The very first morning in the new house, this is the first thing I see in the living room (OK, technically outside the living room , but still...) when getting out of bed.
They are B I G, and they do have rather sharp beaks, they do those peafowls.
It sure woke me up if nothing else...
We had our Sky satellite dish fitted and installed on Saturday at lunch time, and at midnight the very same day (or should that be midnight Sunday? Anyway, twelve hours later it was) the box reported "no satellite signal". Tried the usual restart, but no luck. Had a look at the cable connections at the back of the box, with no luck there either.
This is the third installation we have, due to house moves, and at ALL three occasions the installation has failed in just days. One or possibly two installations failing I could have had written off as bad luck, but three. No, it is very likely to be crap quality control (call it low quality component or sub standard installations, it is all something that SkyQA should have picked up).
Clare called customer services on Sunday and they couldn't have an engineer here until Tuesday afternoon. Bummer. But the engineer himself called last night and checked if he could come here first thing in the morning. Not a problem for us at all! Well, actually he said "Oh, I have you down here as a morning job". More about that bit later, now let's carry on with the technical problem. So they guy came here at 8 am, had a look at the box and said that is was probably too old for the latest software. Told him I was not happy for him to give us a new box at all. This one do have a proven track record, after the tinkering I've done with it. Before that we had gone through five or six boxes (can't remember, one loses count after a while). So this box got himself an upgraded power supply and a bigger hard drive just after the warranty had run out. I briefly put the original hard drive into a computer here, but took it out again after just a minute due to the noise and vibrations it made. It would have killed the computer with the vibrations in no time at all! Which, again, shows on a lack of quality control... So after being a bit insistent, he went on to checking the signal from the satellite dish instead. At this point he had already carried a new box in to the living room here, still in it's box though. Possibly because of me being there saying that I really don't want a new box if it is not needed over and over again. And guess what?! No signal received from the dish! He then changed the microwave receiver head on the dish, and things started to work as normal again. With the old box.
So the head failed after only twelve hours of service. Not good in my opinion!
The engineer (who is most likely to NOT have an degree in engineering) that came around this time was a sub-contractor and he was in a hurry to get on his way to the next job. He did walk in and out of the house with his shoes on and uncovered even though it was raining outside and we do have cream carpets. On top of that he left the door open every time he went in or out, even though I went and shut them behind him numerous times. (Don't want the cat to go outdoors just yet!) To add to that he asked me if I had a ladder he could use, even though he had at least two ladders himself, on the van. And he left the old faulty microwave head here for me to dispose of.
At least this sub-contractor called before showing up, as they should. The first one we had booked for Wednesday just showed up here without confirming at all with us, and then he called Clare and had a go at her for not being here sitting and waiting for him to just show up. When you book an engineer you are told they will call you and confirm at least one hour before showing up. Which that one didn't do at all. He then went on to be very rude on the phone and told here "Listen sweetie, this is my last job for the day, and I am not hanging around for 20 minutes waiting for you to come home". We were in Bicester at the time (at Jocke and Caz's, trying to get two fat Luton vans and a car over to here), so we couldn't do better than that. So after a rather long and animated conversation he just pissed off. Clare then talked to Sky customer service, who called him. And at that point he told Sky he had another job scheduled so he could not wait. This all smells of bullshit if you ask me.
Wonder if they are called sub-contractors because they do deliver a sub-standard service? :-P What really annoys me is that there is no clear way to file a complaint about the service delivered by people like that. There is a "compliments" number, to call if you are extremely happy with the service. But nothing if you are not. I'd like to think this is not just me being old and grumpy, I'd like to think have described very substantial facts behind my complaints.
This seems to be a recurring theme... Every time we have had a proper Sky engineer visiting, the service has been really good. But I can't recall a single sub-contractor that have done a decent job. I might be unfair here, surely there are good subs out there. But in general they seem to be rude, lazy thugs that are only interested in getting you down as a done job so they can get paid for it. If they do actually carry out the job is less important. And it seems like the communication of what job to do when is not working properly. This is not the first time we have an Sky sub-contractor showing up at the wrong time. Which makes it even more important for them to call first.
And if I am unfair, that's OK. This is my personal blog. And as such, it is my opinions aired here. :oP
