Sky's latest fairytale marketing campaign tells us that we should 'Believe in Better'. Rivals Virgin Media have tried to steal Sky customers by claiming only their fairytales have a happy ending. But who is the fairest broadband supplier in the land?
Rebecca Wilcox reports on the battle of the multi-media giants.
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In a land far, far away... well, Portsmouth... lived a man called Graham Warner. He wanted to pay less for his broadband, so he switched his contract from Sky Connect, which cost £17 a month, to Sky Unlimited, which should have cost £7.50 a month. This went on for a period of five consecutive months.
Graham huffed and he puffed but Sky haven't been much help at all. Eventually they offered Graham a small discount off his television costs as compensation, but he isn't satisfied.
Then there's Tamsyn Milne, who asked Sky to provide her with phone, and broadband services. Sky mistakenly set up two accounts at her address. So, even though she paid her bills in full every month, the duplicate account went unpaid. When Sky discovered this, they cut off her phone line for two years - that's how long it took Sky to fix the problem. But just when Tamsyn thought her troubles were over, they started sending duplicate bills again.
All across the land, Sky customers are being promised a fairy godmother style happy ending. But, as more than a thousand of them have complained to us in the last six months, perhaps the big bad wolf is more fitting?
Sky has a rival called Virgin Media. They scoff at Sky's ads and try to tempt away their TV, phone and broadband customers, promising a real happy ending. Paul Vaughn, Michael Froom and the Critchell family are just some of the 500 customers who have contacted Watchdog this year.
Paul checked twice that he could receive Virgin Media's services before cancelling his other phone and broadband contracts, only to be told several days later that Virgin Media couldn't supply him after all.
Michael Froom switched from Sky to Virgin because they were offering a cut-price deal. However, because the salesman put in the wrong code at the time of purchase, he never got the discount.
And Mary Critchell wanted to change her husbands' Virgin Media account into her name after he passed away. Instead, Virgin set up a new account, cut off her phone line temporarily, then reactivated it with a different number - all without telling her.
So who still believes in fairy stories? And who believes in stories by Virgin Media and Sky...?
Sky Statement:
"We'd like to apologise to any customers who have experienced problems. We've been in touch with Mr Warner and Ms Milne to make sure that their issues are now fully resolved.
We never forget that customers have a choice and that customer service is a hugely important part of what we do.
Recent research from Ofcom rated Sky as having the highest scores for customer satisfaction of any major broadband and phone company in the UK, and we take it very seriously when we fall short of the high standards that we set ourselves."
1. Why weren't the above cases resolved in the timeframes promised by customer services staff when they called to complain?
a) Mr Warner
Mr Warner originally took our Sky Connect broadband service - the product we offer customers who live in areas that aren't on Sky's network - before switching to Sky Broadband Unlimited when his local telephone exchange was upgraded to become part of Sky's network.
Unfortunately, this migration from Sky Connect to Sky Broadband Unlimited did not happen properly, and consequently Mr Warner continued to be billed for Sky Connect at £17/ month, rather than Sky Broadband Unlimited at £7.50/ month. Due to a problem with one of our systems in one of our contact centres, the issue remained unresolved and Mr Warner continued to be charged at the higher rate for his broadband services, despite having made a number of calls to us about this issue.
We realise that this issue should have been resolved more quickly, and apologise for the inconvenience caused to Mr Warner. We've since been in touch with Mr Warner and his broadband account has now been correctly moved over to Sky Broadband Unlimited. Mr Warner has been fully refunded for all the incorrect billing charges, and continued to receive a broadband service during this period.
We have taken action to rectify the system issue, to ensure this doesn't happen to any further customers.
b) Ms Milne
The previous resident in Ms Milne's property was a Sky customer, and when Ms Milne took over the telephone line, our system which closes down an account when a customer leaves a property didn't update properly, so the bills for telephony charges were incorrectly charged to the previous resident of the property.
As a result, the bills addressed to the previous customer were not paid, Ms Milne's phone line was disconnected on two occasions, meaning that she was without a phone line for a total of over 13 months. We apologise that this mistake occurred, and for the delay in getting it rectified. We have also cleared the balance on the account belonging to the previous resident.
2. How and why was a duplicate account activated at Ms Milne's property, for a man who was never a Sky customer in the first place? Why did this take so long to resolve and how did it reoccur a second time?
