...soon enough. I've experienced their 'support' first hand, and it’s truly appalling. Cheap (and of occasion free) broadband is appealing to the masses, but when you pay peanuts, expect monkeys on the other end of the phone.

My other half and her sister are about to punt them into touch...

I have switched from Virgin to Sky and I have no worries. My only gripe is I now pay Virgin and Sky for both services even though I have disconnected the Virgin equipment 3 months ago. Still, better that than having to call virgin every day to get hung-up on.

At McClippers - No ISP is perfect no matter how much you pay.

As an ex Sky TV employee from a long time ago (I understand their idea of "customer support") I was greatly amused when a friends brother reported a 8-week delay in even getting them to start broadband service, and a similar delay in getting the line moved to anyone else. The amusing bit came when the support person admitted to friends brother that no-one in the support center used Sky Broadband - even though they'd get it for free - as it was "crap".

;-)

Sky ? I'd rather sandpaper me genitals and bathe in dettol. Choose life.

---* Bill

So far one of the best broadband ADSL providers I have ever used. Also one of the most stable, I get a constant 6Mb (although I did have my BT engineer friend come round and move the master socket closer to the modem and put fresh clean wires in the house).

I was considering getting the complete package from Sky. But first I wanted to downgrade from Movies+Sport to simple Sky. Waited in phone queue for 1 hour 27 mins, decided to cancel completely and go the Freeview route for TV. Why would I pay ~500 quid a year for customer support as hopeless as that?

my broadband was migrated from Freedom2Surf (a la Pipex) to Sky BB without a hitch. The service actually went live 3 days early. But I was already unbundled with F2S on Easynet.

Can't comment on the support side as I haven't had to use it.

The only problem with the migration was F2S still charging me for a service after the migration, but they are renowned for doing this.

How does one loose a customer? Steal their belts? Put their phone numbers up in public toilets? Spike their drinks with date rape drugs? Or is it hypnosis?

I've been unable to get a reliable connection to Sky broadband since I moved to them from F2S.

On F2S I got a steady 5.5meg connection for the entire year I was with them at this address, moved to Sky, and they keep turning down the connection speed to see if it makes the connection stay up for more than a few hours.

So far, despite dozens of calls to them (at not inconsiderable cost!) they have been unable to provide a stable connection. Speaking to their call centres is either an exercise in frustration, or linguistic gymnastics and frustration depending on which call centre you get.

One must be in Scotland, and the other I think is located in a public swimming baths on Mars, judging from the quality of the line.

Every time I call, usually every 2 days or so, I have to repeat the same mind numbing information, because they've closed the ticket. Yes it's plugged into the master socket, yes it's got a microfilter etc. etc. over and over again until my nose bleeds, or one of us dies of boredom.

Third line support don't call back, there's always a queue to speak to them, and I usually get cut off from them after sometime on hold.

I got a lovely letter through the post telling me that they'd fixed my issue and closed the ticket, but couldn't contact me by phone to tell me. I can't believe they tried very hard, and of course they hadn't solved the issue, they'd just throttled my line back another 100kbps.

I'm at the point of insisting on them waiving the 1 year minimum contract and giving my MAC as they are truly hopeless.

I have to say, even with with reading all the bad press and the fact that i dont like that meglomaniac Rupert Murdoch, but Sky Broadband has been nothing but perfect. I switched from Virgin a while ago and the TV service is 100 times better, no crashing boxes.

The broadband was just as seemless; got a letter telling me my activation date and password. On the day, just plugged in the router (they posted the day before) and wham, worked first time! I hate to say it, but it looks like Sky has the LLU process down to a Tee.... If only other ISPs could get their collective fingers out of their....

Sky Broadband is OK if you never have any problems... I moved house recently, and I was told that it would be quick and easy to move the Broadband to the new property. How wrong they were...

Its so far taken them a month to get absolutely nowhere. I even had to call BT Wholesale myself to get the ADSL Markers removed from the new telephone line, as Sky had tried to do it on no less than FOUR occasions and got rejected each time!!

Their helpdesk staff are anything but helpful. They read from a script, and when you ask them a question that they can't answer, they put you on hold and transfer you - seemingly at random - to another department. They never call back when they say they will, and you can never get hold of the person you spoke to last time.

