MoneySaving Poll: Have you haggled with Sky, BT, the AA and more this year?

I haggled with Virgin Media for over an hour to get my broadband and phone down to what I can afford. They agreed just at my top level after a lot of haggling. Three weeks later they put it up by about 10%. They have put it up by another 10% since but I am still locked into my contract until next February. It could still go up again before my contract is finished. I feel all reps for this company are on default to lie with every word they say. There is no way I would have signed up if I had know about them being able to do this. I am now having to use my savings to pay bills as they are above my income. I do not spend over an hour on the phone for the good of my health.

I wanted to haggle with Sky in February this year. I got through to cancellations and they would not offer me any incentive to stay with them (broadband, phone and T.V with half price movies customer). I chose this time to haggle with them as there was a good new customer incentive deal with BT with £175 worth of cash back via MSE link for a lower monthly payment and a better overall package. Used this to haggle but in the end cancelled with Sky and took the BT deal.

Sky have since tried to get me back with firstly 50% off TV bundles. 3 months later it was 60% off T.V bundles and this month it is now 75% off TV bundles!!

So.... if you are prepared to go through with the cancellation process you can potentially get the savings with Sky further down the line. But why they didn't offer this to retain my business in the first place is beyond me.

I'm happy and still with BT and will be until my contract finishes at which point I'll assess the best deal again. Hopefully the haggle success rate with BT maybe better before cancellation!!

Virgin Media kept telling me that they were going to increase my broadband speed in 6 months time, but the price was going up now.

I originally took out "Up to 50MEG" and it would be around 30MEG in the evenings when I actually want to use it. Then they increased it to "Up to 100MEG" and put the price up and it still ran at around 30MEG in the evening.

After 2 price rises last year, last month they told me I was going to get "Up to 150MEG" next year, but the price was going up by £4.95/month NOW.

I called them and said I didn't need 150MEG, it seldom ran at the advertised speed anyway, and I now had an option of getting "Fibre" from BT, SKY or Plusnet at "up to 70MEG".

They told me that these other services weren't really "Fibre" and only Virgin Media had real Fibre, and only Virgin Media didn't slow at peak times (which is obviously false because it clearly does) and I'd only get 5MEG from "Up to 70MEG" via BT (but BT were offering a minimum speed guarantee).

So when I got put through to Retentions I negotiated that I wouldn't get the "Up to 150MEG" upgrade (sticking with the 100MEG I already had) and instead of it going up by £4.95/month it went DOWN by £12/month.