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

BexTech

rose28454 wrote: »

As per my previous post my OH is moving out next week and is trying to get Sky tv, Broadband and Talk. Spoke to BT this morning about reconnecting phone line and was told that he would not be able to take Sky Talk for 12 months as he would be subject to a 12 month BT contract. Can anyone tell me if this is correct?

As long as you are only going for a Sky Talk calls package and not also moving line rental away from BT (not wise anyway) then you'll be OK. The 12 months contract is for line rental. Even with a calls package from Sky, you'll still have a calls package from BT and can pass some calls back over BT if you wished by dialling 1280 before the number you wish to call - handy if you have Free Caller Display from BT where some calls have to go through BT to keep it free.

Sarahsaver

jo1972 wrote: »

Can anyone offer me advice please?

I'm with Virgin for all 3, TV, telephone and internet and paying upwards of £150 a month :eek:

It seems my daughter has been ringing mobiles more than she should as I get free local and national calls!!

Anyhoo, I'm sick of hitting my credit limit with Virgin and being cut off every week and fed up of paying such a huge bill every month. I think my internet is the medium package which is £18 and we have all the channels bar movies and adult channel on the TV.

Would I be better off either..

a. Sticking with Virgin for the TV but finding other phone/internet providers
b. Going to Sky for all 3
c. Going to Sky for TV but finding other phone/internet providers
d. Summat else...

Any advice would be appreciated

I got the virgin 4 for £40, despite being an existing broadband customer, medium broadband, large tv package, landline and mobile 300 txts 300 minutes, so maybe your daughter could use the mobile from such a deal? Get calls to mobiles barred from your line, AND get her a contract or payg where she gets loads of free or inclusive calls. Just tell her to stop it!

gemma_h_3

argh im having a nightmare with sky at the moment. I want the sky+ box and am being told that i will have to pay £95 to have this installed.

I was going to go with them for my broadband and telephone. I was told I couldnt hav the broadband for free as this was not in my area which was fine, i was willing to pay as i wanted unimited downloads (my hubby does a lot with the computer and needs unlimited downloads) anyway was then told this was not in my area either and that tehy couldnt match my deal with BT for my telephone - fair enough i said i will have to look into going elsewhere.

I realised that i was paying £45 a month for channels that i wasnt watching. Ive been a loyal customer for 4 years and 10 months paying £45 a month until Tuesday evening. This obviuosly does not count for anything for sky. I saw a deal in the shops near me whereby if you are a new customer you can install sky+ for £50 when speaking with sky about this i was told that i was unable to do this but i was getting it cheaper than £149 as i dont have free broadband in my area (like i should be happy with this!) and that they were offering it to me for £50. I told them i was willing to pay £50 and i wanted them to do me a deal. I was then told no deals were on offer - the guy i dealt with was very rude to be honest so i decided to rant at him then for 25 minutes about how unfair it was for loyal customers! to be told that i would have got a deal when i first joined sky (I actually didnt). ANyway i lost my rag adn told him to cancel the contract as i thought that was shocking. I told him that i would just sign up again in my husbands name (moment of stupidness on my part but i was angry) he told me that the contract is to the house address so we wouldnt be able to do this. I said i knew people that had done this and he said sky was clamping down on this in the next few months and if they found people doing this they would be made to pay the full price. Anyone reckon this is true?

Do you also think i would be able to do this? my husband is rather annoyed at me for saying im cancelling haha as he doesnt want to. So i think im going to have to call them back up next week and say i actually dont want to cancel grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

BexTech

gemma_h wrote: »

Do you also think I would be able to do this? My husband is rather annoyed at me for saying I'm cancelling haha as he doesnt want to. So I think I'm going to have to call them back up next week and say I actually don't want to cancel grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

You can live without Sky, just let it cancel. Spend that £45 per month on something else, or use it to pay loans or mortgages off.

Sky might phone with a please don't go offer.

If your husband is into football, stream the football online.

