Do I own my Sky Decoder?

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Ricksta

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Wannabe Geek

#319193 1-Apr-2025 08:55

I am thinking of closing my Sky account, but I don't want to hand back my old black MySky HD decoder in case I ever want to join up again. I do not want Sky to make me take the new white Sky box in the future. Now, when I signed up for the MySky box there was an option to "buy" the decoder rather than rent it. That is what I did. Does this mean that I do not have to send it back?

wellygary

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#3359384 1-Apr-2025 09:37

If you are a regular subscriber to Sky, Then they own everything... even the dish on your roof (if they installed it)

Most of the time they won't nag you to return things ( they can only be uses with their service)...

But they are not yours unless you have a piece of paper that says its yours....

Dingbatt

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#3359401 1-Apr-2025 10:38

If it is the original deal I did, where you paid $600 and then didn’t pay an ongoing monthly rental, then you still don’t “own” the mysky (ifaik). What you were essentially doing was betting Sky that you would use the decoder for more than $600 worth of monthly rentals. In my case I well and truly achieved that. Effectively a “lifetime rental”.

If I understand correctly, some customers have swapped to the new (white) box and retained that “lifetime rental” whereby they still don’t pay a monthly rental.

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Bung

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#3359418 1-Apr-2025 10:52

Their Terms & Conditions provide for them deciding what version of equipment you use and return of equipment when contract ended. $260 fee for non return of a decoder.

Goosey

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#3359425 1-Apr-2025 11:07

I don’t reckon it will still work if you ended your subscription. It’s key card dependant…

tweake

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#3359432 1-Apr-2025 11:35

side story, the dish belongs to the home owner, despite skys objections. this hit the news many decades ago. anything fixed to the house becomes property of the home owner. sky used to get annoyed because people would cancel the subs and then pull the dish off and sell it.

however the decoders, as far as i can remember, where always sky's property. even way back in the early days when you had to buy your own aerial.

eracode

Smpl Mnmlst
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#3359434 1-Apr-2025 11:38

Sky remotes are also Sky's property and if you try and sell unwanted remotes on TM, TM won't accept the listing.

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Behodar

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#3359438 1-Apr-2025 11:45

tweake:

however the decoders, as far as i can remember, where always sky's property. even way back in the early days when you had to buy your own aerial.

Interestingly back in ~2008 I paid a one-off installation fee to get a dish, a decoder, and access to Prime (this was before Prime was available on Freeview). This was only available if you were outside a UHF coverage area.

At no point was I told that I wasn't buying the equipment, and there was no documentation stating otherwise (in fact, there was no documentation at all!). I suspect that, at least legally, I probably owned the decoder. I've long wondered whether this was standard practice or whether there was supposed to be a contract.

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Handsomedan

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#3359450 1-Apr-2025 12:14

https://help.sky.co.nz/s/article/Who-owns-the-Sky-equipment

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wellygary

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#3359452 1-Apr-2025 12:17

tweake:

side story, the dish belongs to the home owner, despite skys objections. this hit the news many decades ago. anything fixed to the house becomes property of the home owner. sky used to get annoyed because people would cancel the subs and then pull the dish off and sell it.

I Think Chorus might have a different interpretation of that "law"

tweake

2391 posts

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#3359454 1-Apr-2025 12:17

Behodar:

tweake:

however the decoders, as far as i can remember, where always sky's property. even way back in the early days when you had to buy your own aerial.

Interestingly back in ~2008 I paid a one-off installation fee to get a dish, a decoder, and access to Prime (this was before Prime was available on Freeview). This was only available if you were outside a UHF coverage area.

At no point was I told that I wasn't buying the equipment, and there was no documentation stating otherwise (in fact, there was no documentation at all!). I suspect that, at least legally, I probably owned the decoder. I've long wondered whether this was standard practice or whether there was supposed to be a contract.

my mem it was in the fine print in the contract. all the equipment is rented. the scrap that happened is that sky claiming the dish is theirs is opposite to the property law. however in practice most of the time its a non issue. people left the dish in place and it was cheaper for sky to reconnect that customer (or the next one if house was sold/rented etc). that was fine most of the time except people taking it off and selling it and also real estate agents would get aerials removed to make the place look nicer.

way back at the start you had to buy your own aerial and installs could be done by anyone (ie not done by a sky contractor), which was off putting to customers. i started right at the end of that era (mid-late 90's?), probably one of the last private sky installs. they dropped that and you had to get it done through sky themselves. then it became "all sky's gear".

tweake

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#3359455 1-Apr-2025 12:22

wellygary:

tweake:

side story, the dish belongs to the home owner, despite skys objections. this hit the news many decades ago. anything fixed to the house becomes property of the home owner. sky used to get annoyed because people would cancel the subs and then pull the dish off and sell it.

I Think Chorus might have a different interpretation of that "law"

by mem it was only stuff thats fixed. ONT probably doesn't count as its not permanently wired into the house. but all the companies claim its "their gear" regardless of what any law says and generally its not really an issue.

Bung

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#3359456 1-Apr-2025 12:22

tweake:

side story, the dish belongs to the home owner, despite skys objections. this hit the news many decades ago. anything fixed to the house becomes property of the home owner. sky used to get annoyed because people would cancel the subs and then pull the dish off and sell it.

however the decoders, as far as i can remember, where always sky's property. even way back in the early days when you had to buy your own aerial.

It would be handy to have a link to this. The NZ Law Society include in their list of typical chattels TV aerials. If an aerial isn't a fixture why would a dish become one? What about all the other equipment telcos attach to your house?

Ricksta

9 posts

Wannabe Geek

#3359539 1-Apr-2025 17:21

Dingbatt:

If it is the original deal I did, where you paid $600 and then didn’t pay an ongoing monthly rental, then you still don’t “own” the mysky (ifaik). What you were essentially doing was betting Sky that you would use the decoder for more than $600 worth of monthly rentals. In my case I well and truly achieved that. Effectively a “lifetime rental”.

If I understand correctly, some customers have swapped to the new (white) box and retained that “lifetime rental” whereby they still don’t pay a monthly rental.

This was the deal I did as well. I upgraded to the new white decoder, and paid for it! They then tried to charge me a monthly rental. They dropped this when I told them about the $600 deal. I also returned the white box (got a refund) and luckily I had kept the black decoder. I really want to avoid the new white box at all costs, so will probably just keep the black decoder and the basic plan.

xpd

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#3359548 1-Apr-2025 18:13

Back in the IHUG Ultra days, when a customer cancelled their account, we only asked for the SM200D card back, the dishes were worth nothing, and they could be used for Sky.

After cancellation, funny thing was though, we could charge them if they damaged them. If they wanted them removed, we'd charge. So altho IHUG "owned" them, IHUG wouldnt do anything about getting them back if the owner wanted it gone. Had many calls from irate customers who threatened legal action over them and we'd have to book and installer to go out and remove the dish with no charge to the customer. It was apparently the exact same policy Sky had at the time. (99% of the installers were Sky contractors anyway)

Gavin / xpd / FastRaccoon / Geek of Coastguard New Zealand

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