Once upon a time, there was a hubby and his warped woman and they lived happily in a little house not too far from what used to be a coal mine. They liked watching television, especially science fiction programmes like Stargate and warped woman was also very, very keen on 24. 24 was halfway through the series and getting very exciting so she eagerly looked forward to Sunday nights when she would watch it and then phone ‘A’ and have a good chat about what had happened.
Time passed by happily until one Wednesday night when hubby and WW were watching the late news. It said that Virgin Media were dropping Sky channels at midnight. Well, hubby and WW were a bit mystified at this but since Virgin had only just taken over their cable channel they thought it couldn’t really apply to them and so went to bed and dreamed of spaceships and Jack Bauer.
In the morning hubby phoned WW from work – “Have you checked the TV today?” he asked, “Do we still have Sky?” When WW looked, Sky was gone from the channel line-up and there was just a message from Virgin saying that due to a rise in price they would no longer be supplying Sky Channels. There was much weeping wailing and gnashing of teeth over this – no more Stargate, no more Jack – what were they to do?
Well, as with many tales, this one too has a happy ending as WW phoned the Sky company and the nice men from Sky came and fitted a shiny dish to the back of the house. Since it points straight at the sky, it gets all the science fiction straight from the spaceships and Jack is back saving the universe from the bad guys. All the services seem to work better than the cable did and through some quirk (yet another mistake by the cable company in fact), its costing less too! WW and hubby are now very happy and think that every cloud has a silver lining.
The End!
Actually, this isn’t strictly the end, as I simply wish to add a comment. There has been a certain amount of name throwing via the press between Sky (the Rupert Murdoch Empire) and Virgin (the Richard Branson Empire). It seems that with the renewal of a contract Sky wanted to raise their prices – they think that since they have the best channels (well, they have apart from the BBC) then they should get a fair (or unfairly high depending on who you listen to) price. Virgin didn’t want to pay any more than they were already paying and so said that unless Sky asked for a more reasonable figure, they wouldn’t pay up and therefore wouldn’t continue to have the right to broadcast Sky channels. They also figured that people would stick with them having decided that Sky channels weren’t that good after all.
I might have agreed with them, or at least sympathised with them except for one thing. In their infinite wisdom they didn’t see that we, as customers, needed to know what was going on. They chopped our channels without bothering to tell us in advance and without apology afterwards. In my book this was inexcusable. They have my e-mail address (heck they supply it), my phone number and my address. One e-mail could have been sent to every customer at a pence cost to the company, but no, nothing, zilch, nada. So, we continue with the phone and broadband until they pull the next stunt and the TV comes from the sky (literally!) ….and yes, silver linings and all that, it has worked out cheaper – about £15 a month (no, I don’t know how either!)
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