Hassle from Sky is it me or is Sky worth the trouble?

[ericmark]

I have had sky for many years and over time, the signal has got slowly worse. So we decided around a year ago to get rid of it. At which point the guy from Sky persuaded my wife to keep it and they would send around a guy to correct the problem.

He replaced the dish and LNB and told us the main problem was the cable between the LNB and box. But said since it was routed through the loft he could not replace it. Odd since that was put there by Sky in first place. I got some TV cable and replaced it but seems although better it was not A1 quality and we still had problems.

What seemed odd with the FTA channels the FTA box could receive these without a problem on the cable condemned by Sky as being faulty so I considered it more likely the box was at fault.

So a couple of weeks ago again my wife phoned up to cancel Sky. This time they persuaded her to up-grade to Sky+ and the guy came and set it all up. Seemed OK at first then started to get problems again. So I had a look at what he had done.

Seems he had gone into my garage and removed two coils of cable. One he snipped off and left in a heap the other he had re-fastened to Landers and connected to the second input in new Sky+ box.

The other end of this cable went to my FTA box in bedroom as it both stopped the FTA box working properly and the signal received on Sky+ box varied according to what channel I was trying to view on bedroom box.

So I phoned up Sky.
Guy 1 arrived but said this was an installation job and not his job to correct a faulty installation and said he would arrange for original guy to return.

Guy 2 arrived and said it was two man job as working at height to fit new cable onto LNB so again did nothing and said he would get them to phone me and arrange another visit.

No phone can so I phoned them seems they got fax machine scream and left a voice message! I would have thought most people can tell difference between answer phone beep and fax machine scream?

Guys 3 & 4 arrive. Now they tell me they are height working team but because the roof has no apex to hang ladder from they can’t work on slopping roof of kitchen extension even though both the original installer and repair man of 12 months back had both worked off roof. Although slopping it is not slopping very much I have no problems walking on it. So I asked then why not fit new dish. Seems I am an existing customer and only new customers can have new dishes.

So now the original guys are supposed to come out. To it seems correct their work. But how they can work on the slopping roof and others can’t I don’t understand.

All except the guys would set up Sky+ have agreed that the both the cables from box to LNB need renewing. Yes I know I could renew them myself but I do not really want to mess around changing cables especially when I know they work OK with FTA boxes. I have had three FTA boxes on the cables all work A1 but both the PACE and the AMSTRAD Sky boxes have had problems.

I have a satellite finding box which is not too good and I have found the built in finding tone of the FTA box works better however Sky is not cheap and I don’t see why I should have to DIY a Sky installation?

Am I doing something wrong? If not running A1 by end of tomorrow I think only option is to cancel Sky completely however good it may be when working it’s just not worth the hassle!

Since no one has replied I will add this to original post. Today yet another guy arrives again he refuses to do anything to correct the problem. But he gets his foreman to call. He arrives and looks at the problem and agrees that to the letter the fitter should not work on the roof but says normally they would but once the first guy refused they would realise there would be a record of the problem so became a "Jobs Worth" situation. So he has now agreed to get a new dish fitted which will not require access to roof and new cables to box which should happen Sunday.

Should I claim a rebate from Sky for the three weeks when the new box was fitted but did not work correctly?

 

[Tempiz]

Just an 'out of interest' reply!

How is your FTA box connected to the LNB? if it is sharing a cable with the Sky box and split down the line somewhere, are you not reducing the signal strength and also causing a frequency conflict (vertical or horizontal) with the LNB if watching 2 different frequency channels?

If it is a dual or quad LNB with a cable running to each box individually this would not be a problem. If Sky have updated you to Sky+ there should be 2 cables attached to the box and LNB (either 2 separate cables, or a 'shotgun' cable which is a 2 in 1 job). Sounds like your woes are with that cable. Is there an alternative route that the cable could be run so the height issue is overcome?

I would reccommend Sky if you have the funds to pay for it. With all the Digital switchover hassles we've just had here in the South West, it has been good just to be able to turn the sky box on and be unaffected by retunes until it suits us to do it! We have the HD box which I can recommend if funds allow. Sky Anytime have the top movies of the week downloaded already to your box which you can watch there and then, or press record and save to the hard drive for repeat watching.

