Beware! Sky broadband line de-activated after 3 days :-(

Hi guys, am hoping some of you clever chaps can offer me some advice here. I've had broadband for a few years now with various companies at various addresses so have a decent idea how it all works.

Got activated on Sky "mid" package on Tuesday 6th March. Worked flawlessly for 3 days. Then went to work and came back on Friday 9th March. ADSL completely dead. No green "i" light on router. Tried my previous Netgear router, same thing, ADSL seems to be de-activated!

Has anyone else had this happen to them?

Spent over an hour on the phone to Sky (freephone number of course). Complete waste of time "have you got the grey cable plugged into..." etc. Managed to finally get a Tier 3 ticket raised.

The problem is nothing to do with router or PC - the ADSL line appears to be de-activated. Can't understand it, as other than this the whole migration from IDNet was painless and I've been very happy with the Sky broadband up until now. They seem clueless as to whats going on, hence Tier 3 involvement.

I'm on the ROWNHAMS exhange, doesn't appear to be anything wrong with it.

Anyone else experience this a few days after their line activation?

I am half way through my 8 days cooling off period under which I can cancel the broadband so need to make a decision by middle of this week.

Tier 3 rang me back twice on Saturday, but cannot help me as they have now decided its a line fault (wahey, I told them that on Friday). 4 adsl line tests failed. Phone line is fine. So then I was passed to Tier 2, who deal with logging BT line faults they told me.

Someone is supposed to be calling me back within 24-48 hours. I've been told to leave the router powered off, as BT request this.

So we will see what happens, will update post. If not fixed by Wednesday evening I will be cancelling the broadband within the 8 day cooling off period and going elsewhere. Just hope Sky/BT haven't screwed up my ADSL line causing me problems if I have to move to another ISP. Why do broadband companies in this country just make the whole thing so painful?!

Edited by bristewart (Mon 12-Mar-07 14:05:27)

just a little warning , if you do cancel then you could be waiting anything up to 30 days for sky to clear the line and BT to remove any markers before you can successfully move to another isp.

Chances are it'll be quicker to get sky to fix the problem then move else where. plus if you went elsewhere now you'd get charged an activation fee probably around �50 as it wouldn't be a migraton.

Exact same thing has happened to me today.

Luckily I got put through to tier 2 support quiet quickly as I had already tried everything that tier 1 wanted me to do.

They have raised a line fault with BT and promised to call me back when my line is sorted out which they said will be within 48 hours.

Afterwards, I used the BT online order checker and it appears that Sky put in a request to cease the LLU on my line the day after it was activated, so god knows whats going on there, but hopefully they can reverse it again quickly.

bristewart, did you get your line re-activated within the 48 hours?

if there is a cease sky are unable to cancel it at all, all the can do is let it go through then they have to wait for any markers on the line to be removed by BT then they can place another order

This also happened to me. Sky was activated on the 12th March and then I lost the light on my modem on the 15th. Strange things also happened to my phone line, the line went dead and I could hear someone pressing buttons on the phone and then a recorded messaging saying that it was the BT line test, I could also hear voices in a office, it was after this that my broad band was deactivated. Rang sky cs and was put through to tier 2. My lline was reactivated about 12 hours later. My wife rang sky and they told her that there had been a mismatch on the line and that BT had fixed it, I personally think a BT engineer had accidently disconnected the line.

The exact same thing has happened to my friend. Everytime he calls they make him go through the same checks even though we've seen the "cease" order on his BT account.
This has bene going on for over a month and all they keep telling him is that it's with the "service recovery team" and they will call him back (they never do).

I guess that I must have got lucky, my broadband connection was reactivated around 24 hours later, and when I checked the BT order status it was showing the cease as being canceled. Got a phone call from Sky the next day saying that it was BT's fault and because of the inconvenience they would credit a months broadband to my account.

So although I wasn't very pleased with being disconnected I am impressed with the speed that Sky put the problem right.

Same happened to me with the same dates, activated on 6th cut off at between 8:30-8:40am Fri 9th. Did all the usual tests myself, spoke to some tech guy that asked me to do them again. As I was off on holiday the following week I had to get my dad to sort it out and as hes not techincal it was a struggle. They called up Friday 16th to say they knew what the problem was, and apparently there is an adminstration error at BT and they have actually put a cease on the line and have cut off over 400 people.

I called them up yesterday and it took me 2 calls to get to someone with any sense. The actual problem isnt listed in a ticked number but on the main account details, so it was a chore for the techy to actually find the info.I will be calling them up again today to see if anything has been sorted aqs surely all they need to do is get BT to enable the line again.