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The title only tells a small part about my disappointment with Sky Broadband and my Sky Internet problems. My personal experience with the company has been utterly diabolical, not only have I experienced a huge Broadband speed issue but the company appear to have problems in other areas of their business too. The following article is a summary of my own personal opinion and experiences with Sky Broadband. I’ve listed the issues in bold for easy reading and a quick Sky Broadband review, or if you’re experiencing Sky Broadband problems and want to discover whether other people have experienced similar issues, please read on:
1. Sky Broadband is Slow: (EXTREMELY SLOW)
Sky Internet is horribly, devastatingly slow. When I moved into my house and decided to use Sky Broadband because I thought it would be prudent to bundle the Satellite TV and internet together, I only had one broadband speed option available for the internet, it was the 8Mb line. My house happens to be in the countryside and I am aware that I’d not get what I paid for. I won’t get my full broadband speed quota because I’m not in a city and because of something called contention rate. (“Contention rate” is the amount of people that would share your broadband line, sharing with fifty or more people is not unusual).
Advertised “Broadband speeds” are nonsense. Fact I think many of the major broadband providers recruit copywriters that have PhD’s. in fictional writing, I accept that I’m being charged for something I’m not getting, (I can’t believe that I’ve just written that). It’s like seeing an advert for a fast car that does 200 mph, but when you buy it, you discover that it only gets to 65 mph (on a good day). However, there isn’t much anyone can do about it and it’s the same for everyone so it seems to be accepted as the “norm” here in the UK.
If I have to take the same tenuous analogy and apply it to my Sky Internet connection then the 200mph car I bought would do 2 mph. Yes, my internet is at least one hundred times slower than what’s been promised at certain times. In fact, my internet doesn’t work at all regularly so the proverbial car is broken down fairly frequently.
My Sky Internet is slow all the time, whether it is morning, noon or night, weekends or weekdays. It’s Slow. Very slow. I frequently test my broadband speed with broadband speed test tools and Sky Broadband will download at speeds of less than 1 Mb to over 4 Mb. That’s not the issue. The real test for a internet connection is it’s upload speed. It’s no good having the ability to download at a thousand times faster than the speed of light when your upload speed is as slow as molasses. This means that my broadband is about as useful as a glass hammer. My upload speed at times is less than 30K. Terrible.
2. My Sky Router Didn’t Work Properly: (POOR QUALITY SKY INTERNET ROUTERS)
On multiple occasions Sky Customer service told me that the Faceplate on my telephone socket had failed. I retort: “No Mr.Sky Internet Customer service, the wireless internet router you provided didn’t work as it should have done“. My internet connection would work for five minutes and then the wireless Sky Internet router would freeze and require a reboot (gets a bit tedious after a while), I checked whether the distance between the computer and the router maybe causing the Sky Broadband wireless router problems. It wasn’t. I presume the router problems exist because the internet fluctuates so greatly that the cheap wireless routers Sky provide can’t cope. I’ve changed my router and that particular issue has gone away. Now I “only” have very slow internet that works some of the time. The wireless routers that Sky Broadband provide are manufactured by a company called D-Link for your reference.
3. Sky Internet Customer Service is Dissatisfactory: (TERRIBLE CUSTOMER SERVICE)
Here are a few of the issues that I unfortunately encountered with Sky’s customer service:
3.1 As I had ordered internet and satellite TV in a “bundle deal” they had to physically “install” some hardware for the TV to work. They cancelled and the appointment at the very last minute. They then requested anther appointment two weeks later!
3.2. I had to wait a further two weeks after the TV installation had been done for a Sky engineer to come to my house and “do something” so my internet would work. When the Sky engineer didn’t arrive on the promised date I telephoned their customer service number and was informed that an “engineer didn’t have to come to my house” and the “internet would work soon”. I lost almost a full days worth of work waiting for a phantom telephone engineer. Thanks!
3.3. I had to make multiple pointless calls to inept customer service agents trying to resolve issues. Sometimes they would helpfully suggest to “call me back” as calls to their “helpline” are really expensive when called from a mobile phone. The people that supposedly call you back have striking similarities to their phantom telephone engineers. Nobody called me back, ever.
As I write this blog post, I’m currently paying for two broadband connections at home. Sky Broadband is so slow and unreliable that I’m not even connected to the internet through them currently. I’m working off a mobile internet Dongle, ironically, the speed and reliability supersede what Sky Internet for me by a country mile. I find it astounding that Sky Internet or BSYSB are still riding high in terms of broadband market-share; even though I’ve read thousands of near identical Sky Broadband problems.
If you’re contemplating a move to Sky Broadband as part of a package deal, TV bundle or even a standalone product, I urge you to consider choosing another broadband provider. The internet is full of people on forums that angry, unhappy and generally dissatisfied with Sky Broadband. If you’re attempting to get Sky Broadband help and found this Blog then you’re probably wasting your time looking for the answer to your Sky Internet problems, cancel your contract with Sky Broadband and get another broadband provider. I don’t believe there is a Sky Broadband fix, the issues are systemic and it would appear as though their infrastructure is completely inadequate. I’ve been using a website called “broadband speed test” to conduct my Sky Internet speed tests as it seems to be the most accurate when it comes to determining how fast your broadband actually is.
Broadband is an industry rife with mis-selling and Sky Broadband seem to be one of the worst in terms of what you get versus what you pay.