What's Sky customer service like these days?

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Virgin Media are starting to phase out the TiVo software in favour of the (IMO) inferior Horizon software. This, combined with their now abysmal customer service, has made them impossible to do business with. When my contract ends, I intend to go back to satellite after over 20 years, but I don't want to jump out of the frying pan into the fire.

What's Sky customer service like? Are there customer service centres in the UK (if not, can they speak English to a competent level)?

Is it easy to get a response for them? Is there anything I should be aware of before signing up to Sky Q?

I ask because, unfortunately, it's now the norm for letters and emails to Virgin Media to be ignored, live chat is now a useless bot and people report being kept on the phone for up to an hour and a half before being cut off or staff putting the phone down on them!

Despite multiple complaints on Twitter, Trust Pilot and other Review sites, facebook and even their own community forum, nothing is being done to address this.

My STB HDD recently died and it took nearly a month to get someone to send me a new one!!!

Many thanks.
 

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I haven't picked up the phone to Sky in years. Most communication is done either via chat or emails, which I find a vast improvement. A lot of stuff is self service these days as well.

Whenever I lived in Telewest/Vermin area, I also found their CS useless and have vowed to never use them again.
 
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I haven't picked up the phone to Sky in years. Most communication is done either via chat or emails, which I find a vast improvement. A lot of stuff is self service these days as well.

Whenever I lived in Telewest/Vermin area, I also found their CS useless and have vowed to never use them again.
Thanks, one good thing about chat/emails is that there is a record of what was said. In the days when Virgin Media actually picked up the phone and you spoke to someone who could speak & understand English, one of the persistent problems was that you were often promised the Earth. Then, when it didn't materialise and you called back you were made out to be a liar with the standard line of "we have no record of that"!

Complaints about the poor command of English by the staff at their offshore call centres are met by suggestions of racism!

NTL often took ages to pick up the phone, but honestly Virgin Media have got much, much worse in the past two years or so. They are now so dysfunctional that it's impossible to conduct business with them.
 

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Thanks, one good thing about chat/emails is that there is a record of what was said. In the days when Virgin Media actually picked up the phone and you spoke to someone who could speak & understand English, one of the persistent problems was that you were often promised the Earth. Then, when it didn't materialise and you called back you were made out to be a liar with the standard line of "we have no record of that"!

Complaints about the poor command of English by the staff at their offshore call centres are met by suggestions of racism!

NTL often took ages to pick up the phone, but honestly Virgin Media have got much, much worse in the past two years or so. They are now so dysfunctional that it's impossible to conduct business with them.

Spoke to them late on a Sunday evening a while back over an account issue which could not be sorted self servive, Indian lady, excellent english sorted the problem in minutes..
 

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Thanks, one good thing about chat/emails is that there is a record of what was said. In the days when Virgin Media actually picked up the phone and you spoke to someone who could speak & understand English, one of the persistent problems was that you were often promised the Earth. Then, when it didn't materialise and you called back you were made out to be a liar with the standard line of "we have no record of that"!
I think you might be confusing VM with BT
 
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Spoke to them late on a Sunday evening a while back over an account issue which could not be sorted self servive, Indian lady, excellent english sorted the problem in minutes..
Sounds like you were lucky then. I was recently left without TV for nearly a month because of these idiots.
 

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Sounds like you were lucky then. I was recently left without TV for nearly a month because of these idiots.
I was talking about Sky and not Virgin..
 
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I was talking about Sky and not Virgin..
Ahh, ok ☺ So do Sky use these offshore call centres too, but the staff are much better, or was she in the UK and happened to be Indian?
 

ozumo

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For Sky anything apart from sales and retentions goes to offshore call centres in my experience. The last offshore person I talked to spoke good English but struggled with the issue I had and refused point blank to accept anything other than what was on his screen was correct. Would the average British call centre employee have been any better? Probably not. Always record your calls with any customer services.
 

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For Sky anything apart from sales and retentions goes to offshore call centres in my experience. The last offshore person I talked to spoke good English but struggled with the issue I had and refused point blank to accept anything other than what was on his screen was correct. Would the average British call centre employee have been any better? Probably not. Always record your calls with any customer services.
Yep, swings and roundabouts, depends who you get on the end of the phone...
 

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Personally, if I never speak to them again it will be too soon! :lol::lol::lol:
 

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Virgin have been very good lately. I rang them 6 months ago saying I was unable to afford to pay their price increase. The lady told me she would do her best to reduce the bill because we have been on cable since the Nynex days. Managed to get £15 pm off. A few weeks ago an old Virgin box kept shutting down. New V6 box in the post arriving 2 days later.
 
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Try ringing them today and see what happens...
 

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I find them OK but maybe you upset them at some time.
 

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For broadband VM & for Tv sky is the best both have same level of customers services it’s all depend on the problem you faced and person on the other side of the call.
 
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Are you saying that you think that Virgin Media treat certain customers less favourably?! In any case, this wouldn't account for the amount of people complaining about their atrocious customer service that's been deteriorating for the past two years or so, to the point of it now being impossible to do business with them.

Don't just take my word for it, look on Twitter, facebook, the review sites and their own community forum. Heck, there's now even a Facebook group dedicated to the problem!
 

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All I said virgin and sky customer services are the same both companies treat all the customers same way it’s all depend the problem faced and person helping to sort it out on the other end.
but the realty is most of us can not live without them and they know this and thus take advantage.
 
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Sorry, I was replying go TJExcalibur, for some reason the quote didn't work!

I broadly agree with you though, but Virgin Media is now impossible to contact for a good, bad or indifferent service experience- they've made sure of that.

This last summer an elderly neighbour had trouble with his broadband and was getting nowhere, so I gave him the email of the VM CEO as they have helped me in the past.

They didn't reply for over a month, so he sent another couple of emails to chase them up. He then received a letter from them (which he showed to me) that basically said don't email us again and if you do, we will consider cutting off all your services!!! I kid you not. I asked what he was going to do and he said he'd save them the bother and cancel his services after over 20 years and go somewhere else (which he has done).

I then knew that it was time to move on and, with the news that TiVo was being dropped in favour of inferior software, i'm now looking at other options. I'm thinking of moving to Sky, but don't want to be tied into a contract if they are just as bad as Virgin Media. Difficult, but possible :D
 

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All I said virgin and sky customer services are the same both companies treat all the customers same way it’s all depend the problem faced and person helping to sort it out on the other end.
but the realty is most of us can not live without them and they know this and thus take advantage.
I believe they treat you better, regardless of the supplier if you have a reasonable attitude. No one wants to go to work and get stressed out with attitude customers. We should not have to wait for ages on hold, for an engineer to visit or sort out the bill. Business is extremely competitive and no one wants to pay for instant service. My doctors surgery have removed several "I demand patients" for being awkward during their increased workload.
 
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