Hi all,

I just moved in Lugano Switzerland. I have my sister living in the UK. I would like to know if it is better to use a Sky agent or my sister which I don't trust :-) or think as a reliable person :-) when it comes to manage computer or material installation. I am asking that, because after reading the several threads over the subject, I just don't understand what it the problem with the activation of cards, the telephone line and the 12 months within which they check it.

Can someone give me some advise on it. A sky agent should be able to manage everything for you such as card activation. When I go to their website, I see that they propose to activate it for you. Therefore why can it be the case if I do it by myself. Ask my sister to take a subscription and activate the box with it cards and then send it to me. Why the sky agent can do it and not my sister?

Can anyone give me some advise over the SKy card and Box activation.

Regards,
Daniel

Precision:

My problem is that I read in the forum that, if you bring your own box then you will have to reactivate the card. In the sense that if the card or box is not connected during a while then you will have to reactivate it by calling Sky but with a hidden number and etc.... Why this situation is not true when it comes to sky Agent. They never talk about this problems on their website. That is why I would like to know, what should be the proper way to do it by yourself to obtain the same service as with a sky agent.


Kind regards,
Maatari

The thing with a sky agent is that they will do all this for you, but charge you for the service. Last time I looked they charge £10 a month on top of the sky subscription. So not only are you paying for Sky basic packages, sky movies, sky sports, sky HD, but you are also adding 10 a month into this, which starts to look very expensive!

From my understanding there are only a couple of times you need the phone line: When ordering pay per view content, or if you have a multi box (as you are getting a cheap second subscription they want to check that they are installed in the same location)

If your sister orders sky for you she will have an sky engineer come and install it at her place. Once he's left you simply need her to unplug the box and send it to you. She can't really go wrong.

following:

Also, as said before, if you have to call sky again to ask them to re-activate your card, why at that moment will they not check if you are connected to the phone line? and then block you.

Therefore, please, can anyone be quit explicit on this issue.

How to get a UK Sky subscription+Box+card work here when you have a fellow in the UK. Can someone give me the steps while clarifying the problem of the phone line and the card activation.

Kind regards,
-M-

>>>"The thing with a sky agent is that they will do all this for you, but charge you for the service"

1-/What do you mean by all of this, can you be more explicit?

2-/Are you referring to the activation? Therefore are you meaning that indeed the activation need a phone line? Therefore, how can I deal with it if my card is inactivated when it arrives in switzerland? (I don't have a phone line only mobile)


Kind regards,
-M-

>>>"If your sister orders sky for you she will have an sky engineer come and install it at her place. Once he's left you simply need her to unplug the box and send it to you. She can't really go wrong."

Hence, what about the 12 months?

you dont need phone line to activate your card (you read a bunch of serial numbers off the menu to the guy in the call centre).

if you put the card in a different box it doesn't work straight away. it does resyncronise after a week or so (leave the box on 24/7) without phoning them up.

you'll read lots of contradictory stuff on the interweb, but the above is in my experience.

Sorry, was only replying to the first message, didn't see the update before I posted!

I'm not really sure what you are wanting to do now? It sounds to me like you have a sky subscription that was cancelled and you now want to activate it again?

If you already have a working sky box and card, all you need to do is bring it over and plug it in. It will work (provided you have a satellite dish pointing in the right direction etc.)

It has been discussed on here already, with regards to the issue of new viewing cards. You do not need to be plugged in to a phone line to activate them. If you have a working sky box in the UK that you wish to bring over it will already have been activated and not need activating again.

You only need a phone line if you have "multi room" (more than one box on your contract, where second boxes are given a reduced rate) or (I think it's needed) to order pay per view content with the red button.

All the sky agents I've seen will want to sell you the whole sky package. So you pay them the subscription fees, not sky and do all your dealings with the agents. This is how they charge you a monthly fee on top of your sky subscriptions.

With regards to your sister having installing a box and shipping it to you, you ask "Hence the 12 months"? I don't understand what you are getting at.

If you ever do need to phone up sky, just claim that you no longer have a phone line and use skype or something like that.

Hi, the 12 months was something I read in a post stating that they can check if you skybox is connected within 12 months.

