Unfortunately many companies, from Banks, Building Societies and Insurance companies to Mobile and home phone networks, Gyms and many others seem to have better deals for new customers compared to existing customers.
Whilst it is an annoying fact of life, it is no different to seeing something in the sales the day after you have bought one.
However, I think that in the after sales department Sky can't be faulted.
A month back I had a problem with my Sky HD box which couldn't be sorted with any of the various re-set options. I was wary of buying a box from Ebay, so I called Sky who gave me the option of buying a new box or having an engineer call for £60 with the promise that whatever was neccessary would be done, including a replacement box if one was required.
I pointed out that I had been a Sky customer for well over 20 years and that whilst I was aware the box was well out of warranty, I felt that they could be a bit more generous than that! Without too much trouble they got that charge down to £20, which I would have been happy with, although in the end they charged me zilch as the system wouldn't let her input £20, so bargain. (She also looked into the situation with Sky Anytime Plus on BT Broadband who have just put fibre optic into my road and then rung me back to say that she had heard a whisper that Sky would be able to offer me fibre within a couple of weeks which I have now had installed.
)
I was lucky enough to have SaintSteve as the engineer who called as I am in Southampton, so we talked about cars while he was changing the box. All is now perfect, I'm a happy customer and would recommend Sky to anyone. I've never dealt with Virgin, so can't comment on how this would have been handled, but I can't see how they could have done any better.
Sky gets my vote.
TonyZ
