I had an offer to have sky HD free for a year, already got sky plus so thought why not. I asked if the sky plus could be put into my sons room which they said yes at an extra £10 a month, fine no problem as son willing to pay.
The engineer came today, first had a discussion about shoes as i asked him to take off as we have had new carpets - he said not allowed against their health and safety rules!! so asked him to put on the over shoes that i had (blue thingys) he said he would but not really allowed to wear those either!! if i want my carpets protected i have to cover them up, shame your not told this when they book you in.
Anyway i've gone off a bit as what i wanted to ask is does anyone have multiroom and if so are BOTH your sky boxes plugged into a phone line at all times?

My sky box is not into a phone line but apparently when you have multiroom both boxes have to be in one in case your getting the cheap deal and then pass the box onto you your neighbour and share the cost for receiving sky channels. He said if i didnt have them connected i would get charged as if its 2 seperate households.

Now i was just going to use the extension line for him to connect to whilst he was setting up then remove it later as we dont use the interactive part of sky, but he said sky would know. He then had ring to make sure he could still fit just the new HD box as it had now become a different job!! anyway he did it and i can remove the extension phone line from this in a couple of hours as now i still only have one box in the house and cant cheat sky out of any money.

It does say this in the contract but i thought as i dont have our sky box in a phone line and it makes no difference i thought the same would be for multiroom. son is not happy. Its so much hassle as now i would have to have 2 new phone sockets installed near my tv's.

> Its so much hassle as now i would have to have 2 new phone sockets installed near my tv's.

You don't need a 'phone socket near the TV, you can use an extension cable. When we had sky, the telephone socket was the other side of the room, we used an extension to run all the way around the room.

Do you have to have both boxes plugged into different 'phone sockets, or can you use a multi socket so both can be plugged into 1?

As far as I know you have to have them plugged in while you are under the contracted bit - once you are out of that you can unplug - ie after you've been there long enough to pay for your 'free' offer :-D

Hi, I took up a similar offer just before xmas and was told the same, I must say I haven't been brave enough to unplug yet, although my daughter doesn't have her multiroom box plugged into phone and nothing has been said.

The engineer just ran a long cable around the room as my tv is nowhere near my phone socket, just ask them to run the cable up the stairs but tell them not to attach it to wall.

Would you have to pay though if they come out again?

Both boxes have to be plugged in and if not they dont receive the signal from both boxes so charge you as if you were to sep households. I did have an extension cable ready so he could the initial connection but was then going to remove it but he said i couldn't, plus i only have etension cable and needed 2. My house has just been all updated and decorated so dont fancy cables running round the rooms and upstairs there is no telephone point at all - who needs loads when you have quadruple handsets!

How long has your daughters been unplugged? perhaps they only check if your in flats where it is possible to share a subscription through walls. I wasn't brave enough to take the chance but maybe i should have been.

I have phoned and commented on the shoe taking off rule and also mentioned that we should not all be suspected of trying to rip them off just because of not being plugged into a phoneline. They should at least give benefit of doubt esp to detached properties that it would be impossible to share with a neighbour.

It's been unplugged at least since last summer, but looking at the posts it may be ok as she is out of her 12 month contract period.

The engineer who fitted mine said they want it plugged in as you are more likely to use box office if you only have to press buttons rather than phone and order.

We used to turn our upstairs sky box off at night because of the noise it makes , we received letters on two occassions stating that if it is not plugged in or left on stand by at all times we would be charged two seperate rentals. When I complained they basically said it was tough and we'd have to wear ear plugs because they need the box turned on for updates which they usually send throughout the night!!

so they do check up then! No one has ever contacted us before about no phone line attachment but then we only had one box.
looks like a phone line will have to go in.

We have HD in the lving room and sky plus in the bedroom. When they set them up they ran a lead to the bedroom one so that is could be connected to the phone line but at some point it has got unplugged and we haven't heard anything, our bill is still the same. That was about 2 years ago!!!

Yes they do check up - if the box fails to contact then you get a letter.  I had problems and couldn't understand why the boxes weren't doing a phone back - this can be set up manually to check.  In the end I found it was down to the filters - to stop interference from broadband.  Once replaced the boxes phoned back no problem.  Last year we had problems with our broadband and the help line chap advised us to take the front of our phone box and connect with the interior socket - which worked for broadband but not for the sky boxes.  As long as you pay for multiroom then both boxes have to be connected - otherwise someone could be using the second box in another property entirely. 

We have now got both our boxes in one place - under the main tv - they are both plugged into the same phone socket.  We have got a magic eye which operates the second (or main box) from another room.  It means that I don't always have to watch all my programmes on a tiny tv!

When I hadmulti-room installed I kept getting a message that the box was unplugged from the line (it wasn't). Sky eventually wrote threatening to charge me for the Sky box so I phoned them and it turned out that the modem in the Sky box was faulty so they replaced the box FOC. I kept it plugged in for the year the contract said I had to, then unplugged it, cancelled multi-room and got Freesat cards from Sky instead for bedroom tv's.

I'm not absolutely certain but I think that the plug in has more to do with them collecting information about what you watch etc - probably for advertising statistics, than them sending updates ;-) kind of like your store points cards.

They have to be connected to a phone for the length of the contract (usually 12 months). I had multiroom when I lived with my parents, they wouldn't run the phone cable through the house so it had to go up and over. Anyway, I rarely open any correspondence from Sky as my bill etc was always the same, I don't know what made me open this letter but I'm glad I did, it was a bill for over £100 for the month, as they said I'd unplugged the phone lines from the other 2 boxes and they were charging me full fare for each additional box. I demanded an engineer visit (foc) and it turned out the phone cable had corroded outside.

I've recently had another sky box put in to our bedroom, and because the engineers never fitted the phone cable when we moved in (outside of the initial 12 months), it is a condition of the multiroom to have all boxes connected. So I had to make it clear when ordering that the engineer would have to connect a phone line to both the existing HD box and the new one. He was there for nearly 2 hours, but did an excellent job.

We have Sky HD downstairs and Sky+ upstairs on multi-room.  Our 12 month contract is nearly up and we will be disconnecting both sets from the phone lines shortly.  They do use the info for marketing (spying on us) and to make it ultra easy for us to 'buy' a box office film.  I suppose we have to play the game for a while, but I would recommend people disconnect after their year.