Ripped off?
 

Quite a long story so i shall try and keep it short.
We had Sky installed at our property in the summer. When the first engineer can out he said due to there being big trees in the way he would have to refer the job to the special heights team to see if they could find a signal higher up. So far ok. Special heights lot turn up and the short answer was yes we can get a signal if the dish goes on a pole attached to the chimney. The only problem was that Sky won't pay for the team to do this but if we give him a £100 and don't tell Sky he will do it. At the time and after so much messing around i finally agreed and the work went ahead. Now i am starting to wonder if this is true and did the installation guy just do me out of £100. He made it quite ckear that if i told Sky about it they would stop our Sky signal as their installation policy won't allow such work.

Re: Ripped off???
 

Special Heights don't work for Sky. They are sub-contractors.

£100 sounds like alot. You can tell Sky but I don't think they can do anything about it. As for Sky switching you off, is a load of......

I think Chris or some other mod have used Special Heights maybe wait until they reply.

Re: Ripped off???
 

Sky special heights team (not really a team but not thier standard installers) will only go to a height of 30ft (the point to the height of the dish), anything higher and they normally refuse. If you do get one to go higher then yes they will normally charge you extra, how much extra is between you and the person. £100 does sound a lot especially as he is also getting paid by sky ;) I personally wouldn;t expect to pay more than £50-£60 extra as that would cover any extra time and equipment needed

Re: Ripped off???
 

Sky won't turn off your tv if you are paying your subs, the contractor is basically on a con there and didn't want sky to find out he is taking back handers over the top of installation fees.

Re: Ripped off???
 

You have a very good memory. :D

Yes, we tried to use Special Heights, as the construction of our house meant the dish had to go on the brick chimney rather than on the wooden exterior walls. Unfortunately there are comparatively few special heights teams so you can have a long wait for them, and they cancelled on us twice for various reasons. We gave up after a month or so, and cancelled our order which we had placed directly with Sky.

We then went to a local independent Sky retailer who was doing a free installation offer. He came out within a week and had the dish up where it needed to be, no bother.

The problem with Sky's own official installers is that they have to work to Sky's company elf'n'safety rules. This means installations at height must be done by a Special Heights crew, and even then there are limitations to what they'll do, as the OP has discovered. If, on the other hand, you book an independent satellite installer, the only limitation is what that installer is personally prepared to do, as it's his own business and his own neck.

Faye, personally I'd have told your Special Heights team exactly where they could stick their steel pole, and then looked around to see which of your local independent retailers were doing the best installation deals.

What you have basically paid for is for the installation guy to do a cash-in-hand foreigner on time when he was already being paid by Sky. He is right, officially he probably wasn't allowed to do the job, and ultimately you may well have ended up paying someone else to put the dish on a pole, but you may not have got the best deal by paying him £100 there and then, and if the dish falls off its pole in six months you certainly won't have any redress with Sky.

Re: Ripped off?
 

You've been stung if the installer did it as a job on behalf of sky, which he did, and also took a backhander.

The photo below shows a install that Sly wouldn't do (an additional lashing kit was put on after) because they said there was no line of sight. The house shown is in the middle of nowhere in matlock area, but for the whole job, which included Sky HD and two standard boxes being installed, as well as supplying one of the standard boxes, and running all the phone lines, cost this particular customer £250 as an independant.

http://www.neroaerials.co.uk/photos/...serialNumber=1
[MOD: Oversized picture reverted to link, please resize before republishing]

The engineer who did your job would with the money paid by you and Sly would have been paid £140 in total, and you can bet your life that if any other sly engineers go out there for a service call, they won't go anywhere near it. At least with an independant, you can del with them directly and because they have their business name to look after, they will normally do the best they can for you (within reason)