Apparently its acceptable for them to take up to THREE MONTHS for them to transfer your broadband from one telephone line to another. My case has apparently been 'escalated' (whatever that means), but I only managed to achieve this by sending letters of complaint to James Murdoch himself!!

Sky BB are a complete waste of space. If you aren't with them already, please take my advice and sign up with ANYONE else. Nothing can be as soul destroying as talking to a first line tech support representative from Sky.....

BT support only know their products through duration, they were truly appaling in trying to stabilise the line to avoid drops of connection continously.

They were absolute hell to get the Mac code for the handover, claiming it's not needed for LLU, but eventually gave in.

Sky were helpful but clueless at first, but after politely pointing out that I knew more about their system than they did, I was transferred to a real tech, who was golden. he got me from <1mb to 3+ in ten mins an rock steady. BT only managed a flaky 1mb.

Then the real hell was getting BB off my BT bill. They charged me for 3 months after the cut-off, then during the billing call, I was transferred 3/4 times to various departments until I was taking names and ranks and asking for managers to talk to, then the 1 person who seemed to help confirmed that the system could 'see' both BT BB and LLU stated against my line together, which finally gave me the ammo to point out that 2 services are not only pointless but entirely impossible to connect to.

Utter Utter Spacktards.

If it wasn't for the monopoly position on supplying the copper, I wouldn't pay BT in washers and gladly accept any alternative.

Come on Sky, fibre my area and take all my business!

I'd happily wade through a field of dog shit for the pleasure of having Virgin lick it off the soles of my bare feet. Their service is unbelievable - especially now they've moved all technical enquiries to that damnable premium rate number. Take last Friday, I lost all telephone, tv and broadband ... so I couldn't call on my landline and had to go through my mobile - ooo premium rates on mobile are just great. So here I am going round in circles for 2 hours just to talk to someone who I can actually understand (no offense to our overseas visitors, but I can't understand them and they can't understand me!). So 120*premium minutes (because they will only call you back if you've been talking to one person for more than 20 minutes) and it was resolved that I could have an engineer out in 3 days (!!!) - and no, sorry they won't re-imburse my mobile bill, but they won't charge me for the 3 days of service. I should damned well think not. So anyone complaining of problems with Sky or any other service provider, and thinking the grass is greener on the 0906 side, think again.

Oh yes, my services 'mysteriously' came back on 3 hours later. Virgin/NTL/Telewest haven't got a friggin clue how to diagnose their own connections. I called to cancel the connection - was told to dial 151, which told me to dial the 0906 number... having done so and cancelled, the repair guy turned up anyway (they didn't tell him not to) and because I wasn't there they tried to charge me a tenner for it... HAH.

We also get nothing from Virgin's basic package that I wouldn't get from freeview - they've done sod all with the channels freed up since Sky One jumped (the sinking) ship.

My 12 month contract ends next month. I know where I'm taking my wallet for the next 12...

"Spacktards"

I love it. Please submit to wikipedia.

Arif Rashid

Your comments are totally unbelievable and appear to be written by someone in Sky's marketing department.

I love the part about where you just pluggws your router in and 'BHAM' it worked first time. No configuration needed going from an NTL DSL connection to a SKY ADSL connection on your PC. Of course not. You just plugged your router in and it did everything else didn't it. ROFL.

How much did they pay you to write that...

There are quite a lot of people using Virgin Media for their broadband, Sky or Freeview for TV and BT for their phone service. They could all sign up for the free Sky broadband if they are in a Sky unbundled area. Having two broadband suppliers can open up many benefits when you think about it. I might just have my BT telephone service reconnected to take advantage of this idea. Even if the Sky broadband is nothing to shout about it will still enable me to do a few things that I can't do with just Virgin Media broadband.

Firstly Arif Rashid had also mentioned the (new) router "(they posted the day before)" in the message, and secondly Virgin also supplies a broadband service via BT lines which is what I use at home - see http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/service.do?id=2 for more information.

And I hate the Murdochs (Rupert and James) as well.

Moved from NTL to Sky beacause of NTL's p*&s poor customer service. Sky's is not better either. Have spent a month without Broadband because Sky have screwed my order up - an IT problem which they have so far failed to fix! 9 phone calls later and still no resolution! I will be ditching Sky completely, get rid of phone and satelite as well, and going with BT.

Bunch of jokers!