I felt quite smug when our Sky box conked out a couple of months back. I was able to easily swap it with my sister’s old digibox (no longer used by her since she switched to Virgin Media) and get our TV back. Unfortunately my smugness, as so often happens, was misplaced, and this box has now also failed. The usual tricks (power off, then on; switch on while holding down “back up” to force a software download) didn’t work. Cue call to Sky’s expensive 0870 technical helpdesk.
I hate phoning technical support for anything. I’m a fairly smart, intelligent guy (stop laughing, you) but for some reason I always turn into a gibbering idiot when speaking on the phone to someone in a call centre, and find myself mumbling “OK… OK… I’ll try that” like a simpleton to every suggestion offered by the operator from their script.