Wifi woes: ‘I’m in a nightmare situation with Sky’

“I’m currently in a nightmare situation with Sky and I’m really hoping your expertise can help remedy the situation,” starts a mail from a reader called Colette.

“It began mid-December when I called Sky to cancel my boxset package. The Sky customer service person asked would I be interested in their new high speed fibre broadband service. She explained that our current speed is 7 MB per second, and that usually speeds increased to 170 [MB] but the minimal speed we are guaranteed to receive is 100 [MB]. She confirmed fibre was available in my area.”

Our reader says she was told the cost was approximately €110, so she bought the service that day.

“Due to weather conditions the installation was rescheduled three times, I didn’t mind this. Sky phoned on January 14th confirming the installation would take place the following day. The engineers arrived at 2pm on January 15th.

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“They setup the fibre optic junction box in the garage together with the modem and tested that it worked. Wifi signal in the house is now one bar and they left the land line disconnected. The engineers said that they were contractually not allowed to connect [a particular cable] to the house even though they verified that it was there. They said that Sky would have to have their own engineer come to finish the job. This was the first time we became aware that Sky had subcontracted the job to a third party.”

Her husband called Sky the next day and was on the phone for over an hour. “Sky said they had never heard of an issue like this before and that the subcontractors should have completed the job. We are now in stuck in a conflict situation between Sky and the third party they subcontracted the job to. We have completed the relevant forms and are following Sky’s complaints process however no one from Sky is contacting us. Sky have said per their records we have high speed broadband and our land line is working. We have phoned Sky several times, we have been assured supervisors/engineers will contact us however to date they have not.”

She says the broadband speed is now less than 1 MB per second and the modem is in the garage 25ft away and they no longer have a landline. “My husband works from home and he uses conference calls etc, so his work is hugely impacted . . . If you can help is any way to resolve this nightmare situation we would be hugely grateful.”

We got in touch with Sky. To be fair to the company, the case does sound hideously complicated – even more complex than our reader’s initial communication may suggest and there were all sorts of moving parts involving more than one company as well as other elements.

“This particular case was a complex one in so far as the connection point the customer wanted to route to was not in their home but was instead in their garage, 25ft away from the premises,” a Sky spokeswoman said. “In this instance, the engineers who attended the site to install the fibre to the home did not follow the correct protocol which resulted in a less than satisfactory customer experience. We have apologised to the customer for the poor experience they received and have done everything in our power to rectify the situation. We are already in the process of taking all necessary steps with our partners to ensure this does not happen again.”