Sky

Foolishly, I have this wild notion that one day, if the stars align in my favour, I might be able to reduce my Sky subscription. I know, I know. What a crazy, idealistic dreamer I am. But I just feel it ought to be possible to watch television for less than a thousand pounds a year. I seem to remember, in the dark recesses of my brain, that once upon a time, far away in a wonderful utopia where TVs had big fat buttons, there used to be three channels with everything you wanted to see on them and no more bureaucratic or financial a nightmare to access this simple pleasure than paying a licence fee of a few pounds. Now the licence fee — inflated enough in itself — is the least of your worries as the payments to Sky grow bigger and more inexplicable.

‘Orange 1-1-8 thousand how may I help you?’ said the cheerful voice. Carefree as you like, I asked for the number for Sky customer services to report my parents’ broken digibox. This was back on Christmas eve morning. I had been walking the dog around Kenilworth Castle when my dad rang in a panic saying the Sky box had broken, and, well, we had rather hoped to watch some television over Christmas. So I took it upon myself to sit in my car and make a phone call to sort it out. But when I searched Sky’s website on my iPhone I could not find a number for customer services. I found numbers for all sorts of other things including ‘Report a deceased account holder’, but nothing at all for living account holders with deceased Sky boxes.

Don’t do it. Do not, whatever you do, even think about doing it. I was happy not doing it. And then I weakened and did it. And now I am living to bitterly regret it. I speak of switching my broadband provider, of course. Like any ‘switch’, it promised to be many things — cheaper, faster, shinier — and turned out to be a living nightmare. What made it worse was that my BT service was very good. It was expensive, but it worked. I remember the fateful day I decided to ditch it. I knew deep down it was the wrong thing to do. I loved you, BT broadband. You weren’t superfast fibre-optic. But I loved you all the same. Then I had a rush of blood to the head and decided to ring Sky to ask whether I could get a cheaper TV package.

A slight change to the normal rules of engagement for this latest post in our 'Right to reply' series. Whereas these posts normally take issue with what your Coffee House baristas have written, this one takes issue with the post by the BBC's Jon Williams that we put up yesterday. It's by Al Jazeera's Ben Rayner: In wars reputations of whole news organizations can be made or broken very quickly. And the spin on the result is almost as important as the reality. Undoubtedly the BBC took a fearful kicking in the press over its coverage of the fall of Tripoli in August. To the British papers, Sky's Alex Crawford had won the day at the expense of slow moving Auntie.