Sky broadband may say it's unlimited, however it isn't really unlimited, they have a Fair Use Policy and if you download too much they kick you off.

gemma_h_3

BexTech wrote: »

You can live without Sky, just let it cancel. Spend that £45 per month on something else, or use it to pay loans or mortgages off.

Sky might phone with a please don't go offer.

If your husband is into football, stream the football online.

Sky broadband may say it's unlimited, however it isn't really unlimited, they have a Fair Use Policy and if you download too much they kick you off.

I am hoping they will phone to be honest. I did change the package on tuesday so now im only paying £21 a month which is much better, i realised that i didnt ever watch the sport channels or the movies and i was paying for something that i didnt use.

Our telly doesnt pick anything up where we are without sky so we need something and up till this point ive never had a problem with them. Im just really angry that they wont give me the same deal they give new customers.

If there were more competition out there they wouldnt be able to get away with this!

dfdonelan

My 'friend' (who I found by a post on one of these forums) had their free Sky+ installed today under the 'Introduce a Friend' scheme. As per the instructions on Sky's website and email, I duly phoned with both my contract number and my friend's contract number to claim my free Sky+. They're refusing to fulfil their part of the bargain until I've got my friend's full address. Surely my friend's contract number gives them this ??! Now got to sit and wait/hope that my random friend replies to my pleading request for their home address details. Word of warning to anyone else participating in this deal...make sure you have the new customer's address !!!

BexTech

gemma_h wrote: »

I am hoping they will phone to be honest. I did change the package on tuesday so now im only paying £21 a month which is much better, i realised that i didnt ever watch the sport channels or the movies and i was paying for something that i didnt use.

Our telly doesnt pick anything up where we are without sky so we need something and up till this point ive never had a problem with them. Im just really angry that they wont give me the same deal they give new customers.

If there were more competition out there they wouldnt be able to get away with this!

When your Sky subscription ends, your box and viewing card will revert to a Freesat From Sky service.

So you'll get the 200 or so free TV channels and the free radio channels.

https://www.freesatfromsky.com

You don't need to pay anything, no £150 no £20 - your cancelled contract service will simply become Freesat From Sky.

teehibbee

Hi Guys,

Looking for help please. I'm on Virgin and out of contract. I really only want phone and broadband and was attracted by their offer of £15.50. The retentions department has only offered it at £20, bundling a tv service I wont use.

Q - has any exisiting customer succeeded in getting the new customer rate of £15.50 (= £11 + £4.50)?

mattccross

If you want to reduce your Virgin Media bills don't phone in the evenings as you'll get through to totally unhelpful foreign call centres.

I wanted to reduce my monthly bill as well as upgrade my services.

I had Phone M, Broadband M and TV M for £29 per month.

I wanted to upgrade my TV to L with the V+ box. According to foreign call centre that would cost me a one off fee of £150 and £45 per month. They said that they couldn't give me any offers as they were for new customers only. I suggested that I move to Sky and he agreed! :mad:

I phoned again one Friday afternoon and got through to an English call centre. I asked for the same services and I ended up, without any hesitation, with the following:

Phone M, Broadband M, TV XL and V+ for a one off fee of £75 and a monthly fee of £30!!! That's a saving of £255 in the first year! And £180 every year after (assuming pries don't go up!). :j

M, L and XL are all expalined on their site.

Matt

irrelevant

I wonder if anybody can help me here? My parents-in-law have a sky+ box that's died... it's out of warranty, and sky want £65 to come out and fix. They are pensioners and definitely not up to haggling (unless it involves lots of shouting!), plus being on the bottom rate package anyway don't have that much bargening power I guess. I've got them running again on their previous digibox, which they had kept thankfully, but they like the sky+ (plus the std box is as slow as molasses..)

So.. can anybody suggest a cheap way to get a replacement box that I can do for them, or doesn't involve being diplomatic... :-)

Edit: I managed to fix it by doing a firmware based re-format: hold left & right on the box while powering up, then press select when the lights spin. This wipes everything so don't do it if you don't need to. Sky technical didn't suggest that one. Next option would have been to replace the hard drive.