SKY HD Offer?

Leopard

Summer01 wrote: »

I've had similar problems with Sky also, I got a call originally with the offer that expired end March but couldn't take it and now it's no longer available.

I am wondering if I'd be better of cancelling completely and get my partner to sign up as a new customer? Has anyone done this before? I've been with Sky for years but doesn't get you anything at all..

Blankie wrote: »

One of the Sky staff advised me to do this. I tried to get a HD offer because our picture is awful (we've had an engineer out but he couldn't help). I ended up cancelling Sky and he quietly suggested we ring back under a different name. I don't know what offer we'd get though.

Summer01 wrote: »

Hi Blankie, if you do this I'd love to hear how you get on.
We've been told we're not in a digital switch over area and so are not entitled to any offers until 2012.

Sky is wise to this pass-the-parcel ruse and makes it difficult.

Indeed, it can even be hard to get a new contract if you move into a premises which had previously been occupied by somebody else who had Sky and then cancelled it (perhaps to move abroad).

To really shake off a previous contract at a premises with Sky you need to wait a year from the date of the cancellation.

When the new contract is applied for, Sky checks its records for the address, as well as for the applicant. If it's been less than a year since a previous contract there was cancelled, they're likely to ask for proof that the previous contract-holder doesn't still live there.

It's simple enough for them to check the Electoral Roll and the credit records for both people and also for the address, if they are suspicious.

Your final comment is most interesting. So, you only get decent special offers from Sky if there's a danger you might be about to switch to Freeview HD and cancel Sky...

MORPH3US wrote: »

Did you get any further with this mark?

I too am on just the basic £17.50 a month "one mix" with sky+

I am going to ring to cancel in a couple of weeks and see if I can get a free HD box and free HD subscription for 12 months because there is no way i'm paying £10 a month extra for it.

If they don't offer me anything then I think I will cancel and get a freesatHD box... one off payment fo say £100 but then free HD channels and iPlayer for life.

Virgin is fine unless you already have a phone line (in minimum contract) because they force their telephone on you.

I think you may have missed the boat on this one, at least for the time being.

I don't work for Sky (:eek:) but, to judge from what's appeared on MSE, putting it all together, Sky seems to have made a decision last January to knock out 12,000 HD boxes on half-price (or thereabouts) total deals, as a pre-emptive strike against the commencement of Freeview HD in many areas at the end of March.

Another factor could have been that the end of the tax year was approaching and it allowed scope for some remaindering of stock and some balance sheet decorating.

Whatever the reason, all the special offers on HD seem to have had deadlines that ended in the last week of March and since then they've been as tight as a Murdoch's backside.

But there's no harm in trying.

Happychappy

Cancelled my Sky out of principle, now looking for advice as to best Freesat Hd box, I obviously already have the dish, quad LNB and cabling, as well as a soon to be defunct Sky+ box

MORPH3US

Humax are supposed to be good but depends on how much you want to spend.

The Humax is £150 but you can get a Bush for £70 or a Goodmans for £100

Leopard

Happychappy wrote: »

Cancelled my Sky out of principle, now looking for advice as to best Freesat Hd box, I obviously already have the dish, quad LNB and cabling, as well as a soon to be defunct Sky+ box

Which principle(s) in particular? (Not that Sky has any.)

Anyway...the "best FreeSat HD box" and the one which, with two tuners and a hard drive, is the one most directly equivalent in functionality to your Sky+ box is the Humax FoxSat-HDR.

Description here. Review here. Best price, new, here (price beats, as well). Refurbs here.

We bought one in January last year and it's brilliant. Faultless, too. :money:

If you take a third feed from your dish to your now redundant Sky+ box, you can use that to watch free SD digital TV while you're recording two other things (in HD) on your Humax box.

You can also plug an external hard drive into either (or both) of the Humax box's two USB ports and then store your recordings on that.

(Which you'll want to do because HD takes up a lot of disk space and you'll soon fill the "massive" 320 GB internal one on the Humax, or any other, HD box.)

Happychappy

leopard

Thank you for the comprehensive reply, I have a 5.1 sound system with an Optical lead from the Sky box to the system, will this also have the same connections? thanks again for your time, much appreciated

TigerTanaka

AMILLIONDOLLARS wrote: »

My friend's sky box stopped working and she was told that they would send an engineer out for £65, or she could take out an insurance policy to cover that cost and any future cost of repairs. She mentioned this to me. My advice, contact the cancellation dept and threaten to cancel, I said as she had had no upgrades since joining Sky, she should mention that a lot of her friends were getting deals on HD. Result being, she got free HD box, free installation and 9 months free subscription to the HD pack!!!:j

Its always good to talk:D

AMD

I just called them, said that Virgin were offering me a free HD box and no installation charges and got a free Sky HD box, free installation and 9 months free subs. No hassle and it is being installed on Saturday morning!

Leopard

Happychappy wrote: »

leopard

Thank you for the comprehensive reply, I have a 5.1 sound system with an Optical lead from the Sky box to the system, will this also have the same connections? thanks again for your time, much appreciated

If you zoom in on the photo of the back of the Humax FoxSat-HDR box displayed in the first of my four links, you can see all the connections at the rear.

The Optical Out port is just to the right of the two SCART sockets. Next to it, continuing right, is the HDMI Out port. Next to that, one above the other, are the Ethernet (10/100 – not Gigabit) port and (below it) the rear USB port.

It's got a second USB port on the front, for easy access.

I did connect the Optical Out to our AV amp but, in practice, we usually just use the HDMI feed to the television (in our case a large Sony LCD) because the TV itself is connected to the amp via its Optical Out port. That means that an optical feed goes to the amp whatever we're watching and we don't have to change channels on the amp every time we select a different input on the TV – whatever the picture that's displayed on its screen, its accompanying sound is going to the amp by Optical connection!

We do, however, use a direct optical connection from our Blu-ray player to our amp when we settle down to watch a film.

The nice thing is how much kit you can afford to buy with the money you're saving by not paying Sky. So, the Humax HD box costs a one-off £250? Who cares? Sky+ was costing us £450 every year and it didn't give us HD.

TigerTanaka wrote: »

I just called them, said that Virgin were offering me a free HD box and no installation charges and got a free Sky HD box, free installation and 9 months free subs. No hassle and it is being installed on Saturday morning!

By "9 months free subs" (sic), are you stating that, for nine months, you will pay Sky no money at all, for anything, to watch its programming on your television in HD? Because that's what your words mean, the way you've phrased it.

If, in fact, you will still have to pay Sky a minimum of £19 a month for your basic subscription, it isn't free; you're going to have to pay Sky at least £171 for the first nine months, plus at least a further £87 for the following three months, at full whack, to which you have contracted. That's a total of £258 (minimum) for the full year. Not exactly "9 months free subs" (sic) that, is it?

So, which is it and what is it actually costing you? Please would you clarify.

MORPH3US

Reading between the lines I would imagine it is 9 months free (HD) subs...

I.e. he/she doesn't have to pay the normal £10 a month for the HD pack for the first nine months.

Leopard

The question is, does the poster realise that?

Or is the poster just carelessly misleading everyone?

You can bet your life that some MSE optimist will now ring up Sky and demand to get Sky+HD television, complete with a dish and a box, with everything completely free, for nine months.

vik1491

I think its preety clear its 9 months free hd subs. Tiger how on earth have you managed that??? I called them 3 times on saturday and nothing... I might give them another ring and tell them virgin have made me a good offer too!!!