Avoid Sky broadband like the plague! (Sky by Broadband)

Member Name: fuzzypeg

Product:	Sky by Broadband
Date:	29/04/07 (5134 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good when it's finally connected

Disadvantages: Too many

Where do I start? First, I had a chat with a Sky promotion assistant in our town centre as I'd heard bad things about Sky and wanted convincing it was OK. He admitted there had been problems at first, but they'd been resolved. He assured me I would only be offline during the change over for a maximum of 3 hours. I stupidly went ahead. I started to set up the router the evening before I went live. I then realised there was no set up disc. I phoned Sky and they told me it was the 3rd time they'd had that complaint the same day. I was told I would receive one in 5 days. It finally arrived, I set everything up carefully following the instructions attempted to connect to the internet - nothing, just a message 'internet explorer cannot open this page'. Another (expensive) phone call to Sky. That followed about 45 minutes of click this, go into that, try this,try that, eventually I said I'd had enough and wanted an engineer to come and sort it out. I was told the next available engineer would take almost 2 weeks. I had no choice but to wait. The engineer came, spent about 5 minutes fiddling about with the computer (doing all the things I'd previously done) then he phoned Sky and wrote down a number. He told me to ring the number and they would sort it out, he then left! I was fuming, I should've told him he wasn't leaving until HE'D sorted it out.

I phoned Sky again, this time I was told that my phone line wouldn't support the MAX package and the set up disc automatically installs it. I was aware that I was too far away from the exchange and my line could only support 3 meg, Sky had informed me of this when I'd originally placed my order and I'd said it was fine, I wanted the MAX so I could have unlimited use. So they were aware of it. The lady I was talking to made some changes and Bingo, I was finally connected! But there's more ---

I went to log into the Sky homepage to set up some email addresses, but it didn't accept my password. I had been told that my internet password was the same as my Sky account one. Yet another phone call to Sky. I was told that my internet password had been sent by post. It had not. I explained that I'd been told it was the same as my Sky account and she said no, it was separate. She said a new one would be sent in the post, I'm still waiting. The internet connection though was fine and I could surf again.

When my husband came home from work, he turned his laptop on and clicked the internet button. It didn't connect, it also lost the connection on my computer! Another phone call to Sky. After half an hour of click this, type that etc., he was asked to plug the ethernet cable straight into his laptop. It then connected, but there was still no connection on my computer. The next day, my husband tried a different router and there was a connection to both computers. We couldn't log in though, as we hadn't been sent a password. Obviously, the Sky router was no good. Another phone call to Sky. I asked for a new router to be sent. My request was initially ignored and was followed by more click this, try that for half an hour. Finally the connection was made again on my computer, but now not on the laptop. Eventually I was told that they would send a new router. However, when we get the password for Sky, we are going to use the other router. We had no internet connection for 3 weeks. There may be more problems yet, time will tell.

Summary: Only change to Sky if you're prepared for hassle and can afford the expensive phone calls to them

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