We got Sky talk almost 2 years ago and always found it quite reasonable. We got the line rental free for the first 6 months and after that it was £11 a month. Now to be fair this is very reasonable. We even got free evening and weekend calls to uk landlines. When we originally signed up for this service we were very happy with it as it saved us quite a bit of money when switching from BT.

We even switched our broadband over from BT to sky as well as having our TV with them. Everything was fine until October of 2009 when everything went pear shaped and when Sky's customer service or lack thereof came to the fore.

It was mid October and we were unaware of any problem with our telephone service. People including Friends, Family and Colleagues had been trying to get a hold of us for a few different days. They were ringing our landline number and getting a dead tone as if the number had been disconnected. I myself only discovered this when dialling home from work late one evening. I actually tried 3 times as I though I must be dialling the number wrong. On each occasion I too was getting the dead tone.

Later that evening when I arrived home I went straight to the phone and lifted it. It was live and everything seemed fine from that end. I then tried ringing the house using my mobile to see if it would ring in the house even though I was getting a dead tone on my Mobile. Again nothing. I then tried ringing my mobile from the house phone - this worked!, I rang my parents house and was able to carry out conversation, I asked them to ring me back on the landline to test it but again it wouldn't work.

At this point I contacted Sky for the first time, getting through to one of their Indian call centres, they proceeded to take me through a process to testing the phone, removing the cable & replacing it, then opening the connection box placing the cable in a different port. Then trying a different phone in the box. None of this worked so they escalated the call.

The next evening Sky had still not got back to me and my phone was still not working so I rang for an update. I had to explain my problem again only now it had become worse because we were no longer able to dial out from the house phone. No matter what number we dialled it told us the number we were dialling was not recognised! the problem had gotten worse!. This time I had to ring Sky from my mobile which cost me a bomb ringing their "08" number. I waited for 15 minutes for my call to be picked up, at which time I informed the advisor that I wanted him to ring me back as I had wasted enough of my credit. He said he would firstly try the landline and if he could not get through he would try the mobile. A few minutes later I received his call on my Mobile stating that he could not get through to the house number. He requested I perform the same checks I had done the previous night with the other consultant. I informed him of this fact but did the tests again anyway. Still the problem persisted so he escalated the call to another team and put me through to them. I then had to inform the third advisor of the problem as there were no notes on my account. He stated he would get back to me.

Day 3 and I still had heard nothing back, I rang again and spoke to a girl making sure I git her full name. I complained about the poor service and the fact that I had now been without a phone for 3 days. I also had to go through the process of explaining the whole fault again. She spoke to her manager who contacted the relevant team advising them to contact me ASAP. The female advisor would also take responsibility for the call and check back with me on progress, Day 4 PM and the problem remained and I still had no contact from the technical department. Over the next 2 weeks I received intermittent calls from different engineers, each one of them asked me to explain the problem to a point were I finally cracked and said "excuse me but I have actually told 50 of you people what the problem is and am sick of explaining it, have you not got notes explaining the problem in front of you".

Contact again became scarce and I again had to chase this myself, repeatedly having to have the same conversation ala ground hog day, explain gin the problem until my throat was sore. About 4 weeks into the problem I again rang and was told that Sky were sending a BT engineer to the exchange to investigate the problem. Only took 4 weeks, not bad eh? Well I'm not finished yet. It transpired that Sky had been switching my service to there new network and there had been problems with the transfer. The problem was slightly resolved in that we were once again getting dial tone and could ring people, also mobile numbers and Sky themselves could ring us to the landline, however our parents who were on BT landlines were still getting a dead tone when ringing us, as I did when ringing from work. I had to provide Sky with the numbers of the people who were ringing us as Sky then insisted that it was our parents phones and not ours that was the problem! - Don't think so mate.

Sky then after another week said that they were getting another engineer out on a certain day and asked would people be available at the lines that were unable to reach us. In other words we had to ask our parents to stay home on the off chance that sky would ring them and ask them to try ringing our numbers to try and trace the fault. Our phone did not work correctly for over 2 months when we finally thought it was resolved.

Until one day in early January I tried to check our voicemail service and was told we didn't have that service. This too was reported as a fault and I again had to chase it for weeks to no avail. Eventually it started working in late February. I only knew this because I kept testing it myself, Sky never contacted me to test it, or check, or even inform me that it had been fixed. I only found out it had by checking for myself. So Sky's service is less than exemplary.

By this time we had become more than fed up with Sky as a whole as out Sky plus box had wiped all recorded programming for the umpteenth time. I tried to complain but Sky do not have a complaint department you can speak to over the telephone. They have 15 different departments you can speak to all of who's numbers are on the website but no complaints or customer care team. I tried to submit a complaint online but the forms there were all pre populated drop down boxes which didn't allow you free text to type your problems or vent!. Only if you picked a particular combination of 5 different options would a free text format appear. Sky apparently don't want to make it easy for you to complain. I submitted my online complaint in late December along with a written letter. As yet I have not received a response and I have complained to the regulator.

Deciding enough was enough we are now switching to Virgin, I rang sky to cancel my service and at this point the adviser decided to look into the problems, Sorry love 4 months too late your company have had your chance and failed miserably. She advised me that my last bill would be £85 covering me up to the 26th March. I don't think so mate, I'm switching to Virgin form March 1st. I'm not paying you to the 26th for a service I'm not using, I mean If you had dinner in a restaurant last week and paid your bill, and then decided to go to the restaurant next door the following week would you go into the first restaurant and say "I'm actually eating next door tonight but here's £50 anyway as I ate in here last time I ate out" No you wouldn't so why would I pay SKY for a service I'm getting with another provider?.

To summarise Sky are useless, there service is useless, as is the customer care. We would in fact still be with them only for the quality and response time of the service we received. All Sky's own fault. They refunded the cost of mobile calls to them and also the charges for the days we did not have the service. But it took 4 months from start to finish for the telephone to work as it should. Its not a complicated piece of equipment - it was invented over 100 years ago so how is it that a company like Sky A billion Dollar company owned by one of the richest men in the world, can't run it correctly or provide satisfactory customer service and care?. Why do they have umteen departments you can contact but no telephone complaints service? I mean you can speak to Sky Broadband, Sky Talk, Sky TV, Home Move Teamm Upgrading, Reinstating sky, Joining Sky, Sky Player, Sky Mobile, Sky Box Office, Sky Protect, Program Queries, Introduce a friend. The fact is they don't care sbout the customer in the way they should, they just care about getting money off you in every way imaginable.