Sky High

See, I knew this is how it would end up when I started having work related things to do, like marking exercise books. However, you don't want to know about that.

I decided to go for broke and buy a Sky+ satellite Receiver. We have a Sky Satellite already, but Sky+ allows you to record satellite and do other magical things like pausing reality. So if the Swiss do destroy the world then I can pause reality or run time backwards until before the bang. And I know that this is true because the adverts from Sky tell me it's true.

Besides, later next year they are going to shut down the analogue transmitters in Glossop, along with the rest of Granadaland. At that point, if you have not got a digital system then you will have no TeeVee. HELL ON EARTH! Of course, we have Digital TeeVee, but what we don't have at the moment, is any way to record that digitalk TeeVee. The old analogue recorder will not do the job and our current Digital Recorder will end up only being able to record the one program that is showing at the moment. Which is not much good really.

So when I came into a couple of hyndred quid that I did not expect, Pat and I decided to splurge it on a Sky+ system.

Should be easy, shouldn't it. Read the adverts from Sky. Ring them up and buy on the telephone. Buy online using Sky.com. Use the Interactive Services on our Sky Box. Easy Peasy. Don't you believe a word of it. For starters the price of the box varies depending on where you buy it. Buy online and it is 99 pounds in real money. Buy over the phone and they wanted to charge me two hundred and ten pounds. (HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE) Well at least I thought Hee Hee Hee until I went to check prices in my local Sky Shop. There they told me I would have to pay THREE HUNDRED QUID. The funny thing is that some people pay three times the price and think they are getting a bargain.

So I tried to buy online - and the website crashed. Not my broadband connection, the Sky website. I tri3ed fifteen times and it crashed everytime!!!!

So I tried buying by Interactive Service and the Interactive Service crashed and told me it could not talk to the telephone. Funnily enough it had no problem talking to the phone if I wanted to book a movie.

So I phoned them up. The line connected immediately but it took 55 minutes for someone to answer the phone! The bloke who answered the phone had the intelligence of a small legume (a pea to be precise.) And was unable to sell me a Sky+m Box for the online price. He wanted to charge me £250 quid. Do I look like a Spaniel? Do I???

To cut a very long story short, before I, or you dear reader die of boredom, I finally managed to speak to a Lady who both works for Sky and had a lot of Common Sense. So I have bought my Sky+ box, for the Internet Price. But what about all those phone calls and the fact that the website doesn't let you buy stuff. I wrote a stiff email of complaint and I will assuredly let you know what comes of it.

I'll probably write the next Diary post in another week's time.

Have fun, and don't do anything I wouldn't do. But then, I have a very wide range of tolerances.