I received the phone-call to say when to expect the Sky engineer. Fine. At about half way through the allotted slot, he phoned to say he couldn't find the place, so I gave him instructions. Because I was in a chirpy mood, I didn't say "Read the bloody A-Z," but instead gave detailed instructions. As he didn't turn up, I rang him, he had driven way out of the way, so I gave even more detailed instructions. Eventually he arrived.
Fiddled around for a bit, said that all it needed was a software update, and Sky should have done that over the phone. He updated the software, and the TV seemed to be receiving okay, which was a massive advance on last night. As soon as he had gone I set the Sky+ Box to record something, anything, not important, to see how it went. Guess what, it didn't record properly, so I called 0845 number of the company, and stated very calmly what the issue was, and I expected an engineer to call back today. He tried ringing the engineer, but had to leave a voicemail for him to call me. Half an hour later, no callback. So I call back. And I am going to call every half hour until I get a satisfactory response.
Needless to say, a missive will be despatched, but I'm holding fire until the end of the day to see whether the problem is resolved, or else I emphasise strongly exactly why this is far far far from satisfactory.
About a dozen years ago my friend had a whole sequence of incompetence and inefficiencies from a wide variety of companies purporting to offer a range of services. What made it worse was that it seemed that every time she switched the TV on, John Major proclaiming his desire to see the public sector working more like the private sector. As she said, "God help us..."
Am I being unreasonable in just wanting to receive the service I pay for? It's not even that I can cancel my subscription to Sky, because the only alternative is nothing. But then a supposedly highly competitive market such as broadband provision is demonstrated to be no better than the monopolies. I can't help thinking if someone like me feels constantly so frustrated, what happens to people without my advantages. And it's such an interruption. You spend so much time waiting for the next instalment, or timing your next move, or hanging on the phone, it's actually very difficult to get anything else done.
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