Digital TV Cost Cutting Article - Discuss What You've Been Offered

Minerva69

Hi everyone, been reading this thread with a great deal of interest! I was on Sky's top package for years, then I cancelled the Movies because we never watched them, but it only saved me £6 a month. We used to pay £52 but now we pay £46, as we have everything except the films, we also have Multiroom but not Sky+. We stupidly took out the extended warranty for the digiboxes so that's another £8 a month.

I want to reduce the cost of what we're paying for Sky, but don't want to cancel it altogether as we want to get the free broadband when it's available in our area.

The picture on our downstairs digibox is always breaking up, so I need to ring Sky and get this fixed under the extended warranty (then I'm going to cancel the warranty). Should I wait to ring and haggle for a reduction in our package price until after I've had the digibox fixed?

I don't mind getting rid of the Sports until next year, now that the domestic cricket season is nearly finished (we don't watch football). I need to keep CBeebies for my daughter but not bothered about the other kids channels. I also want to keep Sky 1 & 2 for me. What should I be asking for when I ring?

bring1t

Using the advice in this thread i have just secured the following, was on a £15 per month 2 mix package on basic sky, but looking to take the plunge to sky+ combined with my house move.

1. Free house move and installation of equipment
2. £49 for new sky+ box
3. Sky family + all sports for 3 months half price.

think thats all good but am now on another 12 month contract

lost_but_looking

my partner and i have called them up to see about joining and the best they would do for us was £50 off making it a start up cost of £109 and the 3mts half price:mad: thought they may of been a bit more willing as we were wanting the sky world package...... has anybody else recently just joined up and got a better deal??????

echo

cashback and the m&s vouchers.dus the same thing apply 2 r points?

humfer

Scrumshie wrote:

25% OFF ANY package for 12 MONTHS (taking this offer re-commits you Sky for a further 12 month contract.)

QUOTE]

I got 25% of my Sky World package but they didn't say anything about recommiting myself for another 12 months. Should they? Not really worried as I don't plan to leave, especially with the 25% and the free broadband

echo

when i was offered the deal i was told i'd b entering in2 a new 12 mth contract

monstermind

Minerva69 wrote:

Hi everyone, been reading this thread with a great deal of interest! I was on Sky's top package for years, then I cancelled the Movies because we never watched them, but it only saved me £6 a month. We used to pay £52 but now we pay £46, as we have everything except the films, we also have Multiroom but not Sky+. We stupidly took out the extended warranty for the digiboxes so that's another £8 a month.

I want to reduce the cost of what we're paying for Sky, but don't want to cancel it altogether as we want to get the free broadband when it's available in our area.

The picture on our downstairs digibox is always breaking up, so I need to ring Sky and get this fixed under the extended warranty (then I'm going to cancel the warranty). Should I wait to ring and haggle for a reduction in our package price until after I've had the digibox fixed?

I don't mind getting rid of the Sports until next year, now that the domestic cricket season is nearly finished (we don't watch football). I need to keep CBeebies for my daughter but not bothered about the other kids channels. I also want to keep Sky 1 & 2 for me. What should I be asking for when I ring?

Hi there, firstly I would get the warranty service call, then cancel the warranty, as you rightly suggest.

Have you had multiroom for 12 months? If so, you could probably cancel the second box without missing the subscription channels much - CBeebies is a free to air channel (or paid for by your tv licence fee, to be more precise!) so you'll still continue to receive this on the 2nd box after it's been cancelled.

If you're only really watching Sky One, Two etc then you just need a 2 mix package, which costs just £15 (plus £10 if you need to keep the 2nd box on.)

You can get all this without calling to cancel, but if you ask to be put through to cancellations you should be offered the 2 mix package at 1/2 price for 6 months - just £7.50.

drempels

Monstermind,Thank you for giving the full comprehensive list of "free" Sky channels. I believe in my thread I did point out that all the BBC TV and ITV Channels etc are FTA{Free to air}.
I wanted to point out that there is life beyond Sky though, as well.
Sadly I found on my Pace Digital Box that when it was moved to another Astra
satellite that the "favourite's memory" did not retain my selection.
The digital box was 'given' to me for maintaining my Sky contract at the time when they moved from being analogue and located at 19.2E. In the past you could take your Sky card on holiday to the Med and still watch all your channels. Additionally, because 19.2E was international UK viewers had the opportunity to catch German sex shows on RTL2 and Vox and Lola Wanders (the
transexual presenter on Vox) became the second most famous German in Britain,
I guess. I think the UK regulators were very happy to stop UK viewers viewing
German !!!!!! when Sky suddenly had its own UK satellite location.
A main point I wanted to make was that at 19.2E if you held on to your Pace analogue box -and didn't "give it away to the Sky engineer" that you still have
good free TV to watch as long as you have a twin LNB and still receive it.
Let's face it, the analogue boxes we bought in real shops with our own money
and that had nothing to do with Sky. You ought to have hung on to your property. Lets face it English Eurosport and CNBC and the ticker on the German Bloomberg channel alone make it worth viewing in analogue and they are all free.
Anyone considering Digital Satellite TV 100% of the time will think they need to sign up to Sky and have a telephone link to their digibox for a year etc etc.
It is cheaper to buy a non Sky non Videoguard FTA receiver and you retain your privacy from Sky. Set top boxes from major firms such as Humax, Topfield, Echostar, Technomate etc can all be sourced from their main UK
showrooms or carefully via the net. The Sky "Astra" satellite offers all the channels you mentioned but many of them don't even deserve houseroom.
Why not consider Freeview for the UK channels and relocate your dish back
to 19.2E where digitally you'll find the excellent Deluxe Music Channel, they have a radio channel also, plus Arte {the original and best European Arts channel with excellent films}, plus CNBC (unencrypted) plus TV5 Europe and Monde (unencrypted) plus TVE (unencrypted) plus Rai (unencrypted) plus
TV from Belguim, The Netherlands (BVN) and MTV (unencrypted) and
{German} Eurosports (unencrypted) Sky news (unencrypted + no adverts!) plus hundreds of real TV channels and just a handful of stations such as QVC..and I've not even mentioned the radio choices on analogue and digital.
Whether you choose to watch the Digital Astra "Sky" satellite mix, or you
select Astra 19.2E either way you can do it with no contract from Sky.
An analogue box can be bought for pence almost, but be aware that one day
they will shut down; meanwhile you get Eurosport for free!
A non Sky digital FTA box can be bought from £60 - £90. I would advise
readers to go to the suppliers and avoid internet boxes asserting their software will give you "paid for TV". Honestly, the real Free To Air TV and radio satellite choice is so vast that you have no need to deal with 'piracy'.

littlelily

Yes!!! Result!!!! Thanks to Scrumshie, husband made the call to Sky today. We followed his instructions to the letter, and said we wanted to cancel. We were one the full package plus Sky+ for £53.50 per month (ouch!). We've lost movies but kept everything else, including Sky+ and the all-important Sports channels and the cost has reduced to £28 per month for 6 months!!!! Whopping saving and not exactly a difficult call to make, thanks to all the advice we received here!:beer:

Lady_K

How much would that cost normally then? as that still sounds high to me if you have lost all the movies and sports chanels. You bill is bound to drop if you take them off.

I have everything but sports and movies for half price for 6 months thats £10.50, you could call back