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

KTF

chambta wrote: »

Out of interest does anyone know if I buy a HD Freesat box, will it work with the existing Sky dish or will I need some other equipment to what I already have?

Yes, it will work. Just move the cable from the Sky box to the freesat box.

RichIX

I rang up Sky this morning to re-enable our line, first person I spoke to said there was no discounts to be had so I said fair enough ill stick to Freeview. Rang again later tonight at 7pm and managed to get 50% off for 12 months from £27 to £13.50 !

It does all depend on whom you speak to at Sky it seems.

boabbyrab

When I had $ky and felt i was paying too much, i phoned the up a few times and asked if there were any deals going and always got 25% off for a year, never threatened to leave and was always courteous, may have got more if pushed but at the time, i was happy with it.

moosetastic

my 1st year of sky, which I had half price through a friends code, expires on 20th March. I emailed them to cancel, they rang me asking why, I said I wouldnt be able to afford it when it was full price. I only have hd and the entertainment+ package, which half price was £18.60 a month. They could only offer me £30 for 6 months, or £32 for 9 months. I declined and the cancellation is going through. Just waiting with fingers crossed now for them to ring me before the 20th!!

RobMac

I phoned sky and tried to haggle a deal a couple of weeks ago. I have basic tv, withHD, unlimited web and phone for £55/month.
The women seemed offended that I was asking for an offer and stated that sky cant just give out offers and has to make money. Her suggestion was to take off my HD pack and so I could reduce my bill. I compared their prices to BT, to which she told me sky was cheaper than BT, because you have to pay for 18 months with BT, and only 12 months with SKY?!?!?! Her math was amazing. I did manage a whopping £7.50 off the bill offered to me. The whole phone call was very aggressive and I got off the phone not wanting to phone them again!
A few nights later I sent an email asking to cancel as it was too much money and the way I was spoken to aweful and dont want to be a customer anymore.
I get a phone call back.
An apology, an offer? What do I get? I get a customer complaint department man. Impressively quick response. Thats were the impressive part ends. He talked at me for 3 minutes about how the call taker had done nothing wrong and he had listened to call. When I finally got to speak and told him about the math skills he suddenly never heard that on the call, dismisses this, claims I dont want to speak to the retentions department because I think they are aweful and did I want my TV turned off right now! Long story short I gave 31 days notice, and have gone away to transfer the phone and broadband.
What ever you do, do not call them rude, they get worse and treat you like dirt.
I have now decided to get freesat, gone with talktalk for broadband and phone. I used quidco, got £70 cashback, paid my line rental in advance and got broadband half price. I now pay (when you add all the offers together and divide by 12) £6.92 a month. Cheers SKY! You helped me see the light and save me £48.08 a month, even more now I use my mobile for phone calls, rather than my landline.
I now pay less per month than you offered to take off my bill. If you had only used decent customer service and been polite I probably would have accepted the £7.50 reduction like a fool!!
:rotfl:

Moral of the tale. If you dont really need those sky channels, or could live without, think about my approach. £6.92 vs £55??
If I walked up and said here is £580 and all you have to do is not watch sky1, or the fox channel for a year, would you take the money or watch sky...? Just think about it.

Shivy_2

Been reading the recent deals being offered and thought id post the deal i have been offered,

Called in on Thursday to cancel my Sky as i had been with them for 7 years and never been offered a discount on my package, as a result of the call was offered 25% off but reading the deals on here i was initially after 50% off unfortunately they were not able to offer anything better then 25% as a result the 30 days notice has gone through.... and the waiting game begins....

lfcsi

I'm a customer of 13 years + and my last 3 bills have all been in excess of £110. I've got phone, broadband, TV, HD etc and have had for over 3 years so its quite an expense when you total it up. I rang to cancel last Monday due to a genuine recent change in financial circumstances, only the 2nd time in all my custom I've ever called them, and I was offered £8 discount for 3 months and then they cut me off instead of putting me through to another dept.

2nd call I was on hold for 25 minutes before I gave up.