 

[ericmark]

I have a quad LNB of which 3 outputs are used.
1) To old Sky Box.
2) To New Sky+ Box.
3) To Free to Air box then to Sky+ Box.
The latter is a problem as the two boxes mess each other up. Also the feed LNB to Sky+ is in poor quality cable.
I had expected the old Sky Box was faulty as Free to Air works OK off that cable and I had not realised that Sky+ required two cables. Before going for Sky+ I had been trying to cure the problem and I must have left the cable coiled up in garage connected to the free to air box.
So the guy fitting the Sky+ box must have stuck his meter on the cable and got a signal so decided to re-use it.
Every guy who has arrived since has agreed it needs two new cables and the installation has been done wrong. But I have to date not been able to get them to correct it.
It seems the tiled slopping roof is the problem and they can't go on it because of health and safety rules.
Finally yesterday I go a foreman guy who has arranged for new dish tomorrow so fingers crossed.
As a radio ham I do realise what the problem is and I could have DIY'ed and cured it but why should I?
But I suppose now if I want I can put another Free to Air box in another bed room or in kitchen or dinning room!

 

[Tempiz]

I agree, generally speaking it is not your place to fix it as you have had them install it. Having said that for the piece of mind it would provide I would be incline to sort it myself so I knew it was done right. 3 new CT100 cables from the LNB to your boxes should do the trick nicely for you if you can get to the dish. I use an 80cm dish as well which was a remnant from my original Analogue Sky install, so i have really good signal quality and strength.

In my experience here in the south West, Sky seem to be contracting out the installs to all and sundry, many of which have very little knowledge of the product they are installing. The guy who came to upgrade my basic Sky to HD was generally a clueless spotty teenager with a long drill bit. He drilled right through the existing cable when making provision for the second cable so now have a join in one of the cables.

I specifically asked before he got his tools out of the van if he was going to add a new additional cable or rip out the existing and replace with the 'shotgun'. Fortunately an additional one was the reply so was at least pleased with that, the reason being that 2 full size cables (so I'm told) carry a better signal than the shotgun stuff which has the same overall profile as one regular cable.

Anyway, good luck with your install tomorrow. If they are replacing your dish, perhaps it would be worth mentioning if they can put it where it is more accessable for all. Dont want to be in this mess again if the LNB packs up or it gets blown off direction.

 

[ericmark]

New dish fitted and all seems OK. The guy was a little uncertain as to if anything wrong with box at it reports low signal strength on first LNB input but all shows OK on his meter and all channels seem to work OK.

So now it's just sit back and watch.

 

[Tempiz]

Good news they came when they said! Did they re-site the dish or have you still got an access problem? I had a similar experience with the signal strength as reported by the meter and the box. In the end I got the missus on the phone in front of the box, and tweaked the dish until the strength was at its optimum.

Hope it all stays running for you. Only time and a shower of rain will tell!

 

[ericmark]

I would agree but new dish easy to reach. My son-in-law took TV outside to set it up and it did work. I have used a handy in the past but at 145Mhz there is an interference problem and I would not want to blow the front end of the LNB. I would think mobile phones would also cause problems with harmonics although a hands free phone when they use such low power may be OK.

The Free to Air box has an audio system built in for finding channels but I am not sure if it looks for any channel like the cheap hand held units or if it works on one frequency like boxes used by sky installers.

But I hope all now works A1. Having looked at TV a few times to see signal strength it seems to vary a lot so I am going to ignore that and unless programs fail I will be happy.

 

[ericmark]

Well coming back tomorrow. This time sky box has gone up the creak. It jumps on play back missing bits. A pain as loads recorded and now I have sky+ I can't select to auto change channel so not easy to set up old hard drive to record any more.

Well he arrived with another recon box and fitted. He did check what frez the RF output was set to and changed new box to match and turned RF DC output on as well.

However when he had left I found I was unable to view recording I got message "Recording interrupted please wait" I then found box was not paired to card after phoning sky seems I could watch live channels but not paused or recorded channels. This was fixed by Sky.

I had heard that if you cancel your subscription with Sky you can no longer watch anything recorded this proves it to be correct.

So I hope this is last entry and from now on it will work OK.