her own phone which rings incessantly. It could be her daughter checking to see if she's OK - spreading more alarm when the phone goes unanswered. Meanwhile Satellite Direct UK lines its pockets.

Who is this Data Protection legislation protecting?