3rd call was 30 mins later. I was told existing customers always get the best deals and pay the least. I was offered £9 discount for 3 months. I quoted the deal on MSE and said as a loyal customer and given what the chap had said, surely he could oblige. The outcome - service turns off 23rd March!

I'm not sure I'd even accept an offer if they call now.

Lifes_Grand_Plan

lfcsi wrote: »

I quoted the deal on MSE

This was a mistake IMHO, makes it look like you are a serial deal hunter and only called to see what you could get them down to.

I dare say they will come back to you, but you and anyone else should take 15 minutes to read the advice further back in the thread before calling.

To repeat the advice again, to get the best deals you have to be prepared to lose your Sky potentially. That is very unlikely though and can be worked around.

Ring them up and tell them you want to cancel because you can't afford it anymore (give a reason if you like, job loss, new baby, pay cut at work)....

DO NOT ask for a discount or complain your friends have a discount or anything else, just as above, you want to cancel.

They may make you offers, if they make one you like, take it. If not then keep telling them you want to cancel until you get a cut off date (normally 30 days from date of call).

Then.... WAIT!

They will usually (but not always) call you back within the 30 days (usually nearer to the end of that period) asking why you are leaving and if they could convince you to stay. If they do, tell them its too expensive and what you can afford (half price is usually a good deal). Again if they offer you an acceptable deal then take it.

If they don't call you then you will be cut off as agreed on your first call. If you really can't live without sky then you can call them back before the cut off date (or after it) and get services put back on.

NB. If you don't usually answer your phone then there is a good chance you will miss Sky's calls (obviously). They will likely only call once so be careful.

If you aren't a slave to sky and can live without it for a while, after the cut off date, you will usually get postcards / letters from them in the post asking you to come back with 50% off.

HTH

jetters_2

Hi everyone! New poster here!

Our contract due to run out 3rd March, I phoned up last week asking Sky to cancel.
Currently have Entertainment Extra, HD, Phone and Broadband.

Basically want to bin-off our phone (not used much now, waste of money), bin-off our 'broadband' (barely getting 1.5mb/s since we moved here - Sky say we should be getting 2mb-5mb :rotfl: ), and if we get anything else off... so be it!

We're either looking at getting our BB from Plusnet (same slow speed, but only paying £9.99 a month for it), or biting the bullet and getting Virgin (30mb, £22.50, £17.50 for 3 months) and getting some speed back like we used to have before we moved!

Phoned Sky up once - give me the big sell to keep all services, bashing the other companies etc, told me to 'think about it'.
I phoned back again the next day. Guy kept me on and on and on on the phone untill I eventually got him to put through the disconnect.
We currently pay around about £58-63 - dependant on how Mrs Jetters uses the house phone :eek: - but she's got more minutes on her mobile so we're going to just use them - she's not touched the house phone for months.
We were offered down to £46 a month - the other half said I should have taken that. They also offered about £34ish for the TV by itself (about £2 off a month).

Maybe I was hoping for a bit too much, was hoping to angle for Sky Sports on the cheap and a bit more off a month, so I'd be getting Virgin BB + Sky TV for around about the same, maybe slightly more if there is Sport.
Either way, I've still not had 'the call' back yet. I'm definitely going to get rid of the Phone and 'broadband', and try to haggle down the TV.
Either way, should the worst come to the worst, I'm not too proud to phone up, tail between legs asking for the £34p/m for just the TV.

Anyway. Hello all. Hope you are all well.:beer:

DragonQ

Might be worth checking if you're in an FTTP area - this would enable you to get 160+ Mbps broadband (from BT) with no phone line required. Otherwise, if you're in an FTTC area you can get 80+ Mbps (from Sky/BT/TalkTalk/Plus Net/etc.) but still need to pay line rental. Virgin Media is also an option as you say.

For me, ADSL2+ wasn't an option (not fast enough due to our distance from the exchange), FTTP didn't exist and I wasn't in a cable area, so FTTC was my only option - and it was costly back then! Not so much now - I pay £28pm including line rental for double the speed compared to what I got for £38pm 18 months ago.