Sky’s the limit
A listener to the Ray Darcy show got in touch with me last week after being given a right run-around by Sky Television. He moved house at the end of 2005 and at the end of November of that year his wife sent a disconnection request to Sky. It was acknowledged and Sky said the account would be terminated on the 30th December 2005. The couple opened a new account in his name, with a different bank account number and they thought no more about it.
Until December 2007 when he noticed payments coming out of his account. He immediately contacted the company and it stopped the payments. Ever since he has been trying the money taken from him in error refunded. He has sent numerous letters and emails to no avail. Most recently he sent an email to customer relations in August which was ignored and a fax in September which earned him a terse response in which Sky said “we are unable to make a refund in relation to this”. There was no further explanation.
So, Sky effectively stole (or at least took without asking) over a thousand euro from an entirely blameless customer, ignored multiple requests pleading with them to resolve the problem and said they would not give him a refund without saying why.
Now normally when companies treat customers this badly, they adopt a defensive pose that can take a number of forms. The most common is the ‘oh we needed to be told in writing’ defence - but Sky could not use this line because it had been informed in writing.
The ‘we weren’t given enough notice’ line would not have worked either as it was given plenty of notice. And the ‘Oh you needed to get confirmation in writing from us that the contract had been terminated’ defence would have let Sky down because the couple had written confirmation that the contract was to be terminated.
So, with all the possible excuses used up, Sky just ignored their customer and refused to refund him.
I contacted the company last Wednesday and on Friday evening I got a statement. It said. “Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Following an internal investigation, we have established that an error in our systems resulted in a failure to cancel our listener’s account.” It went on to say it had contacted our listener and agreed to refund him the full amount owed – over €1500 - and it apologised for the failure in its systems which caused these problems. It has also given him free Sky Television for the next 12 months and the direct line telephone number of one of its most senior Irish staff so if any other problems occur he will be able to get them resolved. I don’t think that they could really have done any more short of coming round to his house and pushing the buttons on his remote control when he wanted the channels changed. So the story ends well. But that is not to absolve the company of the disgraceful way it treated this listener.
11:46 am
perhaps it’s time that companies started getting hit with punitive damages as well making refunds and token gestures. Having worked for a telephone company, I know that they didn’t deliberately inconvenience customers but neither did they always put sufficient resources in to preventing or resolving problems. Obviously this customer could have gone to court and gotten some damages and compo but this is too much too ask of the average punter. The relevant regulators need to be far more proactive in levying meaningful punishments on companies in order to encourage good practise from the start
Comment by Tom Ennis