Sky+ HD box = kaput. Now what?

Last week whilst I was trying to watch Stephen Fry and Jonathan Ross talking about Twitter on BBC1, my Sky+ HD box — not more than 2.5 months old — screwed up.

It’s making a clicking sound and failing to boot. Sounds to my highly inexperienced ears like a hard disk failure.

Uber annoying. Uber annoying x10.

I can’t specifically recall what I pay BSkyB for this service — but the huge premium I pay above the normal bog standard tenner a month is specifically geared in my mind so I don’t have to deal with this bollocks.

I want to switch it on and for it to work.

The fact it doesn’t is a significant inconvenience when there’s stuff I want to watch, particularly for business purposes. Rarely do I ever watch anything live any more. I get it all on iTunes and consume it on demand. Or I get it on BBC iPlayer.

My wife took a phone call from Sky a week before. Calling to ask if we wanted to buy insurance for the Sky+ HD box. She declined. Sensible. It’s a piece of consumerist tat and I expected the device to function for another year or so.

It’s a Samsung.

You’d think Samsung would have avoided sending me a piece of shit system. They’re supposed to have really low manufacturing error rates.

So now I need to sod about.

I took 3 minutes to skim Sky’s generic ‘My Box is on standby and not working’ help pages. I bet I’ll have to spend minutes reading their generic help and find out that I need to phone technical support.

I really couldn’t be arsed with it. The fact I’m even having to divert seconds of my valuable time to the matter is flucking annoying. Don’t you get it, Mr Sky? You’re not worth the sodding time of day. Either work. Or don’t work and don’t bill me.

And the equipment and service are one and the same, regardless of what the bollocks contract will say. I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.

But I’m willing to bet it says that if my stupid box stops working — which, delightfully — it has — I need to pay for another.

That isn’t really an issue per say. I took the risk not buying insurance because I don’t want to sod about trying to beat the claims departments.

So if I do have to pay for another, where is the online ordering form? Couldn’t find one. Maybe it’s there, buried somewhere.

I read the generic help page.

Phone technical support.

Joy.

I am willing to bet this is going to be a 100% boring, painful and highly unfulfilling experience.

Which is why I’m writing this post. Have you had a similar experience?

And can I buy a Sky+ HD box on eBay and just plug it in, thus avoiding the pain and negative-joy of interacting with Sky?