“In mid-August, we upgraded our Sky contract, which then was just for various TV channels, to full broadband, including ultrafast plus,” starts the mail from Peter from Greystones. “We also contracted to buy a Sky Glass” – which is, he explains, “Sky-speak for television”.
All should have been well but it was not.
“It took ages for the Sky broadband to get connected, mainly because Vodafone [his previous provider] were lackadaisical about removing their service from the line. But they did, and Sky came on stream on or about Friday, September 6th. Since then ... nightmare.”
He says the broadband “has never worked successfully through a whole day, frequently vanishing mid-evening, around 8pm. Tonight, for instance, it started to disintegrate at 7.40pm and stopped delivering a picture or sound at 8.10pm. The first explanation, from the RTÉ Player people (where Yellowstone became off limits at a critical moment in series three) was that our IP address was in Croydon, UK, and this was a problem for them [RTÉ Player].”
“Sky acknowledged that, yes, the IP address was a problem that was being addressed and they would ‘escalate’ our situation.”
We covered this story last week, when we reported that some Irish users of Sky’s broadband and television services may have been confused to learn they were relocated, in a virtual sense at least, to the London suburb of Croydon earlier this month.
As a result of what Sky described as an issue with “third-party commercial databases”, the customers suddenly found themselves blocked from accessing streaming services that can only be used by those living in a specific country.
Impacted users said that as well as being denied access to content from the national broadcaster and other streaming services, they also had to endure significant time lags when changing channels, with the Sky system appearing to struggle to work out exactly where they were.
A Sky spokeswoman said that “a small number – less than 1 per cent – of Sky broadband customers experienced an issue accessing content which is geo-restricted to Ireland.”
But Peter’s problems did not end there.
“On innumerable occasions, I have engaged with admittedly helpful Sky technicians, apparently based in Bangalore, trying to talk me through resetting the modem, checking the box-thingy through which the broadband wire enters the house, before being plugged into the modem etc. Once we get all the green lights showing, they then talk me through reprogramming the settings on the telly.”
He says that “during the day, it will work and stay working ... until around 8pm. After that zilch. Except Netflix somehow manages to stay working but not TV channels. I got so frustrated dealing online that last Thursday, I think, I went back to the Sky shop in Dundrum but no satisfaction there – apart from them crediting my account with a free month’s subscription.”
Then he turned to Sky Help Ireland on X, and since then “I have spent hour upon hour with [various staff] going around in circles. I have sent them picture after picture of our screen showing the situation. I have been up and down the stairs to the broadband modem, photographing it for them, turning it on and off, holding buttons down for 10 seconds, 40 seconds and them waiting X, Y or Z minutes before ‘try it now and see what happens’ type suggestions.”
So he contacted us and we contacted Sky and they got on the case. It quickly emerged that there was an issue with a piece of hardware. A couple of days later we heard back from the company. “We have spoken to the customer in question and have apologised for the inconvenience it has caused. We always strive to deliver reliable and uninterrupted service to our customers, and will implement process changes to ensure the incident does not happen again.”
