Tags: Scams
Junk Mail from Satellite Direct UK
November 29th, 2006, by Rich.
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It’s been a long time since I’ve seen complete mindless determination in the face of utterly overwhelming odds, but Satellite Direct have shown a lack of comprehension that is quite staggering in their recent marketing campaign. Today, they have raised the bar of ineptitude.
The Odds against Satellite Direct
The odds stacked up against Satellite Direct are not just high, they’re positively gargantuanly mind-bogglingly insurmountable; but this plucky little company won’t give up.
Satellite Direct want to sell us a warranty for our Sky satellite television receiver and they don’t give a stuff that we don’t own one.
It matters not a jot to them that we’ve never had one - why let a trifling little detail like that get in the way of a good marketing opportunity?
Disregarding Things
If you’re disregarding important things like checking that your victims potential customers have a need for your warranty then a few other forgetful moments won’t go amiss either, like forgetting to check if your victims potential customers are registered with the TPS.
We for example are registered with the TPS, so it’s unlawful, for Satellite Direct to call us and even try to sell us anything, but that’s not stopped them calling us twice (1,2) already, and comments are starting to arrive from others who have also been tele-spammed.
Satellite Direct Junk Mail
So if your tele-marking operations were facing repeated TPS complaints, what do you do?
Well I was most impressed today to hear from John Campbell whose 96 year old mum-in-law received a letter from Satellite Direct informing her that she too had an expired warranty on a Sky satellite receiver which has (like ours) never, ever, existed.
So that’s what Satellite Direct do, they switch to junk mail. We’re also registered with the Mailing Preference Service, so it’s also unlawful for Satellite Direct to directly send us junk mail.
It will therefore come as no surprise that we too have received a letter from Satellite Direct UK which opens:
The initial manufacturer’s warranty on your digital satellite (Sky TV) system has now expired and this leaves you open to expensive call out charges and repair costs should anything go wrong!
Profiting from Dishonesty?
If Satellite Direct can repeatedly badger us with this specious nonsense about the expiry of a warranty on a device which has never existed, then we must question how many real Sky customers are buying unnecessary warranties on machines that are still covered perfectly well by the original warranty?
Add todays letter to the call I received earlier this year telling me I’d won a flight to Turkey thanks to Data Partnership Solutions and One4Travel - which work in partnership with Satellite Direct UK and that makes four occasions when they’ve ignored the TPS and MPS and contacted us, then attempted to mislead us.
Countrywide that could scale up to a lot of unsolicited and unlawful telephone calls and junk mails, and a lot of unhappy customers.
Update: Satellite Direct UK’s business practices have subsequently been successfully challenged in the High Court by BSkyB.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:22 pm
Can anyone please tell me, or have any idea, where Satellite Direct gets bank account details from? Also, has anyone else been promised paperwork and never received it?
March 17th, 2007 at 8:08 am
I too foolishly took out a warranty over the phone (misled into thinking it was Sky). Thought no more of it til credit card bill arrived 2 weeks later and I realised it wasn’t sky. I checked and sky warranty also had 2 months left to run. Thankfully I was able to trace company details via website forums as I have recieved NO paperwork. Rang company and was given a warranty number and told to write to a Kirkby address to cancel. I have and have had no reply and still got no paperwork. Will try writing to registered office in london. Does anyone know if companies have to give a cooling off period? As I recieved no paperwork and no was given no contact number when I was originally called I had no way of cancelling the warranty.
March 17th, 2007 at 9:21 pm
I have a policy with Satellite direct and have had to use their services in January and they were called around 9am and an engineer was here about 2pm. When I was with Sky it 4days to get an engineer out. My 83 year old father in law received a letter advising him his warranty had expired which it had and I advised him to take out the policy. He did and had to call them out and they also came within 4hrs. The engineer who came to us was polite and knew his job. If I had to choose again who to take warranty with I would certainly it out with a company who keep their promise. Why knock a company that gives such a good service. I am registered also with the TPS and can say that I receive more phone calls than enough from credit card companies. Insurance companies and yet have only had 1 call from Satellite Direct in 2years.
Has this company got it right and just offering a good service at a reasonable price? Were they taken to court by Sky because they were losing customers to them?
When I took out my policy 2 years ago over the telephone I knew it was not with Sky and I have been very satisfied with the service and would recommend them to anyone.
March 17th, 2007 at 10:23 pm
Hi Terry,
I must say I find your message awfully curious, and I must apologize in advance if you left it in good faith but I cannot help but distrust your motives - after all, why are you reading this? What caused you to go looking for a website that happens to mention a company that you say provides you with a warranty?
You seem to have missed (or perhaps willfully ignored) the point entirely. It does not matter to me how good the repair folk are. I don’t need them. I’m not a Sky customer; never have been. My warranty has not run out because I have never had a warranty.
Satellite Direct are irrelevant to me.
I think it’s apparent that the “knocks” received by Satellite Direct are due to their repeatedly ignoring the TPS and MPS, and as was proven in court, their “habitual passing-off” and “misrepresentation”; and the realization by several people that (a) they may have been duped into buying a warranty from a company who they thought was an approved Sky associate or (b) that they may have bought an unnecessary warranty.