The previous resident at the address was a Sky customer. The issues arose because our systems didn't update properly to reflect that the customers had moved away, meaning that Ms Milne's phone service was disrupted and that bills continued to be incorrectly issued to the previous resident of the property.
3. What is Sky's target response time for dealing with complaints similar to those detailed here? Does Sky accept that its customer services needs to improve in light of the information supplied above and the sheer number of complaints Watchdog has received this year?
We aim to respond to all complaints within ten days. Some complaints, by their very nature, may take longer than others to resolve, particularly if they are technically complex. 90% of our customer complaints are fully resolved within four days, and 70% of issues resolved on the same day. We realise that there is always room for improvement, however, and are committed to continuing to invest in our people and systems to make sure we deliver the best possible service we can to our customers.
www.sky.com/getintouch
08442 410 107
Virgin statement:
Case 1 - Non-serviceability - Mr Vaughan
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "Cases such as these are incredibly rare and are related to incomplete coverage information inherited from previous cable companies when the network was being built over twenty years ago. Whilst there are cable services available on Mr Vaughan's street, following a pre-installation serviceability check we discovered two properties that were unable to get service, one of which belonging to Mr Vaughan. We have now marked these properties as unserviceable on our database and apologise for not being able to provide Mr Vaughan our cable services in this instance."
Case 2 - Incorrect application of offer
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "We're sorry that Mr Froom had to contact us numerous times to correct an error in the offer applied to his account. This was related to an administrational error when loading Mr Froom's order on to our systems. We have since corrected the error and are delighted that Mr Froom has stayed with us and is now enjoy his services on the deal originally offered."
Case 3 - Lost number/Account Transfer
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "We're incredibly sorry for the issues surrounding transferring Mrs Critchell's phone number to her new account. The account was transferred correctly, however an issue with the number porting process meant that instead of Mrs Critchell's number being allocated to the new account, it returned to the number provider, BT. Unfortunately once the mistake had been discovered the porting window had closed and we were unable to retrieve the number from BT meaning we were unable to restore Mrs Critchell's original number. As part of our investigation into this case we have launched a review of our process for handling such cases to help avoid similar issues in the future."
Please visit http://help.virginmedia.com/ which contains lots of general information on services, status, advice etc, as well as further ways to contact us.
Sky versus Virgin: a multimedia battle
Rebecca Wilcox reports on the battle of the multi-media giants.
In order to see this content you need to have both Javascript enabled and Flash installed. Visit BBC Webwise for full instructions. If you're reading via RSS, you'll need to visit the blog to access this content.
In a land far, far away... well, Portsmouth... lived a man called Graham Warner. He wanted to pay less for his broadband, so he switched his contract from Sky Connect, which cost £17 a month, to Sky Unlimited, which should have cost £7.50 a month. This went on for a period of five consecutive months.
Graham huffed and he puffed but Sky haven't been much help at all. Eventually they offered Graham a small discount off his television costs as compensation, but he isn't satisfied.
Then there's Tamsyn Milne, who asked Sky to provide her with phone, and broadband services. Sky mistakenly set up two accounts at her address. So, even though she paid her bills in full every month, the duplicate account went unpaid. When Sky discovered this, they cut off her phone line for two years - that's how long it took Sky to fix the problem. But just when Tamsyn thought her troubles were over, they started sending duplicate bills again.
All across the land, Sky customers are being promised a fairy godmother style happy ending. But, as more than a thousand of them have complained to us in the last six months, perhaps the big bad wolf is more fitting?
Sky has a rival called Virgin Media. They scoff at Sky's ads and try to tempt away their TV, phone and broadband customers, promising a real happy ending. Paul Vaughn, Michael Froom and the Critchell family are just some of the 500 customers who have contacted Watchdog this year.
Paul checked twice that he could receive Virgin Media's services before cancelling his other phone and broadband contracts, only to be told several days later that Virgin Media couldn't supply him after all.
Michael Froom switched from Sky to Virgin because they were offering a cut-price deal. However, because the salesman put in the wrong code at the time of purchase, he never got the discount.
And Mary Critchell wanted to change her husbands' Virgin Media account into her name after he passed away. Instead, Virgin set up a new account, cut off her phone line temporarily, then reactivated it with a different number - all without telling her.
So who still believes in fairy stories? And who believes in stories by Virgin Media and Sky...?
Sky Statement:
"We'd like to apologise to any customers who have experienced problems. We've been in touch with Mr Warner and Ms Milne to make sure that their issues are now fully resolved.
