A SLICE of PIE in the SKY II

I have woefully neglected to fulfil my undertaking to report back on the response to the letter reproduced immediately below. I shall rectify the omission immediately.

The day after I posted the letter, there was an unplanned development. I was presented with a replacement Sky+ box, not by BSkyB but by a kind and concerned friend. Once this was connected and found to provide all the functions that such a box is designed to furnish, the approach to BSkyB was rendered academic.

Nonetheless, when BSkyB’s Customer Services phoned me – commendably enough, on the same day that my letter will have reached the CEO’s office – I allowed the company’s representative to address my concerns before revealing that I should not be requiring the services of an engineer. It had been explained to me that I would still be expected to accept charges for the visit of an engineer and that the Sky+ box was indeed my own rather than the company’s property.

On the other hand, BSkyB did, through the medium of its spokeswoman, take responsibility for my three calls each having been disconnected and owned that this was less than my desert. Accordingly, the company was prepared to offer me a reduction of 25 per cent on my subscription for the coming six months. Of course I should have liked more and perhaps I should have haggled for more, but I accepted the offer.

On balance, I feel I have come out ahead. I lost a week of access to programmes in my Sky package, though doubtless all will be repeated in due course, the only question mark being over reruns of Seinfeld, the programming of which on Atlantic has been very erratic. I have gained a rebate of nearly £80 and – though this is no thanks to Sky – a (nearly) new Sky+ box which is functioning very much more reliably than its predecessor.

So the truism that guided me in making my complaint remains true: it is always worth making a fuss and doing so at the highest level of any organisation. It’s the CEO whose office is least happy to be bothered with irate customers and whose impatient demand for someone else to deal with it that is most likely to get it promptly dealt with.

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Much is being made today of its being 50 years since the release of Love Me Do, the first single by the Beatles. I remember hearing the record for the first time (probably on Radio Luxembourg) and deciding, in my pompous, 15 year-old way, that I wouldn’t care if I never heard of these Beatles again. So much for my star-spotting talent. It may be said in my defence, however, that every Beatles single released subsequently was very much better and, what’s more, very much more successful. Love Me Do only got to number 17 in the Top Twenty, after all.

What is sobering about this anniversary is that the beginning of the Beatles phenomenon seems – to me, anyway – to be such recent history. And then I stop to calculate. To a 15 year-old in 2012, the release of the first Beatles singles is exactly as remote as was the sinking of the Titanic to me at 15. And that makes me feel very, very old indeed.