Sky vs Sony: which hates me most?
…or, rather, which is most indifferent to me?
I received a loyalty bonus: a one-month—as opposed to the standard one-week—free trial for Sky Show in Switzerland. Yay!
And all I have to do is add my credit card details, just in case I can't get enough forget to cancel at the end of the trial period. Boo!
The content seems okay, and there are a few HBO films to watch before the trial ends; but I will not be extending my subscription. And this is due to the way that Sony and/or Sky hate their customers. Or, at least, this one.
We watch Netflix on our main TV through a PS4. The PS4 is region-set to the UK—probably so that I could set up my PSN account in English rather than German/French/Italian, which are all that the Swiss Sony site offers. Ne'ermind, what it means is that the console is tied to the UK store, and I cannot download the Sky Show app from the UK store, only the Sky UK app, which my trial account cannot access.
According to Sky customer support:
The SKY Switzerland app is available only in the Swiss app store because of the transmitting rights for the content. Please check the settings in you PS4 if the country is set to Switzerland and try again.
Netflix, however, works just fine. We have a Netflix Switzerland account, but the app was downloaded from the Sony UK store. It appears that Netflix applies region-restriction through IP address, rather than at the app level through the PSN store.
No problem, just change the PSN region, right? Wrong. Sony doesn't allow an account's region to be changed. Which means one of two options: either create a new account with Sony Switzerland, with the aforementioned setup problem; or invest in a VPN, to fool the Sony store into recognising that I live in the country that I actually live in. (nosmile)
Neither option is worth the hassle for what's on offer. So we cannot watch anything on Sky together, as a family. Instead, we'll use the trial to watch the few films that we want on devices, then cancel.
Sky could make it easier to be a customer, by developing an app that wasn't tied to a region store, and using other approaches to region-restriction. Or Sony could be more customer-friendly, by allowing greater flexibility in language selection, or region transfer.* But that would be sheer, unbridled craziness, eh kids?
* I realise that there are reasons for this, but fuck 'em. I'm not trying to game the system, I'd happily change the region permanently. But perhaps that puts me in the minority of people who want to change regions.