If you get a SKY box at reduced cost, i.e. direct through SKY with your subscription, then they say you must have the box connected to a phone line. But in reality this is not usually a problem EXCEPT for Multi-room where you are only paying an extra £10 for the second subscription.

Do you really want SKY or would freesat do? Really depends if you want the Sports channels then there is little option.

A way around the 12-month phone line is to buy the SKY box for full price or one on e-bay then just ask SKY for the card etc...

If you will make lots of calls to the UK, it may be worth looking at a Tesco Internet phone for cheap/free calls (for a small monthly fee). This will also enable you to call SKY if you have any issues, and you choose the area code for the phone so this ties nicely in with your sisters address....

I will be selling a SKY+ box soon (Pace vesrsion) which has been upgraded with a new 250Gb drive. Will have some other bits to sell as well, some new, some second hand.

>>>>>>
If you get a SKY box at reduced cost, i.e. direct through SKY with your subscription, then they say you must have the box connected to a phone line. But in reality this is not usually a problem EXCEPT for Multi-room where you are only paying an extra £10 for the second subscription.
>>>>>>

-What do you mean by this is not usually a problem? Does it mean that even if I don't have multi-room their might be a problem? Hence, would it be more intelligent, to get my own if I don't want any interruption. In other term sending it back their to my sister so that it can be activated again. In this later case, does it work as easy as what I meant (just pluging it back until it is reactivated) ?

-In case I decide to buy the SkyBox by myself, who is going to activate the all thing for me? My sister? What does she needs to do? Will it be difficult for someone who is not too much into technics.


One small precision, she already has one Sky subscription at home for TV and internet.

>>>
Do you really want SKY or would freesat do? Really depends if you want the Sports channels then there is little option.
>>>

I don't know I think so because, what I want is Comedy Central
that is my favorite one :-)



regards,
Maatari

From all of your answer I conclude that, If their is no problem with Sky agent, it is because, you buy your won SkyBox when you deal with them, rather than the one from SKY. Is it right wrong ?

This could cause a problem. Have you read this thread ?

Thank for the info. Still the answer is not so clear. Apparently, the only way is to say that you can't have phone in the room which would explain why you don't want the multi-room. But I don't understand that. I thought that for activating a SKYbox you needed a Line. I thought that within 12 months they probably check if your sKYBOX is connected. So how come you can explain that you don't have phone in that room, and at the same time want to have a skybox in there. IT just does not make sense to me.

What is needed for a SKYBOX: A Line or not ?


regards,
-m-

You don’t need to have the box connected to a phone line. The card is activated by you calling Sky with the necessary details.

NO phone line is needed (especially when you buy the box at FULL price or second hand).

You MUST :

Have a UK Address.

Call them to activate your card, but if they see you are calling from abroad you are in deep s*!t. I've even heard them questioning why the number is blocked. So best to try and do this from the UK, or get a Tesco internet phone.

Personally I would NOT use an agent unless there was no other option. SKY is already a RIP-OFF and the extra cost for an agent makes this even more expensive.

Hi all,
My sister has her own apartment out there. And she rent part of it from time to time. In order to help her I proposed her to tell SKY (whenver Sky ask her why the second BOX) that she has her own suscription and onther one with different things for guest or client or whatever in the house. This way she can include it as a free service in the rent but she want to keep it separate. From what I understand With the multi-room, you have the same channel in each room right? However, you take another suscription you are not binded to a certain type of channel that yuor client might want as free service. Of course we can also add the telephone in the room. Or simply saying that bI'm renting out there.

But in any case, shall I understand that as she already has a suscription, then she should not ask for someone to come and make the activation for her again. This time she has to do it by herself (calling skype for activation). In this case wouldn't it be preferable to buy a new one at full price, instead of the one that comes with SKY? I am assuming (from a post above) that if I order a SKYBOX with SKY suscription from SKY, putting the adress of my sister, then they will come and install it for her.


Kind regards,
Daniel

No. The point of Multiroom is that you can watch different channels.

What I meant is that: the package of channels are the same per suscription wether you take a multi-room or not. isn't it like that ?

Have a look at the Sky website for details of the various packages.