Sky, Virgin & BT TV Haggle down prices and get serious discounts Article Discussion

saintscouple

lalamb wrote: »

We are currently paying £107 per month. Thats for HD in one room, sky+ multi room and another multi room....so we have 3 boxes. It also includes phone and broadband. Do you think it would be worth my while ringing up to see if I can get it reduced for a period of 6 months? I was also considering adding another multi room but the charges are crazy having to pay for a box and installation.

Phone up taking the cancellation route on the options, state you're having financial difficulties and see what they offer. Don't mention you only want a discount for 6 months, lt them offer you a deal.

My current tv deal on a HD package with Entertainment + is 25% off for 12 months, which ends in December.
As you can see in my post above i recently added broadband and talk with good additional discounts.

lalamb

saintscouple wrote: »

Phone up taking the cancellation route on the options, state you're having financial difficulties and see what they offer. Don't mention you only want a discount for 6 months, lt them offer you a deal.

My current tv deal on a HD package with Entertainment + is 25% off for 12 months, which ends in December.
As you can see in my post above i recently added broadband and talk with good additional discounts.

I may give it a try tomorrow. What if I say I want to cancel and they say OK and go ahead and cancel

guyb2385

hi there i have been a sky customer for almost two years now and have the top package with them paying £53 a month, i recently lost my sky signal and following a lengthy phone call to sky they could not solve the problem over the phone so the final option they had was to send out an engineer at the cost of £69 pounds due to the fact my sky box was out of warranty. to my disgust i tried to haggle the price down with no luck.
i then decided to ring up there retentions department to cancel my sky subscription telling them why i was unhappy and why i wanted to leave, within a matter of minutes i was told instead of the £69 pounds charge id only have to pay £10 pounds and for the week i will be left with no sky until the engineer comes out i will be credited that loss on my next bill so all in all it will cost me nothing......winner!
..........ps also tried to get my monthly bill lowered too but the chap on the line said he could only offer me one deal per phone call. "call back when the engineer has fix your sky and we will see what we can do he said".....so we will wait and see......double winner! i hope..... cheer martin! :money:

lalamb

Just got off the phone from Sky, I said there were lots of appealing offers from BT and Virgin. Told him money was tight and he made his first offer which worked out at £18 saving per month I told him I didn't think it was a good offer although I appreciated it, I think I will look elsewhere. He came back with a saving of £24 per month.....I'm happy with that. As they say, you don't ask you don't get! :j

robhw

bahamas_1350 wrote: »

I have been a VM customer for ten years, just rang them to see if they could do me a better deal, no chance, wanted an ectra £9 a month to upgrade to M+ TV, Broadband and phone M with TV box.

They are offering this half price for 6 months for new customers, which I argued, but she was having none of it, could hardly hear what she was saying throughout the call. Her final offer was a VHD box and TVM+ for an extra £4 a month - umm I think not!

Trouble is Sky don't do the bundle broadband in my area so we are stuck really.

It's really really important that you talk to Virgin's Retention department NOT their rubbish foreign Customer Service department.

Always select "Thinking of leaving us" on the phone selections.

Don't worry - you won't have to cancel if you don't want to. However, it really doesn't hurt to tell them you've been looking into the Sky sale and could save loads of money by leaving.

At bare minimum, they should be able to match how much you would pay as a new customer over the first 12 months (i.e. first 6 months half price).

Keep trying - there's definitely savings to be had - I'm on a £7 a month loyalty discount which lasts 2 years plus an additional £5/m new customer price match for 12 months.

Good luck!

zolablue25

saintscouple wrote: »

You'll be unable to drop talk and broadband after 6 months without penalty fees as it's a 12 month contract.

Whilst you are probably correct, the person I spoke to on Live Chat did state that I could downgrade after 6 months. She had to go away and check but came back and said I could. She may have been lying to get my business (it wouldn't be the first time a sales person has lied) but I did keep a copy of the conversation that I will use if I decide to ask for a downgrade.

lolly5648 wrote:

Where is live chat for Sky - I have always phoned and got nowhere so this might be better.

