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

finnis

Re: subs increase. Yes, got mine with the magazine. Going up £2.50 for me. However, read on...

Re: threatening to cancel over call out charge/technical problem. I've done that in the past. Customer Services wanted £65 to move my dish and I asked to be put through to cancellations and they sent an engineer out to move my dish for nothing. He had to come back again for some reason and that was free too. If you say something along the lines of "no point in having a sky sub if I can't watch anything so I'm going to cancel" chances are they will give you a box for free. No guarantees, though.

Phoned to cancel my sky sub this morning and had a good chat with one of the advisers in cancellations. Started by looking at reducing the channels I get, but we agreed in the end that I would keep my current set up (the full package) but for £25 per month less for six months. We were pleasant to each other and I think we both got a deal out of it - Sky keep a subscriber and I get a discount.

ashbart

I have called today to see if Sky could reduce my bills; have been given Sky + with 1x multiroom for 25% off 12 month contract
Sky Talk £11.00 line rental + £5.00 international calls; calls FOC up to 60 mins. (exc UK mobiles)
So, used to pay £64.49 (Sky+ and multiroom) and average £30.00 BT per month
Now pay £64.25 per month for the whole Sky TV & Talk package
£360 saved for a year - result for me!

robd831

Whatusername
I was out of contract when my SKY+ box failed.
They wanted £70 to come and repair it, said I would leave and it dropped to £35, still said I would go (to Virgin) and they came out and repaired for free......
Still with them :-(( but on a reduced rate....

northwest1965

leeroy221 wrote: »

Hello All,
I have been with VM for the past 16mths and had no problems at all, thing is i am getting bored with the TV channels i have got.
Currently i have the lowest bundle of M TV, M phone and L broadband, this is the basic package.

I pay around £40 all in all each month for this package. This includes the line rental of £11.99 and calls, although we very very rarely use the phone, only for when my Wife calls her family in Thailand.

Anyway, i want to upgrade the TV to XL so my little boy can watch the cartoons and would also like to get the sports package.
Can anyone tell me if they have apackage similar to this and if they received any deals etc. On the website for the M phone L broadband and XL TV with sports they say it costs £56 + £11.99 line rental so £67.99 a month which is out of my price range unfortunatly. I am only able to afford around £40-£50 max per month.

If anyone could let me know any good deals they have got or any good bargaining tools i would very much appreciate it
Lee

Just phone up and ask if they can upgrade your tv to XL, they did for us for free. Dont forget to get a new HD box if you havent got one.

leeroy221

Hi all,

I called Virgin and they were pretty abrupt on the phone and said it would cost £20.50 to upgrade to XL tv and an extra £20.50 pm for sky sports, i asked if they could shave a bit off the price etc and was told point blank NO.

I called sky and i got offered the following package:

Unlimited broadband £7.50
Sky talk - Free
Line rent - £11
Sky sports package
Childrens package
Variety package
Music package
ESPN free for 3 mth
Free sky + box and free installation
Marks and Spencers vouchers
All of this for £56 pm.

I though this was a fairly good deal, what are your opinions?

Thinking of jusst taking them up on this offer and cancelling Virgin, may try calling the retentions team at Virgin one more time to see what they say though?

northwest1965

leeroy221 wrote: »

Hi all,

I called Virgin and they were pretty abrupt on the phone and said it would cost £20.50 to upgrade to XL tv and an extra £20.50 pm for sky sports, i asked if they could shave a bit off the price etc and was told point blank NO.

I called sky and i got offered the following package:

Unlimited broadband £7.50
Sky talk - Free
Line rent - £11
Sky sports package
Childrens package
Variety package
Music package
ESPN free for 3 mth
Free sky + box and free installation
Marks and Spencers vouchers
All of this for £56 pm.

I though this was a fairly good deal, what are your opinions?

Thinking of jusst taking them up on this offer and cancelling Virgin, may try calling the retentions team at Virgin one more time to see what they say though?

Yeah give them another call, you've got something to compare to now. Good Luck!

waltsalt

Cancelled my sub a month ago and just got a phone call to offer the following:-

• Sky Sports free for 12 months with any sub
  e.g. One entertainment pack and Sky Sports for £18/month
• Monthly contract (can be canceled at any time)
• £50 M&S voucher

I then enquired about HD and was offered:-

• Free Sky+ HD box with free self install
  (But I would have to take the £10/month HD pack)
  (And this would tie me into a 12 month contract)

• So that would be Sky Sports, one entertainment pack, HD box and HD channels all for £28/month with a £50 M&S voucher!

All in all, pretty tasty but I already got a Freesat HD box so the offer may have come too late. I said I would think about it and the woman on the phone said this was an outbound call offer only so I couldn't phone up and get it (I asked her for a reference number). She is gonna phone me back on Monday instead for my final decision.

Just wanted to make this post because I had wanted a deal like this when I was cancelling but was offered nothing at that stage so if you're in the same boat it may be worth playing hard ball and going through with the cancellation.

gambleruk

Received a letter from talk talk tv (use to be tiscali) saying my tv/broadband/line rental package is now going up to £26.47 from £19.99 next month.
Just wondered if anyone else has this package and there thoughts on it, the package is basic but do receive sky 1,2,3 and sky sports news etc so more on it than freeview.
Also does anyone know if talk talk in the future will be broadcasting in HD as none of there channels do at the moment.
Use to be with Sky but like many on here tried to get a reduction of my monthly subscription by cancelling and they just cancelled :cool: though to be gonest that was 12 months ago and only missed the sports channels.
I'm presuming the talk talk package is still cheaper than bt vision,virgin and sky ?
Many thanks in advance for any information

leeroy221

Just to let everyone know,

Sky offered me S/Sports package, music, childrens and variety package
Unlimited b/band
+ Phone with the freetime package
Free box, wireless router, installation, dish etc and free installation of a new line.
£25 M & S vouchers

For £50 per month inc line rental.

I am a virgin customer and currently get everything from them but they were not able to match sky, the cheapest they could do was £60 per month and would not budge, tried on 3 occasions and they still would not budge each time as they cant compete.

They didnt seem to bothered that i was leaving to be honest, that was all 3 different operators i spoke to so i have carried on and asked for my package to be cancelled and am moving to sky. Shame because i wanted to stay with Virgin.

joeynix

I currently have unlimited broadband, evening and weekend calls, 6 mixes, Sky sports and HD pack for £60 a month roughly.

I am able to cancel from 29th Aug and was offered a 6 month 25% discount off of tv and advised broadband will drop to £7.50 on 1st Sept. Leaving me to pay £49.25 on a 12 month contract.

Does anyone know how the 50% discount works? One issue I have is that I may need to move to the US in 9 months for work, so the 25% discount doesn't help me, other than making the 3 months I won't watch TV half price! (6 months *25% = 12.5% on a year).

Do you think I should hold out and call back on the 29th to "cancel" and state that as generous as the offer is, it won't help me reduce my costs because of my circumstances and see if they offer me anything better?

Could anyone who got the 50% discount comment on what they actually said to sky please?

Thanks,
Joe