What I’m about to write about is not a disaster, it might even seem trivial. The reason I  want to share it with you is that it feels unjust. I hate injustice and for some reason the principle of this has made me angry. I wanted to share my thoughts and see what you thought?

I’ve been a Sky customer for around seven years. Seven years of loyalty to the Sky brand and today I experienced something which made me question whether Sky value customer loyalty at all.

At the beginning of this year I considered switching providers. I wasn’t sure that I was getting the best value from Sky so I rang them for a chat about my options. I was offered a deal, a reduction in the price of my services, which brought the cost in line with the other service provider. I was also offered the option to upgrade to their new Sky box, and I was told about the great box sets that I would have access to “absolutely free of charge” in doing so.

I’m being honest when I say that the on demand service and the free box sets were what swung my decision. To take advantage of this I had to sign up to a new twelve month contract, which was fine with me.

That was four months ago and I was happy with Sky’s service. We used the box sets daily, as they offered sets of most of my children’s favourite Disney Junior programs. I would download a few episodes and they could watch them advert free, great.

Then recently the service stopped working, without warning. I rang Sky thinking it was a glitch. I was informed that the on demand box sets where free for a short period and that now they were part of their entertainment extra + subscription that I don’t have. I would need to pay an extra £5 a month to upgrade.

Now in my opinion I have signed a contract for twelve months on the basis of one of Sky’s customer service operators telling me that I would have access to these box sets for free (that’s a quote). I was never told it was a trial period, or that there was any limit to the amount of time I would have access to it “for free”.  Four months into the contract that feature is taken away, without warning. This doesn’t seem fair.

I’ve spoken to Sky’s ‘enhanced complaints department’ about this. They’ve told me that “they are within their rights to withdraw this service”. I’ve no doubt they know their legal rights and that somewhere in the small print I can find this legal disclaimer. What I am questioning is not the legality of this but the ‘rightness’.

When I’ve explained my individual situation and asked that I’m allowed to keep the service until the end of that twelve month period, I was refused. Basically whoever sold me this package based on this made a mistake. However Sky’s blanket policy make it impossible for this mistake to be corrected.

There is no scope for looking at customers as individuals with their own stories, only a ‘this is our policy, deal with it’ way of working. It feels as if my customer loyalty, and continuation of this is unimportant to them, perhaps it is?

I think this is horrible customer service, and an unfair situation. What do you think?