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£50 isn't a large amount of money to a massive organisation like Sky. But for\r\nme, it's two to three weeks food, or a train ticket to visit my mother, or\r\nabout half of my Christmas shopping (yeah alright, I'm not very extravagant\r\nwith that sort of thing).
\r\nFollowing is an account of how a relatively small mistake on their part, which\r\nI thought was resolved well and quickly, then led to an agonising four month\r\nback-and-forth of:
\r\na) Lies
b) Broken promises
\r\nc) Incompetencies
\r\nd) All of the above.
\r\nI messaged through Help & Support to cancel my broadband and phone line,\r\nbecause I was going away a lot over the summer and it wasn't worth keeping it\r\non. I was told it was sorted. I went to Australia for a month.
\r\nI got back to Edinburgh and discovered I'd been billed. I turned on my router\r\nto see if I'd managed to mess up the cancellation myself, and saw no sign of\r\nbroadband. So the services were cancelled, just not the billing.
\r\nI finally got round to contacting Sky about my bill; by this point I'd been\r\nbilled for July as well.
\r\nI spoke to a couple of people on the phone who made me feel like it was my\r\nfault, then finally to the lovely Rachael who dug deeper, discovered a human\r\nerror had occurred as a result of (we think) the two ways of writing the first\r\nline my address: 2F2 35 or 35/5. As a result, I had two account numbers... one\r\nhad the services I guess, and one had the bills. It was very confusing, but\r\nonce we found the two numbers Rachael properly cancelled my mysterious second\r\naccount, and very kindly applied £50 credit to make up for the overbilling. I\r\nwas told to contact again in a few weeks to initiate the refund process.
I tried several times to contact customer services via help tickets to ask for\r\nthe refund but got told (by a human, not an automated error message) there\r\n'system error' with my bill, or something totally unhelpful (telling me\r\nsomething I didn't ask about) in response.
\r\nI'm told the £50 credit can only be spent on Sky services, not refunded\r\ndirectly to a bank account.
\r\nI protested the unfairness of this, since I have moved somewhere with an\r\nexisting broadband provider and actually probably wouldn't be going back to\r\nSky after all this even if I had a choice...
\r\nI was told that actually they can refund it after all, and I should expect it\r\nin 48 hours. I pointed out that I'd heard this before. I was told not to\r\nworry, it'll be fine! I relaxed.
\r\n48 hours later... no refund.
Throughout September and October I started tweeting about the problems. I\r\nliked to do things like compare Sky's customer service to that of Virgin\r\nMobile (who have done wonderful things for me from time to time). I hoped\r\n'public shaming' might speed up a resolution. I got encouraging responses from\r\nthe social media team at Sky, who actually seemed to care (which is their job,\r\nI suppose) but really I only ended up opening more tickets and talking to\r\nother advisors in the end.
\r\nFollowing another help ticket chase up, I'm told credit was incorrectly\r\napplied in the first place, and has been removed. I'm not exaggerating (just\r\nparaphrasing) when I say this was done "for reasons".
\r\nOh, hey guys, how about... no? I didn't just suffer through months of torment\r\nfor you try to tell me the only competent member of staff I have spoken to was\r\nactually incompetent after all!
\r\nSo I had a very long live chat to William (I think; I've named him, because\r\nhe didn't leave a follow-up note like he was supposed to) who "carefully\r\nreviewed my account" and agreed with the verdict that the credit was\r\nincorrectly applied. I protested. He "carefully reviewed my account" some\r\nmore, and then said he could see that an explicit reason was left for the\r\napplication of the credit to my account in the first place... so it should\r\nhave been there after all! Yay.
\r\nHe said it would be refunded to my bank account in 78 hours. I told him I'd\r\nheard this before. He said not to worry, it'll definitely be fine this time.
\r\nGuess what.
So far, no refund, no re-application of credit to my bill, and not even an\r\nupdate to my help ticket about the conversation. It was like it never\r\nhappened. I stupidly didn't think to copy the chat as evidence, although I\r\nassume they have a transcript of it somewhere.
\r\nI DMed the social media team a bit, and scheduled a time to live chat with\r\none of them, directly. While I waited, I typed out a timeline of\r\neverything that happened so far so I could paste it straight to them.
\r\nThree quarters of an hour later, I have hope once more following a chat with\r\nthe most human member of Sky customer services I have spoken to so far.
