Revenge for man whose life was made a misery when he tried to cancel Sky
When Pete Swift moved to Leith from Stirling in 2012, he made sure that he called and arranged to cancel the Sky TV and broadband subscription at his old address. Unfortunately, the company failed to cancel the services, and billed him for a debt they claimed he owed. After 18 months of being chased for the debt and threatened with bailiffs, Swift finally had enough.
30-year-old Swift was endlessly chased for a debt he didn't owe. No matter what he did, he told the Metro, he couldn't get anyone at Sky to take ownership and fix the problem they had caused in the first place.
After talking to Sky for months, he suddenly found himself being contacted by a debt collection agency. He provided proof that he had paid the debt, and asked the agency to pass the information on, but soon afterwards he was contacted by another debt collection agency. He contacted Sky to complain, but again a few months later he was contacted by another debt collection company. He was concerned that the saga was affecting his credit rating, so he had to contact the credit rating agencies and explain the situation too.
He ended up in mediation with Sky, which offered him £60 compensation and to correct his credit file. However, they couldn't do anything about the black marks on his file from the debt agencies. An unimpressed Swift decided that enough was enough.
Swift snaps
He kept a note of the time he had spent dealing with each debt collection agency, plus credit reporting agencies, the ombudsman, the Citizens Advice Bureau, and lawyers, and in total it came to 55 hours and 5 minutes. Then he billed Sky at a cost of £25 per hour, and started court proceedings in order to secure a payment.
Sky eventually paid him £1,500 - days before he was due in court. It apologised, and said the problem had been caused by a technical fault. It told the Daily Mail. "Our staff work hard to deliver great service. However, in Mr Swift's case we got it wrong, and didn't resolve things quickly enough."
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Not alone
It's not the first time that Sky has been in the news after a customer tried to cancel their contract. In April we reported on the man from Newport in South Wales, who spent 96 minutes on Sky's online customer service chat facility, trying to cancel his contract. He was astonished to discover that even after all that time, he was still unable to leave. After the news hit the headlines, Sky cancelled his package as a 'goodwill' gesture.
The process of leaving remains time-consuming and complex. Unfortunately, you have to call to cancel, and find yourself stuck on the phone with customer service staff who will try to persuade you to stay. You have to go through this process, because if you just cancel the direct debit, they will be within their rights to claim you haven't cancelled and chase you for the money.
You can terminate the call after a reasonable length of time, tell them that as far as you are concerned you have given notice in accordance with the contract, and then keep a note of the time and date of the call. After the cancellation period, you can then stop your direct debit. However, there remains a risk that they will not take this as a cancellation, and you will end up having to sort out a headache further down the line.
The good news is that from July Ofcom is bringing in new rules. These will mean that if you only have broadband and landline services from Sky, you don't need to contact Sky at all to cancel. As long as you are switching to either BT, TalkTalk or EE, you just contact your new provider, and it's up to them to get details from your old provider.
But what do you think? Have you had trouble trying to leave a provider? Let us know in the comments.
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