F£$%ing Sky+

[village idiot]

we have, for quite a while now, had problems with our sky+ box, some of which are from when the warranty ran out & we refused to pay £98/year for updated warranty
problems include
if a recorded program is fast forwarded over the ad break it will sometime "hang" as in the picture is frozen & the only way to sort it is to switch off at the wall, this is most common at around 9:30 at night for some reason
another problem is it will sometimes stop & show an end of program message when the program hasn't finished, we have to take a note of the time into the recording, switch off at wall, restart, restart watching about a minute before the error & you can usually watch to the end of the recorded program
I have taken the card out to lean contacts, I have gone into the 401 menu to defrag the hard drive & I have just done a forced update of the software, getting just a tad PO'd with the damn thing.
I don't want to have to pay for a new box, apart from the fact the wallet is empty , I'm Scottish & hate spending money

[kellys_eye]

Is it the 'white' box?

If it is I have a spare one you can have (I'm up there at Jennings Ford dealership 27th Feb) that was working fine when we stopped using it.

We've dumped Sky completely in favour of a LoveFilms account via our Xbox360 Gold account plus a FreeSat system. Total monthly cost is now £10 (still on the first months free trial so actually £5/month at the moment). The Freesat system gives us iPlayer too so most programs are 'on demand' and we don't miss the Sky recording facility. Currenly plowing through the whole 'Lost' series as we missed a lot of it when we had Virgin media and they argued with Sky, losing Sky1 in the process and cutting us off from the series....
I've also connected a PC to the main TV so we get all sorts of streamed stuff - you'd be amazed at what's available "if you look" (ahem)...

So far we've not missed Sky at all although the Discovery channels are really all that we're short of. Saving £40+ per month is some serious loose change though......

Anyway, if the Sky box we have is useful to you I'll bring it along.

[Inky Pete]

Sounds like a Sale of Goods Act job to me.

If Sky are claiming that the box is yours and is your responsibility then it follows that they sold it to you bundled in with your Sky package. That means that they have exactly the same duty to provide goods of merchantable quality and fair durability as any other retailler, and if any item fails within a reasonable expected lifespan they are responsible for providing a free of charge repair or replacement.

Have a read up on Sale of Goods act on the Which? website or on Moneysavingexpert, then give Sky a ring back and give them chapter and verse on what you believe your rights to be. I'd be surprised if they didn't give you a new box to shut you up rather than allow a precedent to be set by having you bring a formal case against them.

You might have to write to their Head Office to get action - there are template letters on the MSE website you can use - but I doubt you'll have to go any further than that.

[Icm76]

Is your signal strength and quality all good?

I has similar, though not identical problems at my last address. Sometimes when fast-forwarding or rewinding whilst other recordings were being made the box would occasionally hang entirely and switch itself off requiring an unplug for 60s before rebooting. iirc this happened if there were two simultaneous recordings being made during playback. However I had a dodgy cable and occasional signal drop out on the dodgy cable, so I had a suspicion that the hang was caused when the system couldn't deal with the loss of signal while recording.

I can't be conclusive as I haven't been at my new address for long, but so far with a new dish and new cable and the same old box it hasn't happened. My STB is a Pace v2.5 Sky+

[village idiot]

K_E, if you have a spare box then I'll certainly take it off your hands
Jennings Ford must be operating through Macrae & d*ck????,
Inky, box is almost 4 years old so not sure if that is good or bad though it has been playing up since the warranty ran out at a year old
Icm76, it's an Amstrad box
have been looking at fitting a fan to see if cooling helps

[kellys_eye]

Yep, Macrae and D1ck it is..... I'll make sure to bring the box with me.

[Inky Pete]

Consumer rights on electronic goods can run for as long as 6 years!

[wine~o]

Consumer rights on electronic goods can run for as long as 6 years!

Or as long as 6 months If it's A lan M Ichael S ugar TRAD ing...


Talking of which...does he market his electronic goods as "LAMSTRAD" since he's now a Lord????

[spartacus]

Has your contract expired? Phone them up, threaten to leave and tell them you're not happy and they'll probably sort it out for free!

[village idiot]

Thank you Mr Kelly, nice meeting you & thank you very much for the sky+ box, not had a chance to test it yet, probably be thursday as tomorrow & wednesday are taken up with scout stuff

[kellys_eye]

No probs at all - Mrs k_e was glad to see the back of my 'rubbish' (I'd only have taken it apart for the bits....!).
Interesting 'little' place you work at too - thanks for the lookaround.

[village idiot]

no problem
how much did you spend in the main shop & did you get round to the forest & ground care department?
interesting day yesterday, we had a 400cfm compressor & a 200kva generator break down when we had no replacements