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While the drop in speed did bother me, I consoled myself by the fact that I was only paying £5 a month – a saving of £30 over what I was paying before. Fair enough, I thought. That would have been the case had the service proved reliable. However, on no less than five occasions since my Sky line was activated, I came home to find that the service had gone down. On that first occasion I was told by the Technical ‘Helpline’ that it was down to problems at my local exchange and that they had no information what the problem was or when it might be fixed. It was up by the next evening. The second time I was told the same thing. Of course a few days later the connection was down again and I had to call again. On this occasion I couldn’t help but be riled that the person on the end of the phone could clearly not understand English properly.

Regardless of what your stance is on having call centres abroad, does it seem too much to ask for them to be fluent in the language of the country they're answering calls for?

By the fourth time though, I was completely fed up. It doesn’t matter how much of saving your making if you’re not getting a basic service. I wanted to cancel and go back to NTL.

I spoke to a department that laughably called itself ‘Customer Services’, a name which turned out to have as much meaning as referring to Sky Broadband referring to itself as an Internet Service Provider. I requested that I should be allowed to cancel as I wasn’t receiving a service but this fell on deaf ears, despite my pleas that having no Internet connection meant that I was once again unable to do any work. Having got nowhere with him I asked to speak to a manager. When I got through to him, I could scarcely believe what the first thing he said to me was. The first person I spoke to had passed on what I’d said, and instead of an apology – he said that he’d heard that I’d be using my Internet connection for work and would you believe it, I had therefore contravened the Terms and Condition of service.

It seems that clause 2a of Sky’s Tems and Conditions states,
“Sky Broadband is for private use by you and members of your household only. It must not be used for any commercial or business purpose.”

Instead of assisting me, I was actually being attacked. Aside from the incredible rudeness, what struck me was the sheer absurdity of the rule. He was implying that even checking my work email was not allowed. While overusing a service to the detriment of other users in one thing, as covered by Fair usage policies, what you use the Internet for, within the bounds of the law, in another thing entirely. I could possibly understand if you’re running actually making money from a business using a home connection, but to be berated for checking email or conducting research for work is just ridiculous.

Of course I wouldn’t have minded so much if that he had therefore terminated my contract as that was what I wanted but unfortunately, no such thing was forthcoming.

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