Sky + Maintenance

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi all,

I've had a Sky + box for almost a year and I am now being offered maintenance contracts. One by Sky at, iirc, 8.99 per month and another at 5.99 per month.

Has anyone any experience of this. I feel I should have the box under maintenance or is there an alternative?

Thanks,
Neil

 

[OLD]

Personally i have taken a chance on it failing so say a £80-£100 bill if this happens i will go for a hd box as it has the same record functions.
these things usually fail quick or long term the power supply parts go.

 

[TonyW]

For "maintenance contracts" I read extended warranty? I do not believe that any maintenance/service required on these units.

I am not a fan of extended warranty they are a great way for the seller to generate further profit (and maybe in some cases the only profit?). You have a choice one contract at £107 p.a. or the other at £71.88 - a sky call out parts and labour I believe is around £65.

There is also the issue of "fit for purpose". I believe that you should have some degree of legal protection for a failed product. There must be an average life expectancy for such a unit 3-6years?

Finally with a failed unit perhaps suggesting cancellation of contract will bring about an offer to repair/replace FOC

Cheers
Tony

 

[misterfish]

Don't forget to check what is actually covered. Is it just the box or is it also the dish and cabling/ Does a £65 call to Sky for somebody not covered by the 'maintenance contract' include problems with the dish, lnb and cabling?

Also if you have a failed unit you may be able to get a reasonable cheap replacement from Ebay!

Misterfish

 

[tim]

It may also be covered by your household insurance anyway.

The other option is to stick the 8.99 into a savings account every month - if it does go wrong then you will probably have accumulated enough to pay for it. If it doesn't then you've got some extra savings.

Cheers

Tim

 

[StevieB]

Anyone ever had a problem with their box? I have had mine for over 7 years and not a problem with it at all. Save your money would be my recommendation - a new box is in the region of £100 I believe so if it lasts more than a year you are in profit anyway.

Steve.

 

[davegw]

Anyone ever had a problem with their box? I have had mine for over 7 years and not a problem with it at all. Save your money would be my recommendation - a new box is in the region of £100 I believe so if it lasts more than a year you are in profit anyway.

Steve.

Oh God Yes! when Sky decided to remotely "Upgrade" the box they completely trashed it! after 2 visits from their engineer at the end of which he said "you can record now, you just have to watch the channel you're recording!" I changed to Virgin and got a V+ box which means that I can record 2 channels while watching another.

 

[brianhabby]

Are you absolutely sure it's Sky who are offering the contract Neil?

I say this because there was an item on one of the consumer programs a couple of weeks ago, I think it might have been Watchdog on the BBC, where they were highlighting firms that were calling people and pretending to be Sky and offering these kind of contracts. They were just scam artists.

Whatever, the answer to the above, I would suggest you follow the advice from other members, ie. save your money and just pay for the repair if it ever needs it. I like the idea of threatening to cancel, that would certainly bring the offer of a good deal from Sky - they hate losing you.

regards

Brian

 

[TrimTheKing]

Anyone ever had a problem with their box? I have had mine for over 7 years and not a problem with it at all.

I am on my 3rd SKY HD box since September 2006. One turned itself off at random times, other one wouldn't come out of standby one day and this one is now starting to fail recordings saying 'power failure'. One of these 'power failures' was while I was watching the footy tonight, and the box most definitely did not turn itself off, but another recording still failed.

Has been happening for last 6 weeks or so, but becoming more frequent now, call to SKY tomorrow methinks.

On the flip side, my SKY+ box is still going from when that service first came out.

Mark

 

[Escudo]

The hard disc in my box failed. Sky offerred to send engineer to check it over £60+ I seem to remember.

I found an old hard disc in a computer and replaced the one in the sky box. 15 minute job. Worked straight away, now I have 80mb capacity.

I don't like paying for things like this.

Tony.

 

[Newbie_Neil]

Hi all,

Thank you for your input, it is much appreciated.

You've confirmed my initial thought, that it isn't worth doing anything.

All the best,

Neil

 

[devonwoody]

I've found that you can play virgin/sky and BT against each other, whatever price one quotes the other will come back with a lower offer. So if a box breaks down go to the opposition and start again if the product is out of guarantee.

 

[brianhabby]

I found an old hard disc in a computer and replaced the one in the sky box. 15 minute job. Worked straight away, now I have 80mb capacity.

Curious Tony,

Was it really that simple?

Even brand new hard disks are relatively cheap these days for a pretty large capacity, so this could be an interesting upgrade path.

regards

Brian

 

[Argee]

Curious Tony,

Was it really that simple?

Even brand new hard disks are relatively cheap these days for a pretty large capacity, so this could be an interesting upgrade path.

Here's one option and here's another - both are relatively simple to achieve.

Ray.

 

[devonwoody]

Thanks Ray, I've got the virgin vbox with 70 hours of recording time on the harddrive so I suspect the principle is similar as the Sky setup?

 

[Argee]

Thanks Ray, I've got the virgin vbox with 70 hours of recording time on the harddrive so I suspect the principle is similar as the Sky setup?

Any kit that uses a hard drive as a storage medium can only have a limited number of types of connection and it appears that the VBox uses a standard 3½" IDE hard drive with standard cabling. I'd say that replacing the hard drive for a larger one is possible, but I wouldn't try to replace it with one larger than 500Gb, as there may be formatting and initialisation issues. Have a read here for another comment (in which "psu" = power supply unit, "mobo" = motherboard). HTH?

Ray.

 

[devonwoody]

Thanks above.

 

[Terry Smart]

We've got the Virgin box, very pleased with it... but upgrading..?

When we got our HDD recorder a couple of years ago it had various options and we could record up to 160 hours of TV; at first I worried if it would be enough then I thought back to the old VCR and realised this equated to 40 four hour tapes - and we'd never got to that stage before! I reckon if we got that far behind with TV programmes I'd just give up and start again, it'd be almost impossible to catch up!
(Personally I'd struggle to find 160 hours of TV to record, but that's another story...!)

 

[Gower]

Great tip Ray. I've bookmarked the page for future reference. Fingers crossed I don't need it!

Gower

 

[devonwoody]

I've succumbed to over 50 hours recordings of a painter named Bob Ross. However I am gradually getting them transferred over to my old vcr tapes.
Any woodwork videos around on virgin?