Why did you register with the TPS? I’ll answer that for you; it’s because you value your privacy.
Excusing Satellite Direct because they’re one of several companies who have called you over the last two years is akin to saying that if your house is burgled once, then it’s illegal, but if you get burgled several times then it’s OK because everybody does it.
Your position on this point is indefensible. You also appear to have confirmed that Satellite Direct also called you when you’re TPS registered - another TPS transgression?
Nope, they’ve got nothing right because they have no service they can offer me.
It’s the above point that really puts the nail in the “why do I distrust your motives” coffin; but to answer it…
No, they were taken to court by Sky because they “intended, through the marketing strategy put in place, to suggest a connection with Sky and intimate a current relationship with the customer to create a bond of trust.”
Not to me you can’t, for two reasons:
As I said, I find it curious that you’re commenting, and your (rather disappointingly argued) support for Satellite Direct appears entirely irrelevant - unless…
The last I heard of the court case, payment of court costs had been agreed upon, but damages were still to be considered, so perhaps you’re a shill for SD, hoping to sway the balance of evidence away from the oh-so-very-negative bias that the truth has caused.
March 24th, 2007 at 4:08 pm
OOOH OOOH I too USED (past tense)to work for this company and what you say ‘Anon’ is absolute rubbish and just the very fact that (myself an exception) he only employs single mothers on benefits from the Littlehampton and Bognor Regis area your language proves how uneducated his staff are . It’s dissapointing to know that his recruitment standards have not improved. That’s precisely why I left as it is only people with loose morals that wish to work for a company that’s perfectly happy to con people as long as they paid a nice amount for it and considering most staff members’ are not even on the ‘books’ i’d be very worried if I were you and the ‘tax man acometh’.
March 29th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
hahaha yea me again. i work there cos i am uneducated your right. i have no qualifications at all which is a shame cos i think im actually not that stupid. as for good wages i work monday to friday and get the shittest wage you could imagine. i am on the books though, so you were wrong about that. i read all the crap i wrote a few weeks back and i must have been high or drunk because it really is the bottom of the barrel! im just too scared to be unemployd again!!! help me boakes.org!
April 2nd, 2007 at 11:18 am
I recently received an unsolicited letter from Satellite Direct UK.
The letter tells me that my Digital satellite (Sky TV) warranty has expired and I am now open to “expensive call out charges and repair costs”. How strange this is as I have lived here for five years and have NEVER had SKY TV.To make matters worse my name was mis-spelt and on the reverse of the letter was a form that I was asked to fill in.If I obliged and filled in the form they would then have all my bank details.If Satellite Direct UK can do this to me and I have never had Sky tV then I urge all readers to beware.
April 25th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
hiya rich, remember me, i spoke with you last year i work for sky tech, i just thought i’d take a look in a see how you are getting on the extended warranty issue we talked about!!!! As i told you when we spoke this sat direct are shocking, and i am still getting people calling about a warranty that they don’t have with us, they have warranties with this company among otherwho are pretending to be working on behalf of sky! Are you still to date getting phone calls and letters?
April 26th, 2007 at 6:34 pm
Well there’s a thing. I too have received a scary warning from this bizarre company! Needless to say I do not and never wish to own a Sky digital TV box. Am I just being a tad cynical or are these people using the Electoral Roll as a source of potential victims?
Love the reply from anon employee-cool reasoned reply in perfect English? Hardly! Back to school anon-do not capitalise words you can’t spell!
Jimbo
April 27th, 2007 at 8:34 pm
Having read some of the comments about this company I’m a little concerned about my current position with them.
My warranty on my Sky Digi Box did expire last year so when I received a communication from Nationwide Digital Satellite Warranty Services Ltd, I was not particularly surprised. Having had a problem with my dish assembly some 12 months before and not having to pay anything, it appeared that a payment of £59.99 for a one year contract was good value. The timing also lead me to assume that they were official Sky operators. So I signed up using my credit card. The contract was sent to me and I followed the registration procedures. The contract expires on 28th October 2007.
Imagine my surprise when I received a letter during January from Satellite Direct stating that my warranty period had expired and inviting me to enter int a contractual agreement with the. I no longer have the letter but using their email address at the time I wrote expressing concern about their approach. Naturally I had no reply.
On 21st April I received my credit card statement and found a deduction of £59.99 had been made by Satellite Direct UK Ltd.
I contacted Nationwide Digital on their Southport number, surprisingly on Saturday afternoon. A lady confirmed that they had merged with Satellite Direct and that a number of former Nationwide customers had made the same complaint about unauthorized withdrawals and suggested I talk to the Arundel office of Satellite Direct.
I contacted them on Monday 23rd April and explained my problem to which they replied that there had indeed been several mistakes and that my card account would be credited immediately.
As I have found that after five days no such corrective action has taken place I looked up forums to see if there were any comments about these two companies. Surprise, surprise there a reams of letters on the subject.
At this stage I can only consider two words; SCAM and FRAUD.
Perhaps I am being unfair, but in the light of what I have read I feel I have just cause to be suspicious
My next port of call apart from further attempts by phone is likely to be Trading Standards.