We never forget that customers have a choice and that customer service is a hugely important part of what we do.
Recent research from Ofcom rated Sky as having the highest scores for customer satisfaction of any major broadband and phone company in the UK, and we take it very seriously when we fall short of the high standards that we set ourselves."
1. Why weren't the above cases resolved in the timeframes promised by customer services staff when they called to complain?
a) Mr Warner
Mr Warner originally took our Sky Connect broadband service - the product we offer customers who live in areas that aren't on Sky's network - before switching to Sky Broadband Unlimited when his local telephone exchange was upgraded to become part of Sky's network.
Unfortunately, this migration from Sky Connect to Sky Broadband Unlimited did not happen properly, and consequently Mr Warner continued to be billed for Sky Connect at £17/ month, rather than Sky Broadband Unlimited at £7.50/ month. Due to a problem with one of our systems in one of our contact centres, the issue remained unresolved and Mr Warner continued to be charged at the higher rate for his broadband services, despite having made a number of calls to us about this issue.
We realise that this issue should have been resolved more quickly, and apologise for the inconvenience caused to Mr Warner. We've since been in touch with Mr Warner and his broadband account has now been correctly moved over to Sky Broadband Unlimited. Mr Warner has been fully refunded for all the incorrect billing charges, and continued to receive a broadband service during this period.
We have taken action to rectify the system issue, to ensure this doesn't happen to any further customers.
b) Ms Milne
The previous resident in Ms Milne's property was a Sky customer, and when Ms Milne took over the telephone line, our system which closes down an account when a customer leaves a property didn't update properly, so the bills for telephony charges were incorrectly charged to the previous resident of the property.
As a result, the bills addressed to the previous customer were not paid, Ms Milne's phone line was disconnected on two occasions, meaning that she was without a phone line for a total of over 13 months. We apologise that this mistake occurred, and for the delay in getting it rectified. We have also cleared the balance on the account belonging to the previous resident.
2. How and why was a duplicate account activated at Ms Milne's property, for a man who was never a Sky customer in the first place? Why did this take so long to resolve and how did it reoccur a second time?
The previous resident at the address was a Sky customer. The issues arose because our systems didn't update properly to reflect that the customers had moved away, meaning that Ms Milne's phone service was disrupted and that bills continued to be incorrectly issued to the previous resident of the property.
3. What is Sky's target response time for dealing with complaints similar to those detailed here? Does Sky accept that its customer services needs to improve in light of the information supplied above and the sheer number of complaints Watchdog has received this year?
We aim to respond to all complaints within ten days. Some complaints, by their very nature, may take longer than others to resolve, particularly if they are technically complex. 90% of our customer complaints are fully resolved within four days, and 70% of issues resolved on the same day. We realise that there is always room for improvement, however, and are committed to continuing to invest in our people and systems to make sure we deliver the best possible service we can to our customers.
www.sky.com/getintouch
08442 410 107
Virgin statement:
Case 1 - Non-serviceability - Mr Vaughan
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "Cases such as these are incredibly rare and are related to incomplete coverage information inherited from previous cable companies when the network was being built over twenty years ago. Whilst there are cable services available on Mr Vaughan's street, following a pre-installation serviceability check we discovered two properties that were unable to get service, one of which belonging to Mr Vaughan. We have now marked these properties as unserviceable on our database and apologise for not being able to provide Mr Vaughan our cable services in this instance."
Case 2 - Incorrect application of offer
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "We're sorry that Mr Froom had to contact us numerous times to correct an error in the offer applied to his account. This was related to an administrational error when loading Mr Froom's order on to our systems. We have since corrected the error and are delighted that Mr Froom has stayed with us and is now enjoy his services on the deal originally offered."
Case 3 - Lost number/Account Transfer
A Virgin Media spokesperson said: "We're incredibly sorry for the issues surrounding transferring Mrs Critchell's phone number to her new account. The account was transferred correctly, however an issue with the number porting process meant that instead of Mrs Critchell's number being allocated to the new account, it returned to the number provider, BT. Unfortunately once the mistake had been discovered the porting window had closed and we were unable to retrieve the number from BT meaning we were unable to restore Mrs Critchell's original number. As part of our investigation into this case we have launched a review of our process for handling such cases to help avoid similar issues in the future."
Please visit http://help.virginmedia.com/ which contains lots of general information on services, status, advice etc, as well as further ways to contact us.
Sky versus Virgin: a multimedia battle