New UK Sky Stream TV Customers No Longer Own the Box (puck)

New customers of the Sky Stream TV product, which uses your home broadband ISP (doesn’t have to be Sky Broadband) and WiFi to stream Sky’s on-demand video and live TV content directly to your existing TV without a satellite dish, may be displeased to learn that they no longer own the set-top-box (puck) itself.

The Sky Stream service typically starts from £26 a month on an 18-month term (£29 for a 31-day term) – this covers Sky Entertainment and the Netflix Basic plan. But at launch you also had to pay a £39.95 one-off set-up fee (or £20 if you took an 18-month contract) to help cover the hardware cost (i.e. Stream puck and voice remote).

The good thing about the original terms is that customers who purchased this service got to keep the set-top-box for themselves at the end of their contract. As a result, some even ended up putting them on eBay, although without an active Sky Stream subscription the pucks are effectively useless.

The bad news is that Sky updated the T&C’s for Sky Stream on 23rd February 2023 (here) and one of the changes they made was to add a loan clause. In short, the pucks are now defined as “loaned equipment” rather than owned, which means you’ll have to return them when you cancel the service and may have to pay Sky an as yet unspecified amount if you lose the box. Customers who joined under the old terms aren’t affected by this, yet.

At an extreme, Sky’s new terms even take the step of threatening customers with “legal action” if they fail to return the puck. But such action would probably cost more than the device itself is worth and they’d thus be much more likely to simply charge a fee to cover the lost kit.

Extract from the New Sky Stream T&C’s (new terms vs old terms)

➤ Where your Sky Stream puck has been provided by Sky, it is loaned equipment supplied to you at no extra cost and remains the property of Sky (or another group company) at all times.

➤ As you must not dispose of loaned equipment we recommend you insure it against loss, theft or damage for the full replacement value.

➤ You must return or allow us to collect loaned equipment when reasonably requested to do so. This is the case even if it is being used by you to receive third party retailed content or services and you are responsible for managing any subscriptions with third parties.

➤ If you fail to return the loaned equipment you will have to pay a non-return charge. For more information about these charges go to sky.com/nonreturncharge.

➤ Payment of the non-return charge does not transfer ownership of loaned equipment to you and you are still required to return the loan equipment to us following our reasonable request.

➤ If your Sky streaming TV services end or are restricted your Sky Stream puck will simply stop working and you will not be able to receive any content including free to air channels or other third party content and services.

➤ If we have requested that you return loaned equipment to us and you have failed to do so we may take legal action to recover it from you.

➤ You must tell us immediately if your Sky Stream puck is lost, stolen, damaged or faulty.

➤ You need a TV with a HDMI port to view your TV subscription service via a Sky Stream puck.

➤ Your Sky Stream puck will not have any functionality unless you also have a TV subscription service.

However, loaned kit does have its advantages, such as in the fact that Sky is no longer charging that £39.95 setup fee for Sky Stream. On top of that they’ve also pledged to “repair or replace the loaned equipment at no cost to you if it becomes faulty,” unless of course you caused the damage yourself or lost the puck.