\r\nHe found actual reasons for things that had been done for "reasons". For\r\nexample, my initial refund was never successfully issued because goodwill\r\ncredit must be issued as a cheque, not a bank account transfer, so Finance\r\njust rejected it. A silly rule, but that's the way of it. (In my case the\r\nresponse was just to not issue it though, so Finance can't even follow their\r\nown silly rules).
\r\nI'm still not entirely sure why the credit was totally removed though, or why\r\non my bill its removal shows up as a charge for Sky TV.
\r\nHe treated me like a person by not making vague promises, or holding back\r\nparticularities of how the organisation works. He told me he believed I\r\nshould be receiving a refund based on what he knew so far, but he'd have to\r\ntalk to his manager. He talked to his manager, who agreed. But he didn't then\r\njust tell me everything would be fine. He told me it still might get rejected\r\nby Finance (for "reasons", I presume).
\r\nWhat he is doing is speaking directly to someone in Finance to get a cheque\r\nsent out. He's manually changing my address to make sure the cheque goes to\r\nthe right place, and he's going to get in touch with me again on Wednesday\r\nnight to let me know what the progress has been.
\r\nI asked him what the next step is if Finance reject the refund request, and he\r\nimplied threats of violence. (NOTE to Sky managers who might read this: I\r\ndon't believe he meant he would really commit violence on the Finance team. He\r\nwas doing his job well and using humour to relieve me whilst promising he\r\nwould make an effor to follow up).
\r\nHe also gave me permission to verbally abuse him if he doesn't get in touch on\r\nWednesday night. I appreciate this sentiment, though it's unlikely I'll get\r\ninto capslock territory with this guy any time soon. I would tweet a gentle\r\na reminder of course.
I got a Twitter DM with a link to a live chat... After just under an hour of\r\nwaiting in a 'queue' for the live chat I had to leave, and DMed @SkyHelpTeam\r\nback to ask if they'd let me know when there was someone there, so I wasn't\r\nwaisting my time refreshing a page. They responded and sent the details to my\r\nMySky help tickets instead. And the result?
\r\nA cheque is in the post!
\r\nPlease allow 28 days for it to arrive.
\r\nI sure hope that's true. And that it's coming to the right address. I might\r\nsend a letter to my old flat, just in case. So I guess I'll update in 28 days\r\nwhether or not it actually arrived. I'm hopeful, but they've promised me that\r\nmoney is on its way in x amount of time before...
\r\nIf your problems aren't fixed immediately, pester the social media team\r\n(@SkyHelpTeam). Get everything in writing,\r\nrecord every conversation, keep track of dates, names of customer service\r\npeople, and what you were promised. Don't give up. For every semi-competant\r\nand sympathetic customer service person, there are four or five\r\nlazy/useless/uncaring or possibly even malicious ones. Just keep trying, and\r\nyou'll get through eventually...
\r\nFollowing my unfortunately extensive experience with Sky help ticketing, I'd\r\nlike to make a few suggestions for its improvement.
\r\nOh my god, I finally got on top of currency conversion for my Acquire posts.
\r\n\r\nI've been tracking my purchases since 2016-01-01, but lots of travel complicates aggregation of costs. Exchange rates vary day to day (that's as precise as I care about, at least) and currency conversion APIs vary in what they'll convert between, and how effectively. Several months ago.. maybe a year?.. I was auto-converting all purchases to USD. Some time ago something broke and I finally dug in and put it all back together again - better this time.
\r\n\r\nI abstracted exchange rate API requests and storing the results into CashCache and bulkloaded currency conversions to EUR, GBP and USD for all historical purchases into my triplestore. Henceforth the conversions will happen automatically when I insert something new.
\r\n\r\nThis means I can get back on top of my budget and know how much I'm spending again! Which is.. pretty important. Cos though I log everything, and am extremely thrifty, I have little realistic idea of where I am finances-wise. This is about to change. I'm hoping my general caution reveals that I spend much less than I think..
","as:published":{"@type":"http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#dateTime","@value":"2018-05-21T17:19:00+02:00"},"as:tag":[{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/cashcache"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/money"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/hacking"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/life"},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/tags/sloph"}]},{"@id":"https://rhiaro.co.uk/2018/08/tdbank","@type":"as:Note","as:content":"How to make $$$ (when you're TDBank):
\r\nBonus points if you continue to charge overdraft fees after customer has realised and transferred money back into checking from savings*.
\r\n\r\n* Seriously what is happening? Is this forever now?
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