On their sales page there is a 'contact us' option. Click on that and you are offered a phone number an email address and a live-chat option. Also, if your cookies are cleared, you can just go to the sky.com website and after a few moments a window will appear offering live chat.

zolablue25

robhw wrote: »

It's really really important that you talk to Virgin's Retention department NOT their rubbish foreign Customer Service department.

Always select "Thinking of leaving us" on the phone selections.

Don't worry - you won't have to cancel if you don't want to. However, it really doesn't hurt to tell them you've been looking into the Sky sale and could save loads of money by leaving.

At bare minimum, they should be able to match how much you would pay as a new customer over the first 12 months (i.e. first 6 months half price).

Keep trying - there's definitely savings to be had - I'm on a £7 a month loyalty discount which lasts 2 years plus an additional £5/m new customer price match for 12 months.

Good luck!

I have just got off the phone to a lovely lady in Scotland at VM's retention department. I told her I was going to accept Sky's offer as previously detailed in this thread and she tried to find me a deal. She was unable to find anything less than I was already paying, which was a little disappointing, so I continued with the disconnection. The Sky deal will save me at least £420 over the 12 months + £25 M&S voucher, and the possibility of TCB. Unfortunately I couldn't keep my existing phone number which is a bit of a PITA, but I can put up with bit of inconvenience for those sums.

stars_bright

We have been with Virgin media for years. We are currently on 10 meg BB, M+ TV and Phone with free calls anytime for £40.90 pm. We wanted to upgrade to the L TV and have a V HD box in an extra room. We were told we couldn't have a V HD box as they had none left??? We would have to have a Tivo box and it was finally agrred that it would cost £52.90 pm plus £25 installation. We later had a letter confirming the upgrade but at a cost of £61.40 pm plus £50 installation. We phoned VM and were told she didn't know anything about the previous call and it was definitely £61.40 pm plus £50 installation. We the rang back to cancel the upgrade and were told that it had been a mistake and it would be £52.90 pm plus £25 installation. By this time, with all the call waiting etc I had lost the will to live and said i was cancelling the upgrade anyway as I didn't trust what they said on the phone anymore. Our contract finishes in Sept and I think then we will just have broadband and TV with the cheapest provider and have freeview and netflixs. Its all so much hassle for not very good tv anyway

Richardas

After seeing the deals offered to new customer I phoned Virgin having been informed on-line that existing customers could upgrade to one of the new collections.
I am currently on 10M broad band and an old fashioned box paying nearly £60 a month with 'Talk anytime'.
After an argument with the chap who answered the phone who was qoting £68 he passed me on to customer services.
The end result was that I ended up (after a small haggle) with the 'Essential Collection' - Tivo box, 30M broad band (up from 10) and 'Talk Anytime' thrown in for free. We have lost a few TV channels but most are ones we don't watch anyway.
Total cost £38.90 - down from £59.10 for better services.

mark_steps

Bit of a story so let me start here:

We originally had SKY (one box in living room and one in bedroom) We got rid of it as we were moving house but after we cancelled the move fell through. I was happy enough to have basic tv so got rid of SKY box from bedroom. Stored the old livingroom one away.
The OH became fed up and got Virgin installed. 10M internet, Talk evening and weekends and the M+ package.

A few months later SKY rang up and offered the lot with exception of the sports channels for £21.25. Bargain so i said i would take it. We hooked the SKY box back up and there and there had SKY again. So i rang Virgin and gave a sob story but all they could do was remove the M+ and make it M (freeview)so they done that which meant i now had SKY in the living room(sky+may i add) and freeview via Virgin box in the bedroom.

However we are still paying Virgin £39 (not set up d/d) for the phone and Internet. Virgin contract is up in August and the Sky contract expires in October.

Im holding out until October to see what my options are. However browsing the sky website to build my own package, steering as close to the existing package i have from both sky and virgin means i will pay £60.65..