Pay Once Watch Forever - how exactly does it work?

[norliss]

Excuse the seemingly daft question!

I've seen this mentioned here (and seen the subsequent page on the Currys site) but I phoned Sky and was unable to get any sense out of either of the two people I spoke to.

1/ Is this offer available only from Currys/Dixons?
2/ Am I right in saying I pay the £75 in-store, walk away with a box then call Sky to arrange the installation? (Anyone know the current lead-time on installations?)
3/ I gather this is just a vanilla-sky box, so would I be able to request a dual/quad LNB at installation to make upgrading to Sky+/Sky+HD at a later date?

TIA.

[davemurgatroyd2]

You can also order by phone - see here plus fuller details
http://www.freesatfromsky.co.uk/

You will NOT be able to request the quad lnb at installation from Sky - they will only supply quad lnbs if they are required for the equipment they are actually installing. You can however ask the installer to install a quad lnb you have already purchased beforehand and pay him for extra cabling etc required and most will oblige.

[ian-d]

Buy directly from www.freesatfromsky.com or one of the participating retailers, I have no exclusive codes at the moment so you will pay £75.

Once purchased, you will receive a pack, which explains the next step. What you do is phone Sky up, quote the reference number in the pack and tell them which 4 entertainment mixes you want (you are not tied to a specific 4). They will then book an installer visit with you (usually within a week) who will bring all the required satellite setup, including the standard Sky digibox, which will be a Thomson or Amstrad. The viewing card will be posted to you from Sky directly and should arrive prior to the installer visit.

You can request the installer to add a quad LNB and additional cable, but he's not contracted to do it so be polite and offer him a tenner, or unlimited tea and biscuits.

If you decide that you do not want the subscription any longer, and just wanted to benefit from the cheap satellite setup, make sure you cancel via phone and email within 3 of the 4 months, as you are on 30 days notice and any later than 3 months is too late to avoid further charges.

If you decide to stick with the subscription (80% do!) then you can of course buy a Sky+ or HD box from Sky, or from an independent retailers and connect up yourself, as hopefully the work will already have been done.

[norliss]

Thanks for your replies, people.

Hopefully I can butter the guy up and/or bribe him to fit a quad and at least a second cable since the whole point of me doing this now is with one eye on Freesat HD (with PVR) at some point in the near future.

Another slight issue I have is with the phone point. We have a VM socket in the living room (very near intended install location of said digibox) but it's dead since I gave VM the tablet recently. We do have a live BT (or C&W to be precise) socket but it's right at the other end of the property in the same room as the computer/router etc.

Would I be able to blag connecting to the dead VM socket and feigning ignorance of its dead state or am I going to have to have cables running right the way round to the BT socket?

[StevieBuck]

The nearest phone point to my sky box was outside the livingroom in the hallway. The installers came in and hooked it up using a telephone line extension (maybe about 10m long??) for us.

I removed the cable as I don't use any of the interactive services on Sky.