A senior customer specialist at Sky Subscriber Services Limited, Lorraine Hunter, has lost her unfair dismissal claim after an employment tribunal found that her termination was justified. Hunter, who had been with Sky since 1995, was dismissed for gross misconduct after evidence emerged that she repeatedly disconnected customer calls.
An investigation was launched in November 2024 after managers suspected Hunter of hanging up on callers. A review of seven recorded calls revealed premature disconnections. The tribunal heard that disconnecting a call requires a deliberate two-step physical action, making accidental disconnections unlikely. Hunter's role involved dealing with high-profile or high-value customers and resolving their issues.
Sky's Customer Contact Guiding Principles state that customer service is paramount and that any call disconnections should be followed by an immediate callback to apologize and continue the inquiry. The company's rules also list "hanging up on a customer and not calling the customer back" as potential gross misconduct.
One of the calls reviewed occurred on July 25, 2024, and lasted only 13 seconds before Hunter disconnected. Although her voice was not clearly audible on the recording, background office noise was present. Hunter claimed she had dialed the wrong number and called back two hours later. In another instance, after being asked by a colleague to "wait a moment" to transfer a high-priority customer, Hunter disconnected the call.
When a customer reported an intermittent signal, Hunter claimed she could not hear them but hung up two seconds after greeting them. In a separate case with an "irate" customer seeking to cancel their contract, Hunter asked the customer to "bear with me a second," muted them for a minute, and then disconnected. The customer subsequently called back to complain they had been hung up on.
In September 2024, Hunter told a customer it was "new for her" and asked them to "give me a second, just a second," before hanging up six minutes into the call. She did call this customer back. In another instance, Hunter ended a call three minutes before her shift concluded and sent a WhatsApp message to colleagues stating, "call dropped if he calls back in please apologise."
During a conduct meeting on May 28, 2025, the recorded calls were played for Hunter. She was summarily dismissed on June 2, 2025, with the company stating she had breached policies by disconnecting customers and failing to call them back. Hunter appealed, citing technical issues, but the decision was upheld, with the tribunal noting that information about technical issues is stored within call records.
Employment Judge Michelle Sutherland ruled that Sky had a reasonable belief Hunter had deliberately disconnected calls, had conducted a reasonable investigation, and had grounds to dismiss her. The judge concluded that Sky acted reasonably in dismissing Hunter, even with her long service, and that her complaint of unfair dismissal was therefore dismissed.