Sky charging for repairs to non-faulty Sky+ boxes?

The Register recently reported that BSkyB were charging customers call out fees because of a bug in the Sky+ software.

British Sky Broadcasting has denied accusations that the company tried to profit from a known software fault in its digital video recorders, after customers were charged £65 for engineers to visit their homes.

A recurring fault in the Sky+ system software causes recordings to fail for no apparent reason. The bug eats up space on the digibox's hard disk and, even after the failed recording has been deleted, the disk space is lost.

Although the problem has dragged on for two years, coming and going through various software updates, recent complaints from Sky+ customers have revealed an interesting development:

Customers whose digiboxes are still under warranty are told by Sky that the fault is known about and will be fixed with an automatic software update, downloaded by satellite. But customers whose digiboxes are out of warranty are told that it is a hardware fault and will require an engineer visit. This incurs a £65 call-out charge.