Terrible customer service

[jessi2024]

I am experiencing an interruption in my broadband service, and the resolution timeframe is set for 5 working days. This outage is causing significant inconvenience to my family, as we are left without internet and television. The situation is particularly challenging for me, as I rely on the internet for working from home, and my son requires it for his studies.

During my call to customer service, I encountered rudeness from a lady or girl who asserted that Sky Broadband is intended solely for domestic use, not for work purposes. I find this behavior unacceptable. I'm puzzled about the definition of "domestic use" – does it imply that I'm not allowed to use it for working or studying? If so, I'm left questioning the fundamental purpose of having internet access at home. 

[TimmyBGood]

@jessi2024 

The point is usually that working or studying from home doesn't change the fundamental nature of domestic broadband, which is that it has no particular service level guarantee, no fail-over and no consequential compensation for discontinuity, together with an Openreach target time to fix of two working days with no additional priority for longer outage.

Business-grade connectivity, which can come with some or all of the above, is considerably more expensive.  You can, of course, choose to use domestic broadband for work purposes, but you can't claim that as an argument for getting priority attention.

[Daniel0210]

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@jessi2024 wrote:

I am experiencing an interruption in my broadband service, and the resolution timeframe is set for 5 working days.

Openreach have a target fix time of two working days. There is no quicker response for customers wfh. 

a lady or girl who asserted that Sky Broadband is intended solely for domestic use, not for work purposes. I find this behavior unacceptable. I'm puzzled about the definition of "domestic use" – does it imply that I'm not allowed to use it for working or studying? If so, I'm left questioning the fundamental purpose of having internet access at home. 

Perhaps the word solely was misused but basically she was correct. Sky Broadband is a domestic service. If you require quicker fix times you need to investigate business based packages which will cost significantly more. 

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[jessi2024]

They target to fix it longer than 2 working days. is it acceptable? Because it is domestic broadband, so it takes nearly a week to fix the issue??

[Daniel0210]

@jessi2024 

We, and presumably you don't know what the fault is or where it is. 

The below link explains the Ofcom agreed auto compensation scheme which Sky operates for when there is a TOTAL loss of Sky Broadband or Sky Talk.
https://www.sky.com/help/articles/auto-compensation

If you have a total loss of service and it isn’t fixed after two full WORKING days from when you first report the fault to Sky, you will become eligible for it. It’s applied 30 days after the fault has been repaired and will come in the form of a credit appearing on your Sky account.

[jessi2024]

I should have referred to Sky Ireland in the first instance. They have identified the technical issue and will need to send someone to my property to fix it. Two working days are acceptable. However, the earliest appointment they promised is more than 6 days from this morning, so no internet for me in the next 6 days, which is extremely frustrating.

They also talk about compensation, but that's what I'm not interested in at the moment. 

[TimmyBGood]

@jessi2024 

The network maintainer in RoI (Open EIR) has basically (and not entirely surprisingly) the same target times as Openreach in the UK, as in a target of two working days but no additional priority in the case of longer outage.  Realistically ISPs can't buy anything better from them while keeping subscriptions at a level which households will pay.

[jessi2024]

So as I understand now as we are at a level what household will pay we would expect the outage would last more than 2 working days or even longer (e.g, weeks )

[TimmyBGood]

@jessi2024 

Possibly, yes: domestic broadband just doesn't have any guarantees, only targets.  I don't know the figure for RoI, but in the UK Openreach reports to Ofcom that they meet their two working day target for 85% of faults: some, inevitably, take much longer to resolve.

As an illustration, the business broadband I have at work, which comes with a seven day a week twelve hour maximum response time 'guarantee', runs at £180 a month.

[jessi2024]

So in case of taking weeks or even a month, does the household customer have a right to cancel the service without paying an early termination charge? I believe no customer are happy with an outage lasting for weeks.

[TimmyBGood]

@jessi2024 

Typically not, because if you're waiting for the monopoly national system maintainer to fix the issue then any other ISP using the same national network would have exactly the same problem and couldn't provide service at the address.

Like I said, the great majority of faults are resolved within the target time, some take rather longer and a small percentage considerably longer: for example where digging is required.

[Kelsingra]

Hey @jessi2024 

I am really sorry to hear that you had a bad experience with the Sky customer support. If you would like to make a complaint about it, here are all the channels that you can use to do it:

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/how-to-make-a-complaint-roi

I hope your Internet is going to get fixed soon!

Thanks,

[jamesn123]

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@jessi2024 wrote:

So in case of taking weeks or even a month, does the household customer have a right to cancel the service without paying an early termination charge? I believe no customer are happy with an outage lasting for weeks.

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You can't just cancel during a fault but you'd be entitled to compensation in line with the scheme.

https://www.sky.com/help/articles/auto-compensation

The information you have been given is correct.

- Domestic connections have a target fix time of 2 working days but this is a target not a guarantee 

- Your connection is for domestic uses only this would include studying but does not really include someone who relies on it for working from home 5 days a week. If you do not have the option of going into an office/place of work when there is a fault then you should really be on a business grade connection paid for by yourself or your business.

[jessi2024]

well, if the service outage only persists for 2 or 3 days, it is ok. It looks like to me because the domestic use the outage at the domestic customer can last for weeks and seems to me that you dont care much. My main point here is that when a customer reports an issue, the service provider should send an engineer for inspection within 2 or 3 days. If the problem can't be resolved on the spot, that's understandable, but leaving the customer waiting for a week is not ideal. Customers are paying for a service, and prolonged disruptions can be frustrating. 

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 Your connection is for domestic uses only this would include studying but does not really include someone who relies on it for working from home 5 days a week. If you do not have the option of going into an office/place of work when there is a fault then you should really be on a business grade connection paid for by yourself or your business.

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What do you mean here? the customers pay for a broadband service and they can not use it for work??? Even if it's primarily used for leisure, it's crucial that issues are addressed within a reasonable timeframe, not waiting for a week to have an engineer to inspect the problem.

[jamesn123]

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@jessi2024 wrote:

 My main point here is that when a customer reports an issue, the service provider should send an engineer for inspection within 2 or 3 days

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No you've got this completely wrong. 

If the problem is with just your connection/a property fault then Sky will aim to get Openreach/EIR out to you within 2 working days but this is dependant on Openreach/EIR availability in your area. If there are no engineer timeslots in the Openreach/EIR calendar Sky's hands are tied and you will just have to wait longer.

If Sky know its an exchange issue or Openreach/EIR have reported an area fault why would they spend the money on an Openreach visit just for the engineer to turn up at your house, tell you its a local area fault and there is nothing they can do, then drive away again.

It would be an utter waste of time, resource & money which would eventually drive up your subscription cost and no doubt you'd on the forum complaining about increased costs!

If Sky have told you it could be a week or more then its more than likely an area problem that they are waiting for Openreach/EIR to fix. 

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@jessi2024 wrote:

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What do you mean here? the customers pay for a broadband service and they can not use it for work??? Even if it's primarily used for leisure, it's crucial that issues are addressed within a reasonable timeframe, not waiting for a week to have an engineer to inspect the problem.

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No. Nobody said you can't use it for work, I said if you rely on it for working from home 5 days a week without a place of work to travel to then it shouldn't be used for that purpose and you should ideally have a business connection.

As for leisure, it may be crucial to you to get Netflix back up and running for ya, but its certainly not crucial to Openreach/EIR. With area problems they will repair it asap but repairs can be complex. With local residence problems they aim 2 working days but can be longer due to engineer availability or complexity of the problem.