Monday, February 01, 2010

The End Of An Era...

Remember a couple of years ago when I said that there was a chance that we might lose our Sky satellite subscription in the "near" future. Well, horror of horrors, it's finally happened!!!

This past October, a box began popping up on our screen telling us to insert our new satellite card and we'd have to press a button on our remote every 60 seconds(!!!) in order to get the message to go away - ANNOYING!!! Our card was supposed to have been sent to the U.K. home of one of Mrs. TBF's colleagues, but it never arrived in the mail. Mrs. TBF's colleague had to call Sky from her home in the U.K. (because Sky now blocks calls from outside the U.K.), pretend she was Mrs. TBF (after we coached her on what to say), and ask for a new card to be sent. Sky said they would do so.

They didn't.

After calling Sky a couple of times, and Sky saying they would send a new card but not doing so, we just asked our friend to call them and cancel the subscription. When, our friend called to cancel, Sky practically begged her to give them one more chance. About a week later, much to our surprise, the card came.

This past Friday, we received our new card from our friend, and...

IT DIDN'T WORK!!!

Our friend called Sky from her home in the U.K. this past weekend, and they told her it would be working within 24 hours (after we had to provide the old card number, the new card number, AND the serial number of our Sky box). After THIRTY hours, it still wasn't working, so our friend called Sky last night and canceled.

In the end it was kind of strange: WE wanted to keep our subscription, SKY wanted us to keep the subscription, but it just didn't work out. Shame!

But I'm happy to report that it's not a total loss.

Even without any card, the box still picks up quite a few free channels. Fortunately, one of the free channels, amazingly, is the U.S. Food Network. That means that we'll still be able to get our nightly dose of Iron Chef America every night at 10 p.m. - which is one of the few shows we watch with any regularity anyway. Plus, we'll still get the BBC channels, ITV channels, and quite a few others. Yes, no more NFL on Sunday nights, but... the season's almost over anyway, right? Plus, when the new season begins next September, we'll be getting close to moving back to the U.S. anyway.

Right, Mrs. TBF???

3 comments:

Global Librarian said...

We had the same situation. Fortunately Rosie in Spain was able to fix it in about 3 hours! Want me to hook ya up?

The Big Finn said...

Thanks, but no thanks. We really don't watch much TV, and when we do it's pretty much just the TV Food Network or CNN - both free. In fact, during the summer months, I'd say we often go more than a week without even turning on the TV. We're done with Sky.

CanadianSwiss said...

Well, having the Food Channel has probably saved the day for